Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Debate between Lord Soley and Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville

Tuesday 24th May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Soley]

This is an important group of amendments dealing mainly with crime prevention, which is an important matter. It deals also with the way to vary the crime plan and the various people who could be involved in that. To synopsise, it could be people like those in Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary, the Home Secretary and others, to change or vary the plan or their powers to submit information on it.

This is an important group of amendments, and it is a pity that we are taking it at this time of night. The Minister might be worried to know that I can wax lyrical for many a long hour on the importance and complexity of crime prevention, and if I chose to do so we could all end up by having breakfast on the Terrace, which would be a wonderful way to start Wednesday. So maybe I will do that.

This is the crime prevention part of this Bill, and to me it is very important. In an act of great modesty, I say that Amendment 68ZA in my name is the most important. Some of the other amendments are probing, but they are all important because they deal with how the plan is structured, and so on.

I have a couple of key questions, which I shall put in context for the Minister. First, are we to assume that the crime plan really does mean crime prevention? I would prefer if we actually gave a duty in Clause 5 to draw up a crime prevention plan. A crime plan could mean almost anything.

The second issue that this covers is that if the assumption is that the crime plan includes crime prevention, it raises the funding of crime prevention. A number of references to funding are in this Bill. In Clause 9, a body can fund measures to combat crime and disorder. But if it is to be assumed that crime prevention is included in the plan—this is the other question to the Minister—are we really going to assume that all the other agencies that deal with crime prevention are also going to lose those functions into this? If they are, that is going to have profound financial consequences. If, for example, the Home Office gave up many of its crime prevention projects and plans, are they to go over to these localised—although they are not really that localised—police areas? Are the various organisations that operate under either funding from, or the direct organisation by, other government departments to be transferred, too? This is why I say that if the Government put in the Bill that there is to be a crime prevention plan, they can at least define what is in the plan, which powers are to be transferred and what funding is available to it.

I want to put this in the context of the battle to reduce crime, if I can. I suppose that is always an ongoing battle, but over the past 10 years or so we have been remarkably successful in reducing crime. One factor is policing; the police are obviously important as a deterrent and in detecting crime. If you can increase the conviction rate, crime tends to reduce because one of the greatest deterrents is the certainty of being caught. However, the police alone cannot deliver and that has long been the history of this crime prevention strategy. Crime prevention is more than better locks on windows and doors. It is everything from parenting through to some of the special projects that go on.

I notice that in some parts of the Bill—I paraphrase slightly because of the lateness of the hour—the Government refer to certain things that the panel can do. For example, it can fund measures to reduce disorder. That is fine but if you are to do that, how do you define what it takes on and fund that? There is an assumption in the Bill that the crime plan, as it is referred to, really means crime prevention, but without mentioning it. Yet it does not then deal with the funding issue. If the Government go down this road and are not clear about crime prevention, crime will go up again. It already is; burglary, the one that worries people an awful lot, is going up. Street crime will begin to go up again for other unrelated reasons, which I will not go into at this late hour, but the old crime of mugging—as it was called, although it is strictly robbery—will go up because as unemployment and other issues go up, it rises, too.

One way we have been successful in reducing crime is by having all forms of intervention earlier. That of course involves some social aspects, such as children's centres and things of that nature. Yet the Government have produced a Bill which, leaving aside my other concerns about it, does not properly address crime prevention. We really will have a situation where crime goes up again unless we are clear about whose duty it is. There are two ways of doing this. One is to keep things much as they are now and be clear about what we devolve to these police commissioners. The other way is to say, “Right—we will shift as much as possible down”. From what the Government say, they want to devolve but if they want to devolve much crime prevention, they really have to come clean on the funding. That is not being identified here through a proper crime plan.

If in an area you get, for example, a number of hostels which are for people who are recovering from a mental illness, or who have been discharged from prison, or who have been through the court system, you will have a different type of problem there than in other areas. I think the noble Baroness, Lady Harris of Richmond, and one or two other Members pointed out that one danger of this structure is that because you have quite large police areas, the loudest voices will be heard most. Those will be from the leafy suburbs—the richer areas—while the voices of those in the poorer areas, where the crime rate tends to be much higher, will not be heard, although those areas are in most need of a crime plan, or crime prevention plan as I prefer to call it.

I want to be clear about this. If we are to have these large police areas and an elected commissioner for each area, that person will have to relate to the high crime hotspots which will not necessarily have the loudest voices in the election. That point has been made several times in a number of debates on this over time. That is why my Amendment 68ZA would include in the Bill a duty to issue a crime prevention plan. That would then relate over the whole area, people would not have to speak up about it and it could be checked. There could be a situation, for example, where the individual MPs or councillors throughout the area say, “What is the plan for reducing crime on this estate or in that street?”. At the moment there seems to be no thinking about that at all. It is just a police and crime issue without any definition of whether crime means a crime plan. I cannot overstate the importance of this. This is where the Bill is not well thought through. We have to be clear about crime prevention.

Think of the blood, sweat, tears and toil that were spent by the police, various government agencies, the previous Government, and politicians at all levels and of all parties to get crime prevention right up front. It really was a struggle and we are in danger of losing it. That is why I want the requirement to produce a crime prevention plan included in the Bill. I would then want to see individual MPs, councillors and others saying, “What’s the crime prevention plan for this area?”. At the moment that is not there. All we are doing is saying that someone can vary the plan, that there are restrictions on who can vary it, or that HMIC or the Home Secretary can have an input. We have to be clear about this. At the moment we still have a pretty good crime prevention policy in this country. It has been working well but I am not at all sure that that will continue under this structure. I strongly urge the Minister to see if she can work out the dividing line between these bodies and the existing groups that organise crime prevention programmes. If she does that and does it well, I might be able to let her have breakfast at home. I beg to move.

[Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville]

I was hoping to intervene before the noble Lord sat down, but I will now put my question after the amendment has been moved. Although I am a bear of very little brain, there is the faintest possible ambiguity in the noble Lord’s amendment. I think I know what he will say but, to put it beyond peradventure, does his amendment mean that the crime prevention plan should be moved before or after the ordinary election to which it refers?

[Lord Soley]

I am not too worried about that but my view would be that it ought to be before the election.