Baroness Harris of Richmond
Main Page: Baroness Harris of Richmond (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Baroness Harris of Richmond
My Lords, before I begin, I declare an interest as a vice-president of the national Association of Police Authorities, a former chair of a police authority and a patron of the National Victims’ Association, about which I shall speak later.
According to the British Crime Survey, whose statistics, as we heard, were released last week, crime is at its lowest level for three decades. It dipped below 10 million offences to fall by 9 per cent last year to the lowest level since comparable records began in 1981—the year in which I became a member of a then police committee. Crime recorded by the police also fell by 8 per cent to 4.3 million crimes in the 12 months to April this year.
These statistics do not, however, include some of the more serious violent and sexual crimes, such as homicide and rape, but these are covered by police figures, and even accounting for these gaps does not shift the overall downward trend in crime statistics, as the noble Lord, Lord Mackenzie of Framwellgate, has told us. However, the figures still mean that 26,000 people fall victim to a crime every day, and the one area that proves resistant to such welcome falls in crime rates is sexual offences. This rise may represent the implementation of new guidelines to improve the recording of rape; nevertheless, it is extremely worrying. However, we should all be very happy and congratulate those who have contributed to these considerable falls in crime. I am sure that your Lordships will wish such gains to be maintained, and indeed built on, because 26,000 people rendered as victims of crime every day is far too many.
We recognise that to wish for continued falls in crime in our present economic context is perhaps to place hope over experience, as previous periods of economic downturn have generally been followed by upwardly mobile crime figures. Let us hope that that will not be so this time. I believe that we all have a part to play in helping to ensure that it does not happen. We know that proposals to come before Parliament would fundamentally alter the form and nature of police accountability in England and Wales. I should have thought that the recent crime figures might have persuaded the Home Secretary that police accountability, through the police authorities, had finally come good and that the structures put in place to ensure that police forces focused on providing police services to the satisfaction of their communities was working.
The arguments around this proposal will be brought out when we shortly see the consultation document. I understand that it will not be in the form of a White Paper, which is a little disappointing, but I hope that my noble friend will reflect on the success of police authorities and not consider putting in their place untested and potentially expensive experiments which will deflect politicians and professionals alike from the core policing tasks.
We have been reminded about the Sheehy proposals, which were indeed disastrous, but I also well remember the last time that we were engulfed in proposals to alter police structures and accountability, between 2005 and 2006. Then, we saw considerable falls in police performance in serving the most fundamental of the public’s needs, to which the noble Viscount, Lord Bridgeman, referred. I am talking, of course, about the proposed mergers of police forces which, thankfully, were dropped because of massive opposition across the country. I hope that we learn from that mistaken proposal.
The present system has since 1995 delivered success, huge falls in crime and year-on-year efficiency savings—more than 30 per cent over 10 years. There are welcome signs that the service and national agencies are increasingly making inroads into the terrible threats posed to every neighbourhood by both serious organised crime and terrorism. All those developments are to be applauded and we would be foolish to throw away a system that has delivered such results.
Within the statistics that I spoke of earlier there are others that are more insidious and below the radar. So I now move on, briefly, to voice a very real concern about how victims of crime are treated. Last weekend I attended a meeting of the National Victims’ Association, of which I am a patron. This amazing organisation, led by its chair David Hines, supports families of those who have lost loved ones through murder or manslaughter. On another occasion I will bring to the attention of noble Lords much more detail about how both policing and the criminal justice system as a whole have so grievously and badly let down those who have to turn to this charitable organisation for help. It exists from hand to mouth and almost certainly will not be able to continue unless core funding for its services is provided in the very near future. Those families are the lost survivors who receive barely any help or recognition and it is a national shame that that is so.
We heard the most chilling and horrendous stories of how relatives of murder victims were treated. I will, if I may, quote two instances which illustrate areas which the police will have to address to improve their help to victims. We were told about Hughie and Betty, whose son was drugged and then beaten to death. The people responsible put his body in the boot of a car, drove it on to the Derbyshire moors and set fire to it. They were caught but because they simply blamed each other, the police did not know which one to charge with delivering the fatal blow and no one was ever charged with George’s murder. On top of that, to this day, Hughie and Betty are regularly intimidated by the families of the murderers.
Then there were Carla and Rachel, two young women. Their father, a retired police officer, was beaten to death in the kitchen of his home and his blood covered the floor, walls and ceiling. The police said that there was no funding to pay for a professional clean-up team, so those two young ladies had to do it themselves. On their hands and knees they cleaned up their murdered father’s blood, and years later they are still deeply traumatised by the experience.
I met all these relatives and was struck by their dignity and bravery, so I determined to tell noble Lords their stories. I have many more, sadly, to remind us that policing also needs to focus on those many, many victims of crime who are not helped sufficiently by either the police or the criminal justice system. I will most certainly be speaking about the National Victims’ Association on other occasions.
This has been an opportunity to talk about policing generally and I welcome that and thank the noble Lord, Lord Mackenzie, for bringing it to your Lordships’ attention. I sincerely hope that the comments I have made about the National Victims’ Association will not be lost in the overall concern being expressed about police funding or crime statistics.