Crime and Policing

Debate between Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford and Alan Johnson

Wednesday 8th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Alan Johnson]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend, who did a great deal during her time at the Home Office to pursue this agenda. I think that all social strata can suffer from this problem, but she is right in what she says about poor areas. That is why we must never go back to the days when the typical response to this problem on the Labour Benches was saying that we should not get involved in it. We did; we have; it succeeded. We pioneered restorative justice. We began linking drug treatment to prison sentences. We trebled investment in prison education. As a result, reoffending is down by 20% and youth reoffending by nearly 25%.

The Home Secretary said in her July speech that for 13 years people had been told that

“the ASBO was the silver bullet that would cure society’s ills”.

I want her to give me one example—just one—of a Minister ever making any such claim. We never did. It took a whole range of measures to deal with the spiralling crime that we inherited, and that is what we did. As usual, the only thing wrong with the Home Secretary’s pronouncements is the facts.

[Nicola Blackwood (Oxford West and Abingdon) (Con)]

If the ASBO was such an excellent policy, will the shadow Home Secretary please explain why the chief constable in my local area wrote an article published in The Daily Telegraph on 30 July saying that

“we need to give people the confidence to tackle anti-social behaviour. In Germany, two thirds of citizens would intervene in public; in this country, two thirds would not. Referring everything to the police, and the legal system, is not the answer to every problem—nor is it affordable.”?

[Alan Johnson]

There it is, this is another “big society” argument—or “do it yourself”: there will not be any PCSOs and police numbers will be cut, so do it yourself. Actually, that article did not in any way contradict what I am saying. There is not one police officer or local government officer in this country and no one on a crime and disorder reduction partnership who does not understand that people have to work together using a range of measures, including getting communities involved. It works successfully where communities have decided to turn their own communities around, but they get help. What the Government are now proposing—the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Nicola Blackwood) could not have put it more succinctly—is that people will get no help in future. That is the Tory argument that we are countering. As I said before, the Home Secretary is often accurate on everything except for the facts.