Police Recorded Crime Statistics

Kelvin Hopkins Excerpts

Thursday 16th October 2014 Westminster Hall

[Mr Jenkin]

Our inquiry found that, for example, the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, through the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime, has continued to set targets. It is tempting in our political culture to set high-level and public targets, but I wonder whether the public believe the numbers anyway. It is the first law of science: as soon as one tries to measure something it changes its properties. That is what is happening in this case. Poor data integrity reflects the poor quality of leadership within the police, which the Home Secretary and the Minister here today have understood. That is why the Government have abolished national policing targets. It is for police forces and police and crime commissioners, including the Mayor of London in his equivalent role, to embrace and understand that and to believe it. That is a cultural change to which I hope this report is contributing. Otherwise, we are encouraging what amounts to institutional dishonesty about police recorded crime. What does that say about the police’s ability to comply with the core values of policing, including accountability, honesty and integrity? That is why PC James Patrick felt that it was his duty to speak out against what he found to be going on in his force.

Our report of course came on top of all the other controversies that have raised questions about the values and ethics of the police and their leadership. I will not list them all again now, but the whole question of leadership and values needs to be addressed. I yield to no one in my admiration and respect for so many police officers, chief constables and, indeed, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, who has had a distinguished career in public service and whose senior officers and force daily put themselves at risk in the line of duty. Yet those same officers have overseen a deeply cynical culture about the quality of leadership, honesty and integrity by presiding over such a thing. That is why we recommended that the Committee on Standards in Public Life conduct a wide-ranging inquiry into the police’s compliance with the new code of ethics, in particular the role of leadership in promoting and sustaining those values.

I note that the CSPL will now investigate the public accountability structures of the police. I have to say that that is not quite the inquiry which Parliament, through my Committee’s report, has asked it to conduct. We recommended that the CSPL should conduct

“a wide-ranging inquiry into the police’s compliance with the new Code of Ethics; in particular the role of leadership in promoting and sustaining these values in the face of all the other pressures on the force.”

Accountability structures will not of themselves promote the right values in police leadership and in policing. Accountability depends upon effective leadership, which in turn depends upon leadership that is trusting and is trusted by its subordinates, and that in turn depends upon high levels of trust and integrity within the organisation. If the CSPL is to conduct its inquiry effectively, it cannot avoid the issue of ethics and integrity. I am somewhat mystified about why it is not prepared to confront that question directly and openly, even if Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary is already looking at it. After all, CSPL stands for Committee for Standards in Public Life and its remit is ethics and standards. If it avoids the issue of ethics and standards in the police, it will achieve nothing except to mess with a highly charged political debate about whether police and crime commissioners should continue to exist, which does not seem to be so relevant to the remit of the CSPL. Our recommendation reflects our understanding of the need to challenge police operational leadership about how they promote and sustain the values set out in the new ethics code. I am encouraged by the engagement of the new College of Policing and of many chief police officers around the country, but the CSPL’s unique and independent perspective has more to offer.

Turning to whistleblowing, one of the most depressing and saddening parts of our inquiry was discovering how the Metropolitan police treated James Patrick, my constituent. I was not able to address that as fully as I will now, because an employment tribunal was pending. He withdrew from the process. He could not take any more; it had taken too heavy a toll on him and his family and he was forced to resign from the Metropolitan police. Acting as a whistleblower, PC Patrick tried to highlight serious concerns about police-recorded crime and the target culture. We are indebted to him for his courage in speaking out, in fulfilment of his duty to the highest standards of public service, despite intense pressures to the contrary. Paul Ford of the Police Federation told us that his organisation

“was dealing with a lot of stifled whistleblowers…We have lots of anecdotal information but, unfortunately, people are fearful of coming forward and raising concerns. That comes down to the whistleblowing aspect of the lack of protection for people, the peer pressure and the fear factor in terms of their future”.

I am pleased the Minister for Crime Prevention has told me that the Home Office is looking at a range of radical proposals to strengthen protection for whistleblowers in the police, but that has all come too late for my constituent. Nevertheless, I look forward to what the Minister will add in today’s debate.

Our inquiry, the evidence presented to the Select Committee and the reaction of the UK Statistics Authority, which withdrew its approval of the police recorded crime stats, vindicate Mr Patrick and his actions utterly and completely. As I quoted earlier, even the Metropolitan Police Commissioner agrees that

“there is clearly something that PC Patrick raises that we need to get to the bottom of.”

Despite that, I can only describe the treatment of my constituent James Patrick as shameful. By doing his duty and raising the issues, he showed the highest commitment to the core policing values, but as a result he became the victim of the most monstrous injustice. He was in effect hounded out of his job, following a long period of harassment by the Metropolitan police command chain, which, I dare say, used and abused the disciplinary process to get rid of him. It does the police no credit that a whistleblower should be treated in such a way. He was, for example, accused of a conflict of interest for publishing a book about the misuse of police recorded crime statistics, even though the proceeds were paid to a police charity. In an LBC radio programme in December last year, Commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe said that he would meet PC Patrick. He never did so.

Most shameful of all, the Police Federation saw fit to finance a libel action at the choice of a serving police officer against a former Cabinet Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell), to the tune of hundreds of thousands of pounds, but I could not persuade it to fund the legal expenses and representation of PC Patrick in the employment tribunal that he was due to appear before as part of his defence. I find that completely and utterly inexplicable, particularly after the Police Federation itself told us in evidence to our Committee how difficult things are for police whistleblowers in this country.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

I agree with everything the hon. Gentleman has said so far in his excellent speech. Given what he has told us about the Police Federation, do we not need a proper trade union for police officers, which would defend individuals as he suggests, instead of having an organisation that is in effect half controlled by the Home Office, rather than by its members, whom it is supposed to serve?

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[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure, Mr Bayley, to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon. I never thought you were an hon. Member who was causing problems for our former Chief Whip. I congratulate the Chairman of the Select Committee on his excellent presentation this afternoon and his excellent work in leading us in the production of this first-class report. As Chairman, he does a great job generally and has done specifically with the report.

My police force in Bedfordshire is small, but I have the highest regard for our police and crime commissioner and our new chief constable who is doing good job in difficult circumstances with serious resource constraints. Some hon. Members may have seen the recent television broadcast about Bedfordshire police working at Luton police station. One could see that they are doing a good job and I have a particularly high regard for senior local officers. The police force has its problems and inevitably from time to time complaints come to me about face-to-face experiences, but that is in the nature of things. I hope that over time we can improve that, but more resources are fundamental.

The problem with targets, as we have heard this afternoon, is that they distort justice. My concern has always been that they distort in a particular way and away from the prosecution of crimes of violence and abuse, which are my main concerns about crime and those of most ordinary people. Most voters want crimes of violence and abuse to be sorted out first.

When I was a young man a long time ago, I was seriously concerned that sentences for crimes of violence seemed to be too weak and those for crime against property were much stronger. I thought the balance was wrong, but it was part of a culture, which may still be with us to some extent. In those days, the police would not investigate domestic violence. They just said, “It’s a domestic”, and tended to leave it for those involved to sort themselves out.

My wife was on the committee of Luton Women’s Aid and 40 years ago the first refuge was set up. I helped to move in the furniture, but I was warned not to be seen by women in the hostel because they were nervous of men, even relatively benign ones such as me. There was a feeling that crimes of violence, particularly against women and, as we now know, young people, were not taken seriously. Recent events have shown that there has almost been a conspiracy not to prosecute people who had done dreadful things to and with young people. I need not mention the towns where such things have happened, but the police and local politicians have had a wake-up call to take such things more seriously.

One problem with targets is that one wants quick wins that make the numbers go up, and that sometimes means crimes that are easier to prosecute, such as simple crimes of violence, driving offences and so on. Crimes of domestic violence, violence against the person, or abuse are more difficult. They might take more resource, but in my view, they are still more serious than crimes against property. Being in fear of one’s life or in danger of injury or violence comes uppermost in most people’s minds. They will live with other things, but not violence. We have seen, through the statistics, enormous variations in the numbers of prosecutions and crimes recorded across the country, showing that there is something profoundly wrong, and the report identifies that. There have been too few arrests, too few charges and too few prosecutions in crimes of violence, and particularly, in crimes of sexual violence, and the no-crime approach has been one reason for that. We must now, as a society and through Government, take greater steps to protect women and girls, and indeed, some men, so that they can walk safely and live safe lives, and not be in fear of constant violence or abuse.

I may be a Labour Member—we tend to have a more liberal view of such things—but I believe that rapists and sexual abusers should be put in prison, and where necessary, given long sentences, not just for revenge, punishment or even reform, but to protect society from them, if they are the sort of people who would repeat offences. More prison places and longer sentences, and so on, may be needed—indeed, it is rather surprising perhaps, but sometimes I find myself in agreement with the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies), who takes a particularly strong line on these matters. If people do things that are wrong, they should be constrained by the law.

Again, when I was a child, which was a very long time ago, I used to play outside in the street—we used to disappear all day and come back late in the evening for our tea, and our parents did not worry about us. Parents cannot do that any more. It is shameful and tragic that society is now regarded as so dangerous that children cannot be allowed out unless somebody is keeping an eye on them. There is something wrong there, and I want to do what we can—through policing, through the law and through the justice system—to try at least to recreate that world where we lived safer lives. That means putting away some of the more dangerous people—the wife beaters, the child abusers, and so on—which means that we have to get the police focusing on those areas. Take away the statistics, the numbers, the counting of heads and the counting of how many people have been prosecuted, and let us look at the nature of crimes, and get Parliament, Government and local government to get the police to focus on the things that most concern human beings, which are crimes of violence and crimes of abuse.

That may need more resources, as I have said, but the pattern of prosecutions varies a lot across the country, and constantly, there is too much bias towards crimes against property rather than against the person. We have to shift the focus of the police, which may mean taking away the target culture altogether, and saying, “We want you to make sure that your society and your areas where you police become safe places for everybody to live in and not suffer the fear of violence on a daily basis.” I used to walk the mile from my house to the station, but I no longer do so because I do not want to walk home late at night because of the fear of attack. It may not happen. I could probably walk home 1,000 times and nothing would happen, but it might. When I was younger, that would not have been the case.

I finish by saying how much I support everything that the Committee Chairman has said. I hope very much that the Government will act on the report’s recommendations, and, in fact, go further on some of the points that he has made. Where the Government have not entirely accepted the recommendations, I hope that they will, in time, go on to accept the report in its entirety, and that we will see the return of a world where violence and the abuse of children is seriously reduced, and that we will live in a more civilised society in future.

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[Jack Dromey]

I totally agree with the Chair of the Select Committee. Historically, as my hon. Friend the Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins) said, this crime was simply not taken seriously enough; it used to be described as “a domestic”. There has been welcome progress in the past 10 years and more—of that there is no doubt—but it remains a crime substantially hidden from history. Ensuring that we have an accurate picture, that we encourage victims to come forward, and that they are properly supported when they do is therefore of the highest importance.

Let me turn to the police recorded crime statistics. It was absolutely right to strip those statistics of their national statistics status—the gold standard—on the back of evidence heard by the Select Committee. Considering the substantial weight of evidence that has come forward of significant under-recording of crime, it would have been dangerous to let ourselves be drawn into the false sense of security that those statistics were providing. I therefore commend the considerable courage of PC James Patrick, who alerted the Chair of the Select Committee to his concerns and then appeared before the Committee so that its members could hear at first hand, from the sharp end, just what was happening. It heard very powerful evidence of—the Chair used these words earlier—cuffing, nodding and skewing. As the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs Gillan) rightly acknowledged, PC Patrick was a brave man who exposed what was clearly wrong.

The ONS has raised a number of hypotheses, including some very similar to what PC Patrick said, as to why the police were recording crime incorrectly, including the idea that there were performance pressures associated with targets. The time has clearly come to move on from that old-style performance target regime.

In addition to what PC Patrick, the ONS and others have said, there was compelling evidence to the Select Committee from Dr Rodger Patrick, a former chief inspector of the West Midlands police service. He set out his research, which suggested that

“the perverse incentives embedded in quantitative performance management…encourage a range of ‘gaming’ behaviours that result in under-recording of crime.”

As the Chair of the Committee said, there have been other “incentives”, including the desire for promotion.

Let me turn to the crime survey for England and Wales. That was historically relied on as more accurate. However, we must recognise that the situation is far from ideal. It is true that the CSEW stats are based on interviews with adults about their experience of crime, regardless of whether or not it was reported to the police, but the CSEW stats cannot give us a detailed indication of crime trends at local level. We are missing that vital piece of the puzzle.

Additionally and very importantly, several crimes are not included in the statistics, and that ultimately skews our understanding of crime and where it is headed. For example, according to an ONS study released in July 2013, the number of fraud offences could total between 3.6 million and 3.8 million incidents of crime a year. However, most fraud offences in England and Wales are now referred to a central organisation, Action Fraud, rather than being logged by local forces. It is therefore believed that if bank and credit card fraud were included in the CSEW stats, the estimated number of annual offences would jump by almost 50%. When we listen to Government rhetoric on crime being at an all-time low, we must remember that the Government tend to pick and choose which crimes to pray in aid and which statistics to refer to, ignoring these very significant and growing areas of crime, which are not properly reflected in the statistics. That is both wrong and dangerous.

Professor Marian FitzGerald, a criminologist at the university of Kent, was absolutely right when she said to The Times in August 2014:

“Ministers were readily persuaded that the Crime Survey represented a gold standard for measuring crime when it started to show a continuous fall from the time Labour took office in 1997. Yet here we have an admission from its own results that crime is 50 per cent higher than the figure it claims.”

In addition, the CSEW does not cover a range of other things. It does not cover those living in group residences such as care homes, student halls of residence and prisons, or crimes against commercial or public sector bodies. The CSEW figures exclude murder and manslaughter because the victim is dead; figures on rape and other sex offences, which are calculated separately and differently because of their sensitive nature; and crimes, such as drug possession, that are considered victimless.

Both the Chair of the Select Committee and my right hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne East referred to no-criming. Another important issue identified by the Select Committee in its report was the prevalence of no-criming. In response to the

“damning indictment of police complacency, inertia and lack of leadership”,

the Select Committee recommended that the Home Office undertake a comprehensive analysis to explain the extraordinary disparities in no-crime rates for sexual offences across all police forces.

The gravity of the impact of no-criming should not be underestimated. Let us consider this example given by HMIC of a case that was no-crimed. A woman alleged rape by a man in a car after she changed her mind about having sex following a discussion about use of a condom. The rape was recorded as a crime. She reports that she did not run away because she was scared of being beaten up. There had been no violence or pinning down, although the woman said that her chest was sore and she had felt intimidated. The incident was no-crimed because the man said that he did not know that she did not consent to having sex, but there is no additional verifiable information to show that the victim had in fact given consent. That was “no crime”.

Let us imagine, first, the difficulty of coming forward to report a rape during which the woman was so afraid for her well-being that she felt powerless to do anything. Let us imagine then what happens if the authorities doubt her, in effect favouring the perpetrator, despite no evidence being given to disprove her allegations.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne East rightly praised the excellent work of Vera Baird in Northumbria. When the issue that he referred to was looked into as a consequence of her action, more than one in three rape allegation cases initially deemed to be no crime were reopened, following a review of 153 separate cases. An audit by HMIC identified that the force may have incorrectly no-crimed many of those cases. As a result of the action taken by Vera Baird, the chief constable ordered a review of all such reports going back three years, and a team of experienced officers have now checked 153 cases. In addition, 48 officers involved in the incorrect no-criming and failure to act have been warned that they may face disciplinary action as a result of the inquiry by the force.

Concern about this issue is all the greater today; statistics show a 29% increase in rape, and a worrying justice gap: in the last year on record, there was a fall of 28% in referrals for prosecution, and a fall of 14% in prosecutions.

On unreported crime, in its interim report released earlier this year, HMIC noted a “significant under-recording of crime”. Basing its comments on the assessment of 13 police forces, HMIC stated that up to 20% of crimes may be unrecorded. Only yesterday, I had the privilege of attending an event organised by the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers, at which I heard some heartbreaking cases of violence against shop workers, including the case of a man whose whole life was ruined as a consequence of being seriously assaulted at work. A survey by USDAW of its members revealed that one in five of those who had been assaulted did not report the incident, not least because they often lacked confidence that any action would be taken if they did.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right about shop workers, having visited the USDAW meeting the other day. On the tube, there are now notices saying that if staff are abused, the perpetrators will be prosecuted. We ought to adopt that approach for everyone who is abused while doing their job.

[Jack Dromey]

I absolutely agree. It is important that people have confidence that if they report an assault, they will be taken seriously. The police may spell out a good reason why they cannot investigate, but it is critical that the victim has the right to appeal against that decision. There is disturbing evidence to suggest that a culture has been created in which people feel that except in very serious cases, violence against shop workers is not taken seriously. It is not surprising that shop workers who have been assaulted do not come forward as often as they should, as the USDAW survey showed.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

I accept entirely what my hon. Friend says. Does he agree that even abusive language can be terrifying and upsetting, particularly, for example, if it is used by a male against a female shop assistant? Does he agree that even that is not acceptable?

[Jack Dromey]

Again, my hon. Friend is absolutely right. I want to make a general comment about the under-reporting of crime. The Conservative police and crime commissioner for Suffolk, Tim Passmore, has said that he would not be complacent about a drop in crime in Suffolk because in his assessment, half of all offences go unreported.

As we know from tragic experience over the past two to three years, the scale and obscenity of some crimes—including domestic violence, sexual offences and child abuse—have been hidden from history. I welcome the growing focus on those obscene crimes that are the legacy of history and that sadly persist to this day. When it comes to tackling child sexual exploitation—I say this with all respect to the Minister—I have no doubt whatever that the Government are taking the matter seriously, but it is the worst possible time to cut 16,000 police officers; demand is rapidly growing. In the West Midlands police, 10% of officers are working on nothing but historical and current CSE cases. In the words of the chief constable, that is the tip of the iceberg. The debate today reinforces the need to take action on sexual crime and crime against children. To do that, the police need determination and focus, but they also need the resources that will enable them to do their job.

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[Norman Baker]

I have no wish to detract from the Committee’s work, which the Government welcomes. Anything that helps to improve the accuracy of figures is entirely laudable and correct. Who started what and when is a small point. This happened before my time in the Home Office, but my understanding is that the Home Secretary had discussions with HMIC at an early stage. Nevertheless, my hon. Friend has made his point on the record.

HMIC’s final report, due to be published in the near future, will give an independent and comprehensive picture of overall crime recording quality and rates of compliance with recording standards across all 43 forces in England and Wales. The Home Secretary wrote to chief constables at the start of the year to emphasise that the police must ensure that crimes are recorded accurately and honestly. Since then, I have met a number of chief constables—including Chief Constable Jeff Farrar of Gwent, the national policing lead for crime recording, and chief constables from poorer performing forces—to reiterate the importance of that message and ensure that action is being taken. That is an example of the ministerial accountability that the Chairman of the Select Committee seeks.

The HMIC inspection has been one of the most comprehensive ever into police crime recording practices. To ensure that the issues that have been identified are addressed and that the improvements in recording that the ONS has already noted are sustained, HMIC’s new annual programme of all-force inspections will include a crime recording element. The work on that programme is currently in the planning stages, and more detail will be available as soon as possible.

To regain national statistics status for police recorded crime data, Home Office statisticians are working with colleagues in the ONS, HMIC and the Crime Statistics Advisory Committee to take forward the requirements proposed in the UK Statistics Authority’s assessment report. That is being done as a broad programme of work, with much of it led by the ONS. The Home Office is leading work with forces, so that it can better understand the quality of their crime figures, and it is supplying additional information and documentation on processes to the ONS. In particular, we have fulfilled the UKSA and PASC recommendation to clarify the respective roles and responsibilities of the Home Office and the ONS in the production of police recorded crime statistics. That is set out in the ONS’s user guide to crime statistics. The ONS is working towards being in a position to apply for reassessment by the UKSA at the earliest opportunity next year, and I fully support the ONS in that aim.

As the Chairman of the Select Committee mentioned in his introductory remarks, the Government is not convinced that the Committee’s proposed minimum rank for force crime registrars is needed, not least because not all registrars are police officers, and it is beyond HMIC’s statutory remit to set a minimum rank for registrars. All police forces are different, so a minimum rank would not be appropriate for all registrars, but it is vital that the status of crime registrars is enhanced and supported and that their decisions or reports are taken seriously by chief officers.

The Home Office guidelines, published in the Home Office counting rules, state that registrars should be independent of those responsible for performance and should report directly to the chief officer with responsibility for crime data. We consider that that should be the deputy chief constable, or equivalent. We believe that registrars should meet with or report regularly to the DCC and that those interactions should be evidenced. To better support the status of registrars, the College of Policing is developing a national training and accreditation programme, and I myself will speak at the annual force crime registrars conference next week.

Before the Committee’s hearings, a joint decision was made between the Home Office and national policing leads to develop more formal training for force crime registrars to ensure that they have the skills and knowledge needed to carry out their role. The College of Policing has been commissioned to develop the national curriculum for the role profile for force crime registrars, with the aim of developing an internal national course for them by the end of the year. The course is expected to include provision for a form of national accreditation for registrars, with a requirement for routine reassessment. The college will work with forces to identify gaps in knowledge and any additional training requirements, and we will consider matters further once we see HMIC’s final inspection report.

Some senior police officers have publicly stated a desire for officers to be able to use discretion about deciding whether, and when, to record a crime. That is an important matter, as the Chairman of the Committee and his colleagues will recognise. The Home Office counting rules state that

“a crime should be recorded as soon as the reporting officer is satisfied that it is more likely than not that a crime has been committed”

and

“at the earliest opportunity that the system allows”.

To do anything else would be a clear breach of the counting rules.

The Home Office counting rules and the national crime recording standard require the recording of certain categories of crime, so that an accurate picture of crime in communities is presented. That is vital to ensure a consistent national picture. In particular, it is required for police-recorded crime figures to regain their national statistics status. The police have wide discretion in the choices that officers make in relation to the subsequent action, including being able to decide to take no action at all where that is in the public interest, but they must always first record the crime; making an administrative record of a criminal offence reported by a victim does not, and cannot, criminalise anyone. I make it very plain that that is what the Home Office expects of police officers up and down the country.

I turn now to targets, which a number of hon. Members have referred to this afternoon. A target-driven culture existed under the previous Government. I do not wish to make that a party point; the previous Government had targets for what were no doubt well-intentioned reasons, including to try to cut crime. However, as Members across the House have accepted, those central targets led to perverse and unwanted consequences, and therefore it is right that this Government abolished them. We have one target for police forces, which is to cut crime; that is the only target we are interested in.

To pick up on a comment by my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs Gillan), it is true that some police and crime commissioners have set targets locally; we think that about a third of PCCs have done so. Clearly, that is a matter for them, and they are accountable to their own electors. I would just caution them to be careful to ensure that they do not repeat the mistakes that occurred in the past with target setting.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

The Minister says that police forces should just cut crime, but I think that all Members who have spoken today have suggested that the emphasis should shift to ensure that the importance of crimes of violence and crimes of abuse is raised and that the police ought to be refocusing. It is the job of government to put that case to the police.

[Norman Baker]

I entirely agree with that comment; in fact, we are doing that. I will pick up on individual comments as I go through my remarks, including that point by the hon. Gentleman, which I agree with, as a matter of fact.

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[Norman Baker]

I know the Chairman of the Committee feels strongly about this matter; indeed, it was central to his Committee’s report, so it might be helpful if I put on record part of the letter I wrote to him on 4 April this year. I confirmed that if

“an officer is dissatisfied with the way their concerns have been dealt with by their force, or they do not feel comfortable raising their concerns with their force in the first place, they can raise their concerns directly with the Independent Police Complaints Commission…The IPCC runs a dedicated telephone hotline specifically for police officers and staff…Officers can raise their concerns with the IPCC anonymously or in confidence…We are looking at a range of possible options, including… anonymity for the whistleblower from the point at which the allegation is made…‘sealed’ investigations so that, for a set period, no-one under investigation knows that it is happening so as to preserve evidence and prevent collusion…immunity from disciplinary/misconduct proceedings or prosecution…financial incentives for whistleblowers, for example, a share of recovered criminal assets from the case…protection against vexatious or malicious allegations.”

Those options are under consideration. I mentioned that a consultation will start shortly, and it is open to my hon. Friend and his Committee to make representations accordingly.

Let me turn now to the issue of “no crimes” and sexual offences, which were mentioned by the Opposition spokesman and by the hon. Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins)—I almost called him my hon. Friend because we have taken part in a number of debates over the years.

The overall “no crime” rate for rape has fallen year on year under this Government, from 12.6% in 2009-10 to 7.3% in 2013-14. It is encouraging that a number of forces have stated a determination to further bring down “no crime” rates for rape, and the HMIC rape monitoring group data provide PCCs and chief constables with core information to drive improvements in their response to rape.

The then Minister for Policing, Criminal Justice and Victims—my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Damian Green)—and I wrote to chief constables and PCCs in February, encouraging them to use the figures to improve the response to victims of rape, and we stressed that

“every allegation of rape should be recorded as a crime at the point it is reported, when it is reported without question or challenge.”

That will drive up some of the figures we are seeing.

I entirely agree with the hon. Member that a shift is taking place—the Government is encouraging this, but it is also where society is going—on what we might call crimes against the person. In the past, a lot of these crimes have not been taken seriously. The hon. Gentleman said domestic abuse behind closed doors was not a matter the police got involved in in the past, and that has to change. Clearly, there has been an issue with child sexual exploitation, which concerns everybody in the House, and society has to take it more seriously. Some police forces have also failed to deal properly with rape, and there is no point pretending otherwise. We have to sort these matters out, and we are making significant progress.

That work will lead to a change in the focus of the police. Fortunately, we are seeing a significant decline in what might be called traditional crimes, and we are seeing more reporting and more recording of them. However, I should make it plain that the reporting and recording of them is not the same thing as the number of incidents that occur—that is a different matter entirely. For example, my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham mentioned the figures that came out today. In the police recorded crime figures, there is an 11% increase in violent crimes; in the crime survey for England Wales, there is a 23% decrease. Those figures are not wrong; they just mean that the police are now more accurately reporting and recording. That is what Members on both sides of the House are trying to get to, and it is a good thing.

We will, therefore, see more emphasis on these matters, and so we should. I want to leave Members in no doubt whatever that crimes such as domestic abuse, rape and child sexual exploitation, which is an abominable crime, are very high on my priority list, as well as that of the Government and, I believe, the House. That is reflected in what Ministers say; it is also increasingly reflected in what the police are doing, and they are recording these matters more sensibly and more accurately than they were; and it reflects where society is as well.

That will lead to an increase in reporting of historical offences, where people did not have the confidence to come forward before, and of offences that take place now, which people may not have wanted to report in the past, and which I hope they will have the confidence to report now. I encourage anyone who has been subjected to a crime of violence to report it to the police and make sure that they pursue that matter if they feel that the police are not taking it as seriously as they should. Violent offences such as rape are of course devastating crimes that ruin lives. We expect every report to be taken seriously, every crime to be recorded, every investigation to be conducted thoroughly and professionally, and every victim to be treated with dignity. We recognise that vulnerable victims are often unwilling or unable to go directly to the police. That is why it is vital that the police take crimes passed on to them by third parties seriously, and record them appropriately. Many victims will of course feel that they want to go to a non-statutory person in the voluntary sector, for example, to let them know about those matters, so the police need to take that into account in how they deal with the issues.

Last year, the prevalence of sexual assault recorded by the crime survey was the lowest ever since its introduction in 2004-05. Nationally, police recorded crime figures showed an increase of 21% in all sexual offences, and a 29% increase in recorded rape, so I think it is encouraging that more victims have the confidence to come forward. We know rape and sexual violence are under-reported crimes and want to correct that. We want more people to report to the police, and more cases to be brought to justice. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington mentioned the increase in rape, so I want to mention that rape prosecutions were up 5.3% in 2013-14 and rape convictions were up as well, so there is a helpful effect now coming through the court system.

Sexual offences are one of the six main crime types reviewed by HMIC as part of its audit of crime recording quality. The first tranche of the reports has been published, and the remaining force reports are expected to be published shortly. We want PCCs and chief constables to use the findings and figures to improve the way their force responds to rape and supports victims. It is encouraging that some forces have already announced reviews of earlier “no-crime” decisions following the HMIC reports. Vera Baird, the Northumbria police and crime commissioner, was mentioned in that regard in the debate. The new rape action plan, led by the Crown Prosecution Service and the national policing lead for rape, will aid the Government’s drive to ensure that every report of rape is treated seriously and every victim is given the help they deserve.

Whether the role and composition of the Crime Statistics Advisory Committee should be reviewed is a matter for that committee and the UK Statistics Authority. The Home Secretary values its advice and I spoke to the committee recently to stress the importance that the Government places on the ability to ensure that the public have accurate, reliable crime figures.

I want to pick up a few points made by hon. Members during the debate. I agree with the right hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne East (Mr Brown) that the emphasis must be on core policing values. That is exactly right, and I also agree that we must deal with the under-reporting of sexual crimes, as I mentioned a moment ago. I think that the reason for it is, frankly, that in some cases the police have not been as sympathetic or treated those crimes as seriously as they might, or recorded them as they should have. Those matters are now being addressed, as I have suggested, and I think that the police are making good progress.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

Does the Minister agree that if there were more women in senior positions in the police and the justice system it might lead to even more rape cases being prosecuted successfully, and to a change of culture in those institutions?

[Norman Baker]

It is dangerous to assume that the only way to change the culture is to have women in key positions. The Home Secretary is a woman, and I have not noticed that effect. It is important to change men’s attitudes. That is how we will ultimately make progress—by changing the way men look at things.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham referred to the conflict—or the different messages coming out—given the decrease shown in the crime survey figures compared with police recorded crime. I hope that I have dealt with that matter. Police recorded crime is catching up with the crime survey by recording more accurately. That is the explanation—the divergence between them is now closing. That also explains, as I think I set out, why the figure for sexual offences is up.

The hon. Member for Luton North referred to his concern about crimes of violence. I agree with him about that, as I have said. He slipped in a suggestion that his party tends to have a more liberal view on home affairs matters. I have not noticed that in my time at the Home Office; liberal is not the word that I would use to describe the shadow Home Secretary and her team. However, the hon. Gentleman is entitled to his view; perhaps he is in the more liberal element of his party. I do not know.

I agree that we need a shift in policing. It may interest the House to know that I have established two panels with that in mind. One is a crime prevention panel, which is considering the steps that can be taken to reduce crime before it happens. That can involve a range of things, including designing crime out of buildings and some technological solutions. That panel of experts has some good ideas. There is also an horizon-scanning panel, considering where crime will be going in 10 to 15 years’ time, with experts from all parts of society, including young people. Their ability to suggest where online crime might go is much better than mine or the other panel members’. That has been a useful exercise and recommendations will be made shortly, which I am sure the House will be interested in. I mention that because it picks up the shift in crime, which relates to the shift in policing that will have to be made, in relation to crimes against the person. I think that it will be a greater priority for the police in the years ahead.

The Opposition spokesman, the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington, was a little unhelpful in his description of the crime survey. He appeared to cast doubt on its value, calling it far from ideal. It is the same one that his party’s Government ran for 13 years. We have not changed it; any change that we are making is to strengthen it, to bring in some of the issues that he and other hon. Members mentioned. The crime survey is regarded throughout the world as the gold standard. It has been running since 1981, and it captures most crimes and enables trends over long periods of time to be discerned.

Oral Answers to Questions

Kelvin Hopkins Excerpts

Monday 7th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Last but not least, I call Kelvin Hopkins.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

Alcohol continues to be implicated in a high proportion of crime, especially crimes of violence. When will the Government take effective steps to reduce levels of alcohol abuse and the associated crime?

[Norman Baker]

We are taking a large number of steps to deal with alcohol abuse, including the introduction of late-night levies, including the local action areas and the early morning restriction orders. We are also dealing with the industry and securing voluntary action from it. In fact, I am meeting the industry in about 45 minutes to see what progress has been made.

Deregulation Bill

Kelvin Hopkins Excerpts

Wednesday 14th May 2014 Commons Chamber

[Norman Baker]

The effect of the new clause is to create a new light-touch form of authorisation for community groups or certain businesses, such as bed-and-breakfast accommodation providers, to sell small amounts of alcohol under the Licensing Act 2003—the new part 5A notice.

It may be helpful to the House if I first give some background and explain the problem that we are trying to solve with the new measure. Last year the Government carried out an extensive public consultation on various proposals in its alcohol strategy. This of course included our efforts to tackle alcohol harms. On that front we have already achieved much. For example, we have reformed the Licensing Act 2003 and introduced new tools and powers to make it easier for local police and licensing authorities to close down problem premises and crack down on alcohol-fuelled crime and disorder.

At the same time, the Government’s public consultation last year recognised that sometimes regulation can be excessive, even needless. No one wants to stop a responsible drinker enjoying a drink responsibly. The Government’s approach is all about balance. We want to free up the police and local enforcement agencies to tackle alcohol harms while giving them greater discretion to manage low-risk alcohol sales. The Government has also made it clear that it wants to cut red tape and pointless regulations, but I stress that that must not be at the expense of necessary safeguards against alcohol harms. This new measure is about striking that balance.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

The Minister talks about alcohol harms, about which we are all concerned, but would not the new clause increase the consumption of alcohol rather than reduce it?

[Norman Baker]

I do not think that it will increase the consumption of alcohol; rather it will reduce unnecessary bureaucracy, and do so in a way that means that alcohol is consumed in low quantities and safely, as I will set out.

Our public consultation last year recognised that the existing alcohol licensing regime is a touch bureaucratic in some respects. For some small voluntary groups and bed-and-breakfast establishments, for example, the existing premises licences and temporary event notices regimes are pointlessly costly and burdensome. The restrictions and scrutiny are disproportionate for their low-level, low-risk needs. The first of these are the community groups with local membership, including charities and not-for-profit organisations, which carry out activities in local areas and wish to sell small amounts of alcohol at small-scale events throughout the year. I should confirm that alcohol provided as part of a ticket price or in return for a donation is usually defined in law as a sale.

We are thinking here of local groups, such as the women’s institutes or local residents’ groups, or the church choir that wants to offer a glass of wine to audience members in the interval, and other groups who hold occasional events, for example, lunches and plays at which they wish to provide very small amounts of alcohol to attendees. Such groups often operate from different venues in their local communities. Groups such as the women’s institutes, thriving church organisations and other local charities are not just about “Jam and Jerusalem”; sometimes they might also be about a glass of warm beer or chilled chardonnay. But refreshments aside, their wider activities are part of the fabric and lifeblood of thriving local communities, which I hope all in this House support. No one wants to tie them down with unnecessary bureaucracy if we can help it.

The existing options for an alcohol licence are often unsuitable in such cases. The cost of obtaining a single premises licence is between £100 and £1,900 a year, with an additional associated cost of obtaining a personal licence of approximately £75. Temporary event notices must be given each time and only a limited number—12 at the moment—can be allowed each year for the same premises to ensure appropriate safeguards against crime and disorder and public nuisance because they provide for larger scale, higher risk events.

The other group we looked at was small businesses that want to sell small amounts of alcohol in a similar low-risk environment as part of a wider service. We specifically have in mind providers of bed and breakfast or other similar overnight accommodation who may wish to offer a glass of wine or a beer to welcome their guests at the end of a long day’s travel or with an evening meal. Even if not charged for directly, this alcohol is in law a sale. The burden of a premises licence in such cases seems to many, including me, to be excessive.

We did consider options such as directly exempting such activity from the licensing process and consulted on other ideas such as greater local discretion on temporary event notices. However, the coalition Government is committed to tackling the harms that alcohol can cause, as I mentioned a moment ago, and recognises the need for important safeguards to guard against those harms and the risk of loopholes. We believed that creating a new tailor-made authorisation was the best option.

In the response to the public consultation on alcohol, we announced our intention to create a new authorisation called the community and ancillary sellers notice. This will be a cheaper, simpler and easier alternative to other types of authorisation, such as a premises licence or using multiple temporary event notices. Since that announcement, we have been working with colleagues across Government to develop the proposal. It has been designed to remove unnecessary licensing burdens and costs for community groups, and for some small businesses in the licensing process, so it is right that it should be part of the Deregulation Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Norman Baker]

That is a bit off my beat, if I may say so. Obviously, the Government believes in regulation where it is appropriate, but it also believes in removing regulation where it is not appropriate, and that is a balance that it tries to strike in what it does.

Getting an authorisation under the new community and ancillary sellers notice will be simple and straightforward for eligible users and for the local licensing authorities. Users will fill out a simple form and send it to the council to notify it of their intentions to provide alcohol under the new notice. The fee, which we want to keep as low as possible, will accompany the notice. Under the provisions, business users or ancillary sellers will need to specify a single premises from which they will be making alcohol sales, and community groups will be able to name up to three premises at which they will be holding events under the notice.

Licensing authorities will be able to reject a notice where it is appropriate on grounds of preventing crime and disorder, preventing public nuisance, promoting public safety, or protecting children from harm.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

I am interested in what the Minister has to say. Did the drinks industry contribute to the consultation, and was it enthusiastic about or resistant to the new clause?

[Norman Baker]

The drinks industry responded to the alcohol strategy. It would be astonishing if it had not done so. Obviously, its comments were taken into account, but so were the comments of others who were concerned, for example, about alcohol harms. As I mentioned a moment ago, we tried to strike the correct balance, ensuring that we do not encourage alcohol harm, while removing unnecessary bureaucracy where its removal has no adverse impact.

With regard to the notices, it is also worth pointing out that the local police and environmental health authority will also have a say. If they have concerns, they can say so before such a notice is given, and once an authorisation has been agreed, the notice may be revoked by a similar light-touch process.

--- Later in debate ---

[Norman Baker]

Let me be clear that this is not an attempt to change the law relating to under-age alcohol sales. The requirements for alcohol sales that apply at present will apply in future. As I mentioned a moment ago, if we find that local police object and that individuals are taking advantage of the process in order to sell alcohol to those who are not entitled to it, obviously that will lead to the licence being revoked, and possibly to criminal action if the police and Crown Prosecution Service so determine.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

Was there consultation with representatives of those who work in accident and emergency departments on Fridays and Saturdays and who have to put up with people who are seriously inebriated, and often injured, causing terrible problems for the staff?

[Norman Baker]

There was certainly an open consultation on the alcohol strategy generally. I am well aware of the link between alcohol and violence, as both matters are within my portfolio at the Home Office, but I must stress that this proposal is about very low levels of alcohol being consumed in controlled events and in certain circumstances involving, for example, church choirs and bed-and-breakfast establishments. That is a far cry from the problems we sometimes see on our streets on a Friday or Saturday night. I want to stress that alcohol harm and disorder would in no way be accelerated by this process; quite the reverse. We are simply taking a non-threatening, problem-free alcohol environment and simplifying the bureaucracy that surrounds it. I appreciate the hon. Gentleman’s concerns about these matters, but let me assure him that we take alcohol harm very seriously indeed.

--- Later in debate ---

I see no evidence of any kind of strategy on alcohol whatsoever. This is just another random licensing measure thrown into this Bill at the last minute without proper consultation, as we have heard from the interested parties. I urge the Minister and his colleagues to work with licensing authorities on the secondary regulations and to reassure the House that councils will not be harmed or hammered by the fees involved. In expectation of those assurances, we will not oppose these measures.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

I do not doubt the Minister’s sincerity when he says that he is concerned about alcohol harm, but I cannot see that as being consistent with this clause, which liberalises alcohol sales and use. It is a deregulatory measure, not a regulatory measure. I am a regulator rather than a deregulator. I believe profoundly in the nanny state where it is going to protect lives, particularly the lives of young people and vulnerable people, as in the case of alcohol.

Britain has a very serious alcohol problem, with appallingly high levels of binge drinking reported only this week, when we were compared very unfavourably with many other countries. We are simply not taking the alcohol problem seriously. It is all very well to say, “Have a drink when you arrive at your bed and breakfast—a little tincture to warm you up for the evening and get you started before you have your bottle of wine with dinner later on”, but it encourages a more relaxed culture of alcohol consumption when we should instead be raising concerns about it. Alcohol liver damage has increased massively in recent years. We have seen rising numbers of deaths from cirrhosis of the liver. There is an enormous burden on the national health service, especially in A and E departments at weekends. I wonder what the British Medical Association and the unions representing the staff in those departments feel about this.

Oceans of cheap alcohol are still being sold in supermarkets and bought and consumed illegally by young people, often with the collaboration of older people. These things are still not being addressed seriously. Vast numbers of people are drinking under age. They are being hooked on alcohol young so that they will spend their lives drinking and making more profits for the drinks industry. I am not a spoilsport. I enjoy alcohol myself, Mr Deputy Speaker, as you may have observed, though not, I hope, to excess. Nevertheless, I am aware of its dangers. Making the culture more liberal and relaxed reduces rather than increases concerns about alcohol and makes us less likely rather than more likely to be self-controlled.

My most serious concern is about the thousands of babies born severely and permanently damaged by alcohol consumed in their mothers’ pregnancy. A more relaxed attitude towards alcohol consumption as regards Women’s Institute functions, going to bed and breakfasts and so on will do nothing to dissuade women who are seeking to become pregnant, or who are pregnant, from consuming alcohol.

The scientific research that I have mentioned in this House on a number of occasions shows that even small amounts of alcohol cause damage to babies. If one is drinking oneself, one is causing damage to oneself. Even an alcoholic has a choice about whether to drink, but an unborn baby does not have a choice as to whether its mother does so. This is very unfair on mothers, and on women, but we have to think about the children and what happens to them. We do not even have notices in every maternity clinic giving advice to women not to drink at all if they are seeking to conceive or if they are pregnant, yet apparently—I have not visited one recently—they all have warnings about smoking, which is less dangerous to foetuses than alcohol.

The alcohol culture is being fed into our general culture surreptitiously by the drinks industry. It is ever so nice and cuddly when it talks about these things, but it is actually talking about an addictive drug that causes terrible problems. Providing advice to all women from the age of puberty onwards about the dangers of alcohol to unborn children is absolutely crucial. Until the Government put on every drink canister a warning to women that they should not drink at all during pregnancy—accompanied by a symbol of a pregnant woman, as happens in the United States—I will not be satisfied and will continue to pursue the issue.

We need minimum unit pricing. It is possible, even now, to buy vast quantities of alcohol very cheaply, including 3-litre bottles of cider, in supermarkets. A simple unit price of 50 p per unit would be reasonable. It would have no effect on beer drinkers in pubs or on the average wine drinker, but it would stop oceans of very cheap alcohol being handed to children and others who abuse alcohol.

The Government have to wake up and take alcohol seriously. Although this liberalising measure is cuddly, nice and warm and we all like the idea of women’s institutes having a little wine in the evening—that is fine—what we are actually doing is encouraging more alcohol consumption rather than less, and creating a more relaxed environment and culture for the consumption of alcohol. That is a mistake, given Britain’s serious problem with alcohol.

[Norman Baker]

Let me respond first to the hon. Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins). If he is going to judge the Government’s alcohol strategy, it is important that he does so in the round, rather than simply assuming that what we are discussing today represents its totality. The reality is that the Government has taken a number of steps to deal with alcohol harms and continues to do so.

The Home Office works in close conjunction with the Department of Health on these matters. We have made it easier for local police to close down problem premises. We have banned sales of alcohol below cost price. We are challenging the industry very firmly to make progress on the sorts of issues referred to by the hon. Gentleman, including the availability of high-strength, cheap 3-litre bottles of cider. I am also pushing the industry on how alcohol is promoted, particularly in supermarkets. We are taking a whole range of actions to try to deal with alcohol harms.

It is important, as part of a sensible strategy, to identify what the problems are and deal with them firmly, but we should not apply the same sledgehammer approach—if one may call it that—to an area where there is no problem, and there is no problem with a women’s institute offering someone a glass of wine. That is what today’s debate is about. The hon. Gentleman needs to judge the strategy in the round rather than assume that this represents its totality, as he appeared to do in his contribution.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

In all kinds of ways, Britain seems to resist imposing rules that seem restrictive, but in the end we are forced into them. I remember people opposing the wearing of crash helmets on motorcycles, while seat belts were not made compulsory here until years after other countries had done so. I also remember resistance to the breathalyser—it is only Barbara Castle who had a bit more courage and gumption to push it through—but now we recognise that drinking and driving is wrong. Is not the Minister just part of a long tradition of resisting change that will ultimately come about?

[Norman Baker]

I am in a long tradition of providing pragmatic answers to the problems that present themselves and of responding to them in a measured, rather than over-zealous, way. We have to remember that we have to take people with us—we need to win hearts and minds. I also think that Britain is less authoritarian than many other countries. Some countries appear to be happy for their Governments to direct their way of life more than we do, but people in this country do not like being directed by the Government of the day and it is right that we respect that healthy response.

Let me turn to the comments of the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah), who, unless I am mistaken, does not appear to know that we actually did consult on the alcohol strategy, including a question on the ancillary sellers’ notice, which matured into the provision under discussion. It is not true to say that there has been no consultation on the strategy or the measure, because there has been a consultation.

--- Later in debate ---

The hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North usually complains about late-night levies, but she does not mention the alcohol disorder zones her Government brought in, none of which was taken up. The Opposition need to be a little more careful in their accusations.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

In my defence, I was opposed to what the previous Government did and I raised these matters with the then Secretary of State.

[Norman Baker]

I am almost tempted to say that that is a compliment, but that goes without saying and the hon. Gentleman has put it on the record for the benefit of the House.

The hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central does not think that much is happening in terms of an alcohol strategy. Perhaps she has not noticed that her own local authority in Newcastle has introduced a late-night levy, which appears to be working rather well. I was very pleased to go there and join local councillors in launching it.

Oral Answers to Questions

Kelvin Hopkins Excerpts

Monday 28th April 2014 Commons Chamber

[Susan Elan Jones (Clwyd South) (Lab)]

13. What assessment she has made of trends in the level of charges brought for violent crime.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

15. What assessment she has made of trends in the level of charges brought for violent crime.

[The Minister for Policing, Criminal Justice and Victims (Damian Green)]

The number of charges brought for violent crime has fallen. This is broadly in line with falls in police-recorded violent crime under this Government, but in fact the percentage of violent offences that result in a charge has increased under this Government. In addition, the independent crime survey for England and Wales for 2012-13 shows the number of violent crimes at its lowest level since 1981.

Public Administration Select Committee

Kelvin Hopkins Excerpts

Thursday 10th April 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jenkin]

We recommend immunity from disciplinary proceedings while a whistleblowing process is under way. That is standard practice in the financial services industry, nuclear industry, aviation sector, transport sector and many other industries, and it should be so in the police as well. I am pleased to say that, in a letter sent to me by my hon. Friend the Minister, a number of possible options have been included. They are:

“Anonymity for the whistleblower from the point at which the allegation is made…‘sealed’ investigations so that, for a set period, no-one under investigation knows that it is happening …immunity from disciplinary/misconduct proceedings… financial incentives for whistleblowers, for example a share of recovered criminal assets from the case…protection against vexatious or malicious allegations.”

All those options would have made life very different for my constituent.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

As a member of the Select Committee, I was pleased to have taken part in the work on this first-class report. I congratulate the Chairman on his strong leadership in bringing forward the report and on his statement today. The issue of no-crime rates for rapes and sexual offences is a most serious matter. Although I fully support the recommendation for research, is the matter not so serious that the Government should act now to seek to ensure that all rapists are brought to justice and that women and indeed some men can feel safe from such attacks in future?

[Mr Jenkin]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his work on the PASC and for his question. I refer to chart 3 on page 17 of the report, which shows a remarkable divergence in the average no-crime rate reported for rape incidents. It is important to understand that no constabulary sets a target for rape. That lesson has been learnt, but the culture of downgrading rapes to lesser offences is embedded in the culture of the police. Generations of police officers have learnt that it is a good thing to downgrade the importance of crimes to make the figures look better. The result is a 20% variation across forces in how often they downgrade a rape to a lesser offence. That shows that there must be a very wide divergence of practice across police forces, and it demonstrates why an investigation into this question is necessary, particularly for such a serious offence. I expect the same applies to many other offences, such as domestic violence and violence against women and some of the less fashionable offences that we have difficulty talking about.

Oral Answers to Questions

Kelvin Hopkins Excerpts

Monday 10th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

We are going to introduce a ban on the sale of alcohol below the cost of duty plus VAT. That was a coalition agreement commitment, which will be introduced this April. We are also working with the industry and challenging it to ensure that it raises its game in dealing with problems related to excessive binge drinking and alcohol use, and we will watch what happens. Obviously Scotland is moving on the minimum unit price. There are legal issues and it will be interesting to see what evidence arises from that.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

Following the question from my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham), some of us believe that the primary problem with alcohol is a health problem rather than one of disorder and crime. Is the Home Secretary working closely with the Department of Health to ensure that we deal with alcohol seriously?

Oral Answers to Questions

Kelvin Hopkins Excerpts

Thursday 31st October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Grant]

My hon. Friend raises some interesting issues, but work has begun and we will look at all the evidence and all the research. In addition, we will put pressure on the industry to develop its own harm mitigation measures. We must ensure that those measures work and that their success is evaluated.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

These wicked machines are destroying lives and families in some of the poorest areas of our country. Ireland has banned these machines; should we not simply follow that example?

[Mrs Grant]

As I have said repeatedly, the future of these machines is not set in stone, there is no green light for fixed odds betting terminals and their future will be kept carefully under review.

European Public Prosecutor’s Office

Kelvin Hopkins Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)]

I add my congratulations to you on your election, Madam Deputy Speaker.

It is important that we retain some sense of proportion in this debate. We are, after all, discussing an idea which, in practice, would tackle the simple issue of crime against the EU, particularly fraud against the EU budget. While I welcome the Minister’s fairly practical approach, I think that the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson) doth protest a bit too much in painting such a cataclysmic picture of the complete collapse of the European criminal justice system were this to go ahead. That is completely out of proportion, and I think she is just trying to prove her Eurosceptic credentials. This is not quite the massive issue that some might imagine. I recognise, however, that there is a thin end of the wedge argument in that the proposal sets out a different principle in creating a new kind of European competence, albeit one already recognised in treaty. I also recognise the specific acknowledgement in the coalition agreement that Conservative Members, in particular, do not want to pursue such a solution to the problem.

In this case, on balance, the Government are right in their interpretation of the subsidiarity principle. The Commission has not demonstrated that the proposed path has to be taken because nation states are incapable of tackling fraud against the EU budget, and it therefore fails the subsidiarity test as currently presented. There is an important role for pro-European Members of this Parliament and other Parliaments in applying the subsidiarity principle properly. We should not allow any kind of drift towards dealing at a European level with competencies that are really better exercised at a lower level.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

rose—

[Martin Horwood]

I am happy to give way to my friend on the Labour Benches.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

Yet again the hon. Gentleman talks about Europe rather than the European Union. Many of us love Europe in all sorts of ways but do not necessarily love the European Union.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

May I add my congratulations to you on your election, Madam Deputy Speaker? I am very pleased to see you in the Chair.

I support the motion. As a member of the European Scrutiny Committee, I am pleased that we are winning an argument and making a point. It is good to see both Front Benchers in agreement and taking a robust stand on matters to do with the European Union.

The ESC is concerned that, over time, the British legal system is being chipped away at by EU reform. The proposal would be another step away from our own legal system and rights. The legal system on the continent—this is particularly true of France—tends to combine prosecution and investigation, but our legal system is very different and follows a different route. It is very important that we retain our great legal traditions and our legal system, which I think works extremely well. Of course, we also do very well in investigating fraud compared with some other member states.

I support what has been said by the Minister and my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson), who spoke so well. I also apologise for missing the first part of the Minister’s speech because I was detained elsewhere. Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for allowing me to say these few words on behalf of the European Scrutiny Committee.

[Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)]

I would like to join the hon. Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins) in giving credit where credit is due. This debate is taking place on the basis of the report and reasoned opinion of the European Scrutiny Committee. The Government agree with that reasoned opinion, but it is very much that of the Committee. In my capacity as Chairman of the Liaison Committee and the Justice Committee, I think that the European Scrutiny Committee is entitled to the credit. If there is something wrong with our procedure, it is that it does not fully recognise that process. However, the outcome is a happy one because pretty well everybody agrees that the reasoned opinion is correct, and it accords with the Government’s view.

The proposal for a European public prosecutor offends against the subsidiarity principle. One of its primary objectives is to strengthen the protection of the European Union’s financial interests. That is a perfectly reasonable objective to pursue, but it does not have to be achieved through the creation of a European public prosecutor. Indeed, it would not necessarily be best achieved in that way. The other limb of the general argument in favour of the European public prosecutor is that it is a further development of the area of justice. That provides the hint that subsidiarity is in danger of going out the window.

There are many ways in which the European Union could improve the way in which it deals with fraud. If national Governments fail to take the actions that they should take, they should be shamed into doing so. We also have to be a little careful about using percentage figures on the success of prosecutions. There is considerable danger if anybody thinks that the target of a justice system is to have 100% success in prosecutions. Courts will sometimes find people not guilty because the evidence has not been brought forward or sustained. The 100% target is a rather dangerous principle to import into this debate.

It is often pointed out that the European Union could do a lot more to resist fraud if it designed its schemes and its disbursement of money in ways that lent themselves to fraud a great deal less. Nothing is fraud-proof, but schemes can be designed that are less susceptible to fraud than many of those that have been developed over the years by European institutions.

Many elements of the proposal offend against subsidiarity. The European public prosecutor would have investigative powers, search and seizure powers, and interception and surveillance powers. To have those powers in operation at a supranational level would be a pretty significant change.

The proposal would take away the role of the Director of Public Prosecutions in prosecuting decisions in matters relating to EU fraud. It would have a similar effect on the roles of the procurator fiscal and the Lord Advocate in Scotland. The proposal would ignore the deliberate separation of decisions on investigation from decisions to prosecute in England and Wales, which is a long-standing element of our system. We can argue about whether that barrier should be retained, but we should have that argument in the context of our legal system and not allow it to be forced on us by the introduction of the European public prosecutor.

I am convinced that in the minds of some people, the creation of a European public prosecutor is a route to a prosecution role that goes wider than EU finances. I am not always tempted by slippery slope or Trojan horse arguments, but some of the same people have advanced the case for a prosecutor to deal with EU finances and a wider role for such an office.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

The right hon. Gentleman must accept that there has been constitution creep for decades in the European Union. Surely that is what we are trying to stop.

[Sir Alan Beith]

There have also been many advances in the way in which European nations use the European Union to achieve highly desirable objectives, such as through co-operating to deal with international crime. An intrinsic problem with the way in which the European Union was constructed, which is quite understandable given the way in which it was constructed, is that there is a belief in the Commission that the way forward is always to create further powers and jurisdictions. We have created a system that has that element within it. However, those who worry about Britain’s membership of the European Union have a tendency to underestimate the benefits and the value that have been achieved through many of its processes.

My hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood) pointed out that there is a close relationship between this proposal and the issue of Eurojust. Unhelpfully, it would compromise the acceptability of Eurojust to many people if the European public prosecutor was located within Eurojust. There are other aspects of interrelationship between the two issues. I regard Eurojust as an extremely valuable institution that has many processes that are of great advantage to British citizens. It has an important role in the prevention and detection of crime against British citizens and British interests. But again, even within the Eurojust proposals that we will be looking at again shortly, the role of the national members of Eurojust in the Commission’s proposal to order investigative measures changes the relationship between law enforcement and prosecution that is so firmly a part of our system.

There is, of course, another feature of the proposals that I am glad has not attracted the attendance of some of my hon. Friends on the Conservative Benches: if we went ahead with it, it would trigger a referendum. That might make it attractive to them to vote against the motion tonight, or whenever we have a deferred Division. I should not really tell them this, because it might inflame them in a way that I do not want. Basically, I think we all agree that establishing a European public prosecutor’s office is not the direction in which we ought to go and that it offends the principle of subsidiarity, as is extremely cogently argued in detail by the European Scrutiny Committee.

[Chris Heaton-Harris (Daventry) (Con)]

It is a huge pleasure to see you in the Chair this evening, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is the first time I have had the opportunity to say, “Congratulations.” I congratulate you on your position.

I am a member of the European Scrutiny Committee, so it is a pleasure to witness the report being debated and accepted on all sides of the House. It is also a pleasure to see other members of the Committee—the hon. Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins) and my hon. Friend the Member for High Peak (Andrew Bingham). I am sure the Minister is delighted that unfortunately my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr Cash) cannot be here this evening, so I intend to fill in for him to a certain extent by taking the next 45 minutes of his life away from him. [Laughter.] No, I do not intend to detain the House for too long.

It is obvious to all who have read the Committee’s report or listened to the speeches this evening that the creation of the European public prosecutor’s office would breach the principle of subsidiarity. In fact, it is so obvious that my good friend the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood) has noticed that there is a breach. Blimey, it must be bad—if there is a breach that he can spot, most of us could drive a coach and horses through it. We should therefore be very aware of what the Committee is highlighting.

The European Commission proposal to establish the European public prosecutor’s office has been around for quite some time. I can remember as a Member of the European Parliament being stuck in a debate in the early 2000s listening to a fantastic German lady, Diemut Theato, who I think was the head of OLAF for a short period and then my chair of the Committee of Budgetary Control, argue vociferously for the office of European public prosecutor and everything that goes with it. This new regulation, however, would create a slightly different beast—it has morphed even since then. This would be a new EU body with a head, the European public prosecutor, and at least four deputies, with powers to conduct investigations and prosecutions in member states against people suspected of crimes against the EU budget—fraud. I heard the Minister say that there will be a further debate next week and I look forward to speaking in it, if I am called. . However, if I may, I would like to spend a few seconds on what the proposal might mean.

Each member state will have a representative of the EPPO, known as a European delegated prosecutor, who will be empowered to direct national investigative and prosecuting authorities when it comes to crime against the EU budget. There is an interesting question about what constitutes a crime against the EU budget and how that would be defined. They will have exclusive competence to investigate and prosecute suspected offences against the EU budget. The investigative measures include surveillance, search and seizure, and even the summoning of witnesses. These would be significant powers. The EPPO would also be able to act as prosecutor in national courts.

The possible creation of the EPPO is enabled via the Lisbon Treaty, and I recognise the work of the previous Government to ensure that we were not swept up at that time. It can be created through this new regulation, but we are not bound by it: we can choose to opt in thanks to the justice and home affairs arrangement. However, the Lisbon treaty actually discusses the public prosecutor’s power being extended to other serious cross-border crime, such as computer crime, money laundering and a host of others. In itself, that could make the EPPO more powerful than even the FBI, and it would hold the power to investigate and prosecute in nation states. That looks like the creation of a federal European criminal justice agency, which is not something that anybody in Britain would like to see.

The EPPO does not fulfil the “principle of subsidiarity”, by which

“the Union shall act only if and in so far as the objectives…cannot be sufficiently achieved by the Member States”.

As the Minister outlined, I am aware that this is possibly only the second time that the yellow card will be used, and member states have an eight-week opportunity—which closes this coming Monday, I am told—to use that yellow card. As a football referee, I very much like the yellow card and believe we should use it more often when it comes to European regulation.

There are three aspects to why the European Scrutiny Committee says that the EPPO does not comply with subsidiarity, and I think they are worth highlighting. First, the European Commission has not adequately considered options for alternative means for improving the fight against fraud, such as preventive measures at the point EU funds are given out—that point was well made by the Chairman of the Justice Committee. Secondly, the Commission has not waited to see the impact of the proposed new directive on criminal offences and sanctions relating to fraud against the EU budget—indeed, I believe that that directive has not yet been properly agreed, so perhaps we are putting the cart before the horse on this occasion. Thirdly, the Commission used questionable data and flawed assumptions when assessing the proposal, such as unreliable convictions data from member states—it is questionable how much money the prosecutor would get back, and no one knows how the figure in the proposal was reached.

When becoming Members of the European Parliament, all are given jobs—that is part of the deal—and being the most junior of the juniors when I got elected in 1999, I was given the job of rapporteur for OLAF. That came on the back of the fraud of the European Commission in 1999, and the report of the committee of wise men that said what should be done.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

I am most interested in the hon. Gentleman’s experience of the European Parliament. May I ask whether one is paid extra for these jobs?

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

If only that was the case. My wife questions the sanity of my move across to this place anyway. We were well rewarded for what we did; it paid exactly the same as for Members of Parliament at the time, but Members of the European Parliament now have their own salary, and pay a different tax rate on most occasions.

OLAF came out of the report of the committee of wise men. It was mainly to investigate Commission fraud and crime, which was one of the things that brought down the European Commission in the first place. It also had plenty of powers to protect the EU’s financial interest. In the debate next week I intend to highlight what can be done in the reform of OLAF to allow us to prove to the European Commission that the whole new power grab of having a European public prosecutor’s office is not required. If the Commission used the powers and bodies it already has—already well funded and in general relatively well run—we would not be in this position in the first place. I wholeheartedly support the motion.

Alcohol Strategy Consultation

Kelvin Hopkins Excerpts

Wednesday 17th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Browne]

My hon. Friend makes a typically astute point. People were asked whether they agreed with a minimum unit price of 45p. The majority said that they did not and only about a third said that they did, but we do not know whether the majority disagreed because they thought it should be twice as high or half as high; they just disagreed with the figure they were given. I think that it is important to look at the evidence from the legal developments in Scotland, if it is forthcoming in time, and from Canada to see how the policy works in practice. There are some other points that are worth bearing in mind, which I have tried to touch on this afternoon, about getting the balance right between how many harms a minimum unit price would prevent and the restrictions on people’s ability to live their lives freely and make individual choices. That is the balance we have tried to strike in today’s statement.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

Thousands of babies are born damaged by alcohol every year, many with permanent genetic damage. Will the Government give further serious consideration to introducing legislation making it compulsory for all drinks containers to have a written health warning aimed at women of child-bearing age, combined with a pregnant mother symbol?

[Mr Browne]

The hon. Gentleman makes a serious point about the terrible fetal damage that excessive alcohol consumption can cause during pregnancy, although I think that it would be better directed at Health Ministers, rather than Home Office Ministers. I know that some warnings exist to alert expectant mothers to the risks, but no doubt the Minister for Public Health, my hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry), will take his words seriously and see what more can be done.

Home Affairs

Kelvin Hopkins Excerpts

Thursday 9th May 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I am conscious that a number of people have been asking specifically for a dog control notice. We have not introduced it because we believe that the other powers and orders we are introducing under this antisocial behaviour Bill will give sufficient power to the police to be able to deal with dangerous dogs without needing to introduce a separate—and yet another—notice.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

I was bitten by what was obviously a weapon dog during the last election campaign, so although I was not seriously hurt and did not suffer too much, I am very concerned about this issue. I am also concerned about it on behalf of my constituents, who have made many complaints about dangerous dogs. Are the Government going to be serious about dealing with this problem and reintroduce licensing, with every dog having to be chipped, and with a proactive role for dog wardens and the police to ensure that dogs are not dangerous?

[Mrs May]

Excellent work is done by dog wardens in many local authorities throughout the country. We feel that the legislation we are introducing, which will extend the ability to deal with dangerous dogs, is sufficient to be able to cover the issues that cannot be covered at present. I know some people say, “Why don’t we go back to having the dog licence that was held in the past?” Not only is that quite difficult to administer, but, unfortunately, all too often the owners of dogs we will need to be concerned about do not bother to get a dog licence, whereas the law-abiding citizens do. Giving the police extra powers to deal with dangerous dogs so that they can deal with them in all situations, even within the private home where the dog normally resides, gives the important extension of powers to the police that will enable them to deal with dangerous dogs wherever they may be in the community.

I am sorry to hear of the experience the hon. Gentleman had during the last election campaign. Dogs and letterboxes are the major problems for campaigners. [Interruption.] Yes, I think there would be widespread support for measures on that.

The reform of the police and the modernisation of their regulatory framework has been one of the most important aims of this Government, and it still is. We have ended the tyranny of national targets, eliminated useless bureaucracy and freed up police officers’ time so they can fight crime rather than fill in forms. We have set up the National Crime Agency to fight the cancer of organised crime, we set up the Winsor review of police pay and conditions, and we are determined that the priorities of the police should reflect those of the public they serve.

With the election of police and crime commissioners, we have made local police forces more accountable to the people they serve. This Bill will provide the new College of Policing with the powers it needs to set standards for the police in England and Wales. It will also ensure that the Independent Police Complaints Commission has the powers it needs to investigate complaints of misconduct effectively.

Although this was not specifically mentioned in the Gracious Speech yesterday, we intend to introduce measures to clarify the compensation arrangements for those whose property is damaged by riots. The law on this has not been changed since 1886, and, unsurprisingly, it is in great need of modernisation: for example, the Riot (Damages) Act 1886 does not cover damage to cars, because, of course, in 1886 there were no cars. This month, an independent review of the 1886 Act that I have commissioned will commence. It should conclude by the end of September. We shall then consult publicly, before looking to publish a draft Bill in spring 2014, with the aim of introducing it in the fourth Session of this Parliament.

It is one of the fundamental duties of Government to protect the law-abiding public from the effects of criminal behaviour, and I would like to update the House on the position regarding our proposals on communications data. The Government are committed to ensuring that law enforcement and intelligence agencies have the powers they need to protect the public. Existing legislation already allows those agencies to monitor who has communicated by telephone, as well as with whom, when and where. These data are used in 95% of all investigations into serious and organised crime, and they have played a role in every major counter-terrorism operation by the security services in the last decade, but terrorists, paedophiles and criminal gangs today increasingly communicate with each other over the internet using the latest electronic technology. Our proposals are simply about ensuring that we can keep up with criminals as they shift to e-mails, instant messages and the internet, rather than making phone calls. We cannot leave the British public exposed to dangers which could be eliminated were communications data obtained. As the Gracious Speech yesterday indicated, we will be bringing forward proposals to address this most important issue.

--- Later in debate ---

[Yvette Cooper]

As the hon. Gentleman will recognise, people are travelling and trading more than ever. That is why immigration is an important issue for our future and why we must get the policies right. A policy that targets net migration means that the Government can claim to have made huge progress on the things that the British people care about when they are failing to tackle exploitation in the labour market and failing to tackle illegal immigration, which is not even measured in the net migration statistics. Illegal immigration can go on getting worse and worse, yet the Immigration Minister can make more and more claims about his target, and the result is that he is not listening to the real issues that people are concerned about, particularly on illegal immigration.

There are serious issues on immigration, crime and justice that should be addressed in this Queen’s Speech and we support action in all these areas. I shall cover each of them. We want to support many of the Government’s measures, although we will scrutinise the detail. We support action to stop the terrible crime of forced marriage and the right hon. Lady will agree that it is important to get the legislation right. We support action on dangerous dogs, though we will wait to see whether it goes far enough and to look at the detail of her proposals.

We welcome action on fire arms, but what is the Home Secretary doing to stop people with a history of domestic violence owning a gun? We need an answer for Bobby Turnbull, whose mother, aunt and sister were tragically killed by Michael Atherton, who was granted a gun licence despite his history of abuse. We agree, too, with more support and rehabilitation for offenders, but where is the evidence that these untested massive private contracts will work? When the Justice Secretary tried it for the Work programme, it proved worse than doing nothing at all, and when the Home Secretary tried it for the Olympics, she ended up calling in the troops.

Time and again the promises do not match the practice. The right hon. Lady promises action on antisocial behaviour, yet she is weakening powers, not strengthening them. There will be no criminal sanction if antisocial behaviour measures are repeatedly breached. She promises that the community trigger will make a difference in persistent cases, yet in the pilots it was hardly ever used. Out of 23,000 incidents of antisocial behaviour in Manchester, the trigger was implemented three times. In Richmond it was not used at all.

Yet still there is nothing to deal with the serious consequences for justice of the police cuts and the policies that the Government have pursued. For nearly 10 years, the proportion of crimes brought to justice went up. In 2002, 18% of crimes were solved, and that rose to more than 30% by the 2010 election. Crime fell, but a higher proportion of crimes were solved. Not any more. We all want crime to keep falling, but we need support and justice for victims too. The proportion of crimes brought to justice has fallen since the election. There are 15,000 fewer police officers, 200,000 fewer arrests and 30,000 fewer crimes solved, and some of the most serious crimes of all have not been followed up or offenders have been let off.

The Queen’s Speech proposes to expand community resolutions for things such as antisocial behaviour, and we support more action in the community to resolve low-level crimes or antisocial behaviour—people apologising to victims and making reparations. But it must not become a short cut for dealing with serious and violent crime because there are not enough police to do the job, and that is what is happening on the Home Secretary’s watch. The number of serious and violent offenders let off after they said sorry has gone up massively since the cuts started—up from 13,000 to 33,000 in just three years. Yet it goes against all the guidance from the Association of Chief Police Officers. ACPO says that it should not be used at all for domestic violence because it

“represents serious risk to the victims of such offences and is often subject to a complex and protracted investigation”.

That is too right. We know the pattern in many domestic violence cases: the offender apologises and says he will never do it again and that he really, really loves her, until the next time, when he hits her all over again. The criminal justice system must not sanction that. Yet that is exactly what happened 2,700 times last year—a fivefold increase since before the election and before the cuts started; a fivefold increase in the number of cases where a domestic violence offender was let off after they said sorry.

What was the response from Ministers? The Home Office has refused to issue new guidance, to set safeguards, to raise the matter with ACPO, and to rethink police cuts. Instead it says that it is a

“matter for Chief Constables. Through crime maps and police and crime commissioners, the public now have the means to hold them to account.”

That is reassuring. The police are overstretched, violent offenders are getting off, but at least we can Google it, and at least people get a vote in three years’ time. That is not an acceptable response to a serious problem.

On immigration, the grand claims do not match the reality either. We support action in many of the areas that the Government have talked about and we will scrutinise the legislation when it finally comes forward. Concerns about immigration are genuine and Parliament should respond. The pace of immigration has been too fast and we support measures to bring immigration down, particularly from low-skilled migration. But I hope that the Home Secretary will agree that Britain has benefited from people coming to our shores through the generations and contributing to this country. From our great scientists to the founders of our most successful businesses, from our great artists to our Olympic gold medallists, people who have worked hard for this country have boosted our society, our culture and our economy too.

As people travel and trade more than ever in future, in global markets, immigration will be important to Britain’s future as well. It is because immigration is important that it needs to be controlled and managed so that it is fair for all. We supported the proposals on article 8 when they were passed through Parliament last year. Article 8 is a qualified right and it is reasonable for Parliament to say how that should be balanced, especially when crimes have been committed, and we will work further with the Home Secretary in this area. But she should not pretend that the Government’s failure to deport foreign criminals is all because of the Human Rights Act. In fact, the number of foreign prisoners deported has fallen by 800 a year since the election, and she has herself admitted that only a minority of cases involve successful appeals under article 8. Far more often the problem is lost paperwork and administrative incompetence, problems that have been getting worse not better on her watch.

Nor has the Home Secretary set out proper plans to deal with exploitation in the labour market and illegal immigration. I hope that she will now introduce the powers that we put forward for borders enforcement staff in the Bill last year. I also hope that there will be action to close the loopholes on student visitor visas, and further action to deal with the fewer illegal migrants deported, more absconding at the border and fewer cases of illegal migrants reported to the Home Office simply not being followed up.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

I strongly agree with what my right hon. Friend is saying, but does she not accept that we must argue the case for a substantial increase in staffing to deal with all those matters?