Alcohol (Minimum Pricing)

Christopher Chope Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd February 2011 Westminster Hall

[Andrew Griffiths]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman. However, there are those who say, “Why should we penalise someone who wants to buy a 24-pack of strong lager and take it home and drink one can a night for 24 days? Why should we penalise that?” The reality, however, is different. The clients at the Burton addiction centre in my constituency will talk about the impact that cheap booze has on fuelling people’s drinking consumption.

[Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

My hon. Friend seems to be against these loss-leaders. Would he outlaw loss-leaders for chocolate, salt, butter and other things that are not good for us if we take them in excess?

[Andrew Griffiths]

My hon. Friend makes a very important point. However, I cannot remember the last time I was on Burton high street and saw two guys knocking seven bells out of each other over a Toblerone. I also cannot remember the last time I was in Queen’s hospital A and E and doctors were pumping somebody’s stomach because they had overdosed on too much butter. The reality is that alcohol is a very different beast from things such as chocolate.

[Mr Chope]

Surely the issue is not whether alcohol is distinct from other products, but the use made of it by the people who consume it. Is my hon. Friend not in danger of victimising people, particularly poor families, who benefit from these loss-leaders? He is trying to put forward the argument that, by penalising those poor families, he will tackle the problem of binge drinking, which I do not think he will.

[Andrew Griffiths]

I recognise my hon. Friend’s concern, but the people we are penalising are the taxpayers, who have to pay for the consequences of binge drinking through the costs of extra policing and the impacts on A and E departments. Furthermore, if I am being brutally honest it is those poor families who suffer most as a result of cheap alcohol. Young people and poor families are much more price-sensitive to alcohol than others.

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[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to be present in a debate under your chairmanship, Mr Sheridan, and to follow the hon. Member for Burton (Andrew Griffiths), who made an eloquent and thoughtful speech.

I think that this is going to be a great debate. It will also provide a lot of information for political diarists. We have already heard this morning about butter-related crime, or the possibility of butter-related crime, from the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope); we have heard the hon. Member for Burton offer the working men in his constituency the prospect of welcoming my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Mrs Chapman) with open arms, and we have also heard about the Minister’s various meetings with beer groups, of which I am sure there are many, although some will think that the Minister, with his youthful good looks, might not even be old enough to drink.

Having said that, this is a very serious issue and I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Blaenau Gwent (Nick Smith) for choosing it for a debate. It has attracted so many right hon. and hon. Members to Westminster Hall on a Wednesday morning, each one of whom has a constituency interest and a desire to ensure that we continue to move in the right direction.

Other Members here will be able to talk about the health aspects of the issue, for example, the hon. Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston), who has vast experience in the NHS. Indeed, my hon. Friend the Member for Blaenau Gwent and the hon. Member for Burton both mentioned the cost of binge drinking to our health service and the health of the nation.

In the next few minutes, I want to concentrate on alcohol-related crime and the report of the Select Committee on Home Affairs, “Policing in the 21st Century”, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Blaenau Gwent referred. That report was published last year and it addressed the cost to the taxpayer and to the public of alcohol-related crime. When our Committee began the inquiry that led to that report, we were looking at what a police officer did with his or her time; we never intended to look at alcohol-related crime. It was only after we had visited a number of town centres, including Colchester, that we did so. The hon. Member for Colchester (Bob Russell), who was then a member of the Committee, invited the Committee to visit Colchester and hear from local police officers there about the amount of time that they spent on alcohol-related crime, especially on a Friday or Saturday evening. The latest estimate is that 70% of police officers feel that they are distracted from other aspects of policing because they are dealing with alcohol-related crime.

A statistic was sent to the Committee from the Cabinet Office showing that it costs £59 extra to process someone in a police station who has been arrested because of alcohol-related crime. In the current climate, the Government want to save money on policing, and there is no better way of doing that than to have responsible laws that reduce the time that police officers spend on this issue.

[Mr Chope]

I do not think that anyone will disagree with the right hon. Gentleman about the problem, but how will limiting the price at which supermarkets sell alcohol be the solution? We know from our constituencies that it is alleged that small shops, where alcohol is sold at a much higher price than at the supermarkets, enable young people under the legal age to access booze.

[Keith Vaz]

I have huge respect for the hon. Gentleman because he was my Greater London councillor when I was in Richmond many years ago. I have always had a great deal of time for what he says, but I think that he is wrong on this issue. It is not the little shops or the pubs, but the supermarkets, that cause the problem. The evidence is clear, and it is in our report. As the hon. Member for Burton has pointed out, people get tanked up before they go out on a Saturday night, because of supermarkets’ special offers, which make beer cheaper than bottled water, even the cheapest water—I am not saying that we should not drink tap water.

[Keith Vaz]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. She tries to tempt me down Leicester high street, especially the Melton road, where we are currently fighting an application by Tesco to build one of its supermarkets in the middle of one of my main shopping areas.

My hon. Friend the Member for Blaenau Gwent mentioned the cost to the health service, but the cost to the taxpayer as far as crime is concerned is £7.3 billion a year—a huge amount. What do we do about that? It is in the hands of the Minister. At the last Home Office questions, I got up to praise the Home Secretary for moving in the right direction. We could not get the previous Government to do this; I do not know why. It is not that they were not concerned about the matter—I think that they were worried about alcohol-related crime and the pressure on the health service—but that the debate perhaps got distracted by claims that somehow the extension of licensing hours meant that people were drinking more alcohol. I do not think that that is correct, but as someone who does not drink alcohol, and has no constituency interest—no distilleries or production units—I feel that the previous Government should have taken up the Select Committee’s recommendations. This Government are moving in the right direction, but not far enough, as I think we will find from the contributions of most Members here this morning.

Some would say that the hon. Member for Burton has the most to lose because of the production in his town. I have visited Burton and been to the Coors headquarters there. It is a remarkable town, and the world centre of beer making, but down the high street there is an alcohol addiction centre—how very convenient. The people I visited made the case for minimum pricing, so if they can do that, we can look at the issue very seriously. There is something of a practical nature that the Minister can do, picking up on what the hon. Member for Gainsborough said.

[Mr Chope]

I represent Christchurch.

[Keith Vaz]

Oh, I am so sorry: Christchurch, of course. How could I confuse the hon. Gentleman with the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh)?

What the Minister needs to do is to get the chairmen and chief executives of the five biggest supermarkets around the table for an alcohol-free sandwich lunch with both him and the Home Secretary, to discuss the issues. It is in their hands; they can do this.

DNA and CCTV (Crime Prevention)

Christopher Chope Excerpts

Tuesday 6th July 2010 Westminster Hall

[Caroline Flint (Don Valley) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to contribute to this debate, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) on securing it. This is the second time in a week that we have appeared together on the same side, so we are in strange times in terms of alliances. What unites us today is the argument about the balance between respecting individual freedoms and liberties and recognising that the people we represent want the freedom to live and work safely in their communities, free from crime as much as possible.

We all know that crime has gone down, but the reality is that often people’s perception is that it has not. We politicians in the previous Government tackled that and tried to do so further. I am sure that the present Government will find that they face the same problem. CCTV has contributed to people’s sense of personal safety. In Doncaster, CCTV cameras at the taxi cab ranks in the town centre have undoubtedly helped to solve crimes. I know of one case where some young men waiting in a queue for a taxi were attacked by some other young men. Before the victims had rung the police to inform them of the attack, the police had already seen it on camera and, by tracking the offenders by camera through Doncaster, they picked up the culprits before the victims got to the police station. That is a good example, showing how effectively CCTV can work.

CCTV has also been a tool in respect of antisocial behaviour. I was pleased that we in the previous Government had started to talk more about how communities could have more say in where cameras would be positioned. Undoubtedly, mobile CCTV units have been effective when placed in hotspots for antisocial behaviour that may lead to crime.

Today we should be talking not about restrictions, but about how we can improve the quality of the technology that is available. Let me tell an anecdote. Before I was a Member of Parliament, my husband and I were involved in helping stop an armed bank robbery in a local bank on a Saturday. Unfortunately for us, as part of the solution in solving that crime, it was the early days of CCTV and the Saturday staff who came in from another branch forgot to turn on the camera inside the bank. We have moved on a long way since then. It is important to ensure that the equipment is of the highest quality.

The hon. Gentleman cited a number of important cases. I should like to mention that CCTV was used in pursuing Steven Wright, who was responsible for the murder of five women in Ipswich. As I have said, CCTV is also used in multiple cases of drunk and disorderly behaviour, antisocial behaviour, graffiti and vandalism. I appreciate the points that have been made by hon. Members about other organisations, including local authorities. Again, I agree with the hon. Gentleman. I do not advocate putting cameras into people’s refuse bins. But when tackling fraud, for example, CCTV cameras can be useful, whether they are used by the Department for Work and Pensions or the local authority, where people say one thing about their inability to work, although the reality, which is caught on camera, is that they are working at or are seen leaving local sites regularly each day. Unfortunately, we do not live in an ideal world with enough police officers and benefit fraud inspectors out there on every street—and I do not think that that would be a good use either of public money or their time.

It is vital that we equip the police with the technology that they need. I am proud, as a former Home Office Minister, to have been in charge of this area of work. Automatic number plate recognition is a fantastic tool. I recommend that all right hon. and hon. Members sit in a police car and see how it works, connecting up to the cameras. It is amazing. Undoubtedly, despite police complaints about bureaucracy, they welcome that technology wholeheartedly, as do the people that they work with in the community.

We have to ensure that CCTV can be used and that it is not stopped. It needs to be made more effective. I am pleased that under the previous Government an interim CCTV regulator was appointed to look at that. I hope that in all the rhetoric that is used we do not lose sight of the important job that CCTV does.

It has been suggested that we should reduce the amount of time that DNA is retained in the database. By 2012 we will have six years’ worth of statistics. I urge the Minister to be cautious about doing anything to destabilise that information, which can then be looked at, allowing us to make a more considered choice. This is a good example of devolution politics. Although there is a three-year limit in Scotland, with a caveat on its being extended, we need to be clear about what we are talking about. Despite the three-year headline, in Scotland they are still mindful that the period for which information is kept might want to be extended. I understand that the Scottish police would like a system that is more like the one in England. Why not have something more like English policy once in a while?

The DNA database has been transforming. It has been used, for example, in south Yorkshire to resolve a case involving rape some decades old. The culprit was found because his sister was picked up years later on a drink driving charge. Her DNA was taken and matched in the system, making a connection with her brother, who had been responsible for a huge number of rapes many years ago. Without doubt, the DNA database has contributed to solving thousands of crimes.

Between March 1998 and March 2009, DNA evidence helped solve more than 304,000 crimes. In 2008-09, there were 252 homicides and 580 rapes with a DNA scene-subject match. It is also important to recognise that DNA also picks up people who have not been convicted of a former crime. In 2008-09, 79 rape, murder or manslaughter charges in England and Wales were matched to the DNA database from DNA profiles that belonged to individuals who had been arrested but not convicted of any crime. The evidence shows—this is not easy to come to terms with—that there is a justification for retaining the DNA of people who have been arrested but not convicted because their risk of offending, as measured by the risk of re-arrest, is higher than that of the general population. This risk is higher than the general population for six years following the first arrest, at which point their DNA would be removed.

We should also not forget the potential deterrent effect of DNA. People are less likely to commit crime if they know that there is a good chance they could get caught. There are many ways of deterring people from committing crime. We can look at our neighbourhoods and create designs to make them safer, but we should embrace and deal with technology and not be luddite about it. If people know that DNA can play a significant role in securing convictions, they will be less likely to commit crime in the first place.

The head of the National Policing Improvement Agency, which hosts the DNA database, has said that it has been the

“most effective tool for the prevention and detection of crime since the development of fingerprint analysis more than a century ago.”

As the hon. Gentleman said, DNA does not only find those who are guilty; it can ensure that those who were thought to be guilty, or who were sent to jail as a result of a court conviction, can be proved innocent. I urge the Minister to be cautious in proceeding in this area in a way that could undermine some tools that are effective in fighting crime in the 21st century.

[Mr Christopher Chope (in the Chair)]

Order. Before calling the next speaker, can I say that it would be sensible to have the wind-ups starting at 10 minutes past 12 to allow more time for Back-Bench participation?

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[Mr Christopher Chope (in the Chair)]

Order. There are four hon. Members still trying to catch my eye and 12 minutes to go before the winding-up speeches. I call Mr Keith Vaz.