Lord Balfe
Main Page: Lord Balfe (Conservative - Life peer)
Lord Balfe (Con)
My Lords, I welcome the strategy and the Minister’s introduction. I read through the strategy a couple of times and found it higher on analysis than on solutions. It had a pretty good analysis of where the problems are, but I am not sure that it really came to grips with the solutions.
First, we seem to be imagining that somehow crime is completely out of hand. In fact, Britain has become a safer place over the last 30 or 40 years. What we do have, however, is a problem over the last short period of time. I was struck, for instance, by the assertion in the report that, with respect to assaults with a sharp object,
“since 2012/13, the number of episodes involving individuals aged under 18 has increased by 51%”.
The numbers, however, are from 313 to 473. This is not 51% of many thousands to many more thousands. It is a problem, but we need to remember the numbers as well as the percentages. Similarly, homicide rates are up 20% for 18 to 24 year-olds and 26% for the 25 to 29 age group. Clearly, as you get older, you are more likely to murder people than stab them, according to the report. Again, we need to look at the numbers: the numbers are serious—particularly for those who are affected—but we are not living in Colombia. We are living in a society that clearly has problems. The report states on page 25, in respect of age and criminality:
“Underlying this pattern is strong evidence that crime trends tend to be driven by a small proportion of highly prolific individuals whose criminal career tends to decrease via a lengthy ‘ageing out’ process”.
I was entertained by the intervention of the noble Lord, Lord Bird. I was educated to an extent, but as the product of a secondary modern school myself I cannot agree that everybody who went to a secondary modern school was necessarily disadvantaged at all. In fact, I cannot remember anyone in our class at school who went to the juvenile court or anywhere else. Perhaps it was an exceptional class. Sometimes, when I sit on this side of the House and wonder why I am here, I realise that it is because of reports like this—I am not much good as a liberal in terms of thoughts.
A lot of people have to be responsible for their own actions. Many years ago, I was the research director for the Committee on One Parent Families, known as the Finer committee. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, has already alluded to the importance of family, particularly a structured family and a two-parent family. We have become almost shy about mentioning it; it is almost as though we are worried that we should not mention anything that might offend anyone at all. The fact of the matter is that the statistics show that a stable, two-parent family is a very good indicator of a stable life and a useful future.
My daughter has mild dyslexia. She is now working, and has worked every day since she left university. She got to university thanks to very good teaching. She is one of those people who had an exceptionally good teacher who taught her to cope, and now she is doing a valuable job. Many people overcome disadvantage. I do not intend to delay the House with personal sob stories, but I grew up in a children’s home. That is also seen in many ways as a disadvantage, but it is not necessarily a disadvantage. You can get over things and you can fight your way forward.
One of the things we saw in the Finer committee report, which is now many years out of date, was how many one-parent families actually won through. The great majority of them won through—not only the fatherless families but the motherless ones: the number of men who managed to bring up children, do a job and get through. I am not saying that people do not need help. Indeed, one of the things that report showed was the need for financial assistance and one-parent family benefits. However, that is part of the package, not the whole package.
I move on to social media. I point out that when the noble Lord, Lord Howard, who is not in his place, advocated a tough approach with those who were caught being given tough sentences, he was not necessarily that far out. Look at the quote about,
“via a lengthy ‘ageing out’ process”;
people who are doing their lengthy ageing out behind bars are not causing as much trouble as those who are, let us say, running around.
I want to look at the social media quotes in the report. On page 31 it says:
“There is strong evidence that rival gangs are using social media to promote gang culture, taunt each other and incite violence. Some gang members have thousands of followers … Social media also offers a method for promoting drug selling activity and recruiting others into the lifestyle … One of the most common things for drug-related groups to do on social media is to post pictures of themselves surrounded by money purportedly made from selling drugs”.
That is not poverty, is it?
On the online sale of knives, test purchases in 2008 and 2009,
“showed that 80% of the retailers sampled … would sell to a person under 18”.
By 2014, it was still 70%, and in 2016 it was 72%. Another quote is:
“Every time an online test purchase operation is undertaken, the large majority of online retailers tested break the law on sales of knives”.
But what do the Government say about it? They say:
“We are planning to introduce new legislation to take additional steps to prevent online retailers selling knives to young people under 18 years old”.
Why not just ban the sale of knives online? Surely that is the answer. It is not about saying, “Take new powers”, which almost certainly will not work. You can ban them. We can take the online adverts under control. We should look at stopping selling knives in shops where there is a problem. We should at least make it as difficult as buying alcohol, and not only have test purchases but make it obligatory for people to check the age of people buying knives. I would not be averse to putting the age limit up to 25, let alone 18, before people can buy a knife. In other words, we need to be a bit tougher.
On page 80, the report says:
“The Home Office will provide a fund for two years to support targeted prosecution activity against online and in store retailers in breach of the laws in relation to the underage sales of knives”.
Why does not the Home Office set up its own dedicated unit to do the job? Why is it setting up a fund that, presumably, people will have to apply for, and which presumably will be a big bureaucracy? It is online—it is not impinging on anyone’s territory. The Home Office itself could set up a dedicated unit and do this job.
Finally, I will say one or two things about the police—I was interested in the speech given by the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe. In the preamble, written by the former Home Secretary, she says that the,
“Police and Crime Commissioners have a pivotal role to play”.
Nothing the Government and their predecessor have done has been more of a disappointment than the introduction of police and crime commissioners. One only has to look at Wiltshire to see how totally useless they are, and to put them into the foreword is an abuse of the foreword itself. I would like to see the police going back to doing a bit more policing.
I saw in one of my weekend newspapers that the police are looking at the possibility of setting up a unit to look at the Jeremy Thorpe case. Jeremy Thorpe has died, sadly. I do not think he was quite the rogue that his current reputation gives him. If he was, he was a fairly loveable rogue. But he has died and he was found not guilty by a jury. That really should be the end of the matter. If we have enough police to set up dedicated teams, it is a waste of police resources. I am afraid, in my view, the police are just a little too fond of undertaking fishing expeditions, and it is about time they got down to doing the job they are paid for.
As a starting point, I wonder whether it would be a good idea to recruit a full-time security service for this building. That would free up dozens of policemen to go back on to the beat to do their job, and a dedicated security force for this building would be much more able to be integrated with the other functions in this building. I do not know about other noble Lords, but the number of times that the front desk downstairs with our attendants on has failed to get a message registered in the police box, which is about 20 yards away, is a little too many. So I would like to see a few more of them on the beat and not doing an easily replaceable job around this House.
In conclusion, I thank the Minister for allowing us to air our views in this debate, but I think we have to remember the central role of families and society in tackling violence.
Lord Cormack (Con)
The noble Earl has ranged far and wide. He talked fondly of his late father, whom I remember well. He was a member of Attlee’s Government, one of the seminal Governments of this country. Indeed, I believe that I am right in saying that he was the last Secretary of State for India—but I must not be tempted.
One thing to have come through in this debate has been the reiteration—it began with an intervention from my noble friend Lord Framlingham, who is not in his place now—of the importance of the family. This was brought home to me last week. Many of your Lordships may have heard in a news item anxiety being expressed at the number of young children in primary schools who knew nothing about basic hygiene. I intervened on a Question last week to urge my noble friend who has the education brief in your Lordships’ House to do more about the education of parents and for parenthood. It is clear that most of the problems which lie at the root of today’s debate occur because children have not been brought up in a stable home with parents devoted to their welfare, anxious to teach them the difference between right and wrong, cleanliness and filth, and all the things that we used to take for granted.
As my noble friend Lord Balfe mentioned, the strategy to which my noble friend the Minister spoke is a little turgid. It is long on analysis and a little short on solutions.
We can solve the problems troubling your Lordships’ House in this debate and on many other occasions only in schools and in prisons. We have to realise that many young people who are sentenced, often quite rightly, to terms in prison and young offender institutions have the most appalling backgrounds. I had such an institution in my former constituency in South Staffordshire, a place called Brinsford. I remember going there one day after there had been a fairly monumental riot; the place had been smashed up. Incidentally, a brilliant report on that prison was delivered by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, when he was the Chief Inspector of Prisons—and what a brilliant inspector he was. That report had a very salutary effect and the institution improved considerably. Going round and talking to those young men was a distressing experience. I could not honestly look at myself in the mirror and not say, if I had had their background, there but for the grace of God. It applies to all of us.
We must try to ensure that we do not stint on the resources going into the prison system, because prison must be the place where people are rehabilitated, and that applies most of all to young people. We must be able to give them a sense of self-worth, aspiration and hope. If we cannot do that we just create a sink generation. There is not enough emphasis on that in the strategy document we are talking about.
Of course, we should do everything possible to keep people out of prison. When I was chairman of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee in the other place, I saw the dramatic effect of community restorative justice. If you can keep people out of prison and make them atone for their crimes and shortcomings without risking the contamination that frequently occurs in a prison, you are doing a great deal. I would like to see emphasis on that.
My final point is about schools. I hope noble Lords who have heard me refer to this before will forgive me if I refer to it again. I believe that we need to educate our young people as proper citizens of this country. I want to see an emphasis on citizenship. That does not just mean teaching young people about the way Parliament and local government works; it means trying to make them realise that no society can work unless they play a constructive and, indeed, aspirational part in it. I had the privilege a couple of years or so ago of going to the Terrace in your Lordships’ House when there was a citizenship ceremony for those who were receiving British citizenship. The sense of pride among those people of all ages, backgrounds, nationalities and ethnicities was palpable. They were dressed in their best; they had their wives, husbands or companions with them; they were going to celebrate afterwards; it was a moving ceremony.
I would like every young person in this country leaving school to go through a citizenship ceremony. They should be prepared for it. They should all do some community service. Whether that is reading to the blind, visiting the old, helping the sick or going on a National Trust conservation programme does not matter, but it should be community service of a sort that is worth while, challenging and through which they can actually achieve something. They should also be taught properly about our country’s history and its system—the preciousness of democracy—and at the end of the day they should receive a certificate.
I have suggested, when I have mentioned this before, that to take this out of the realm of party politics this should not be done by the local authority but through the lieutenancy. I think we all respect the lieutenancy. The lord-lieutenant, the deputy, the vice lord-lieutenant and the deputies, all of them—I speak as a DL myself, although now on the retired list—could play a part in this. If young people aspired to it and were taught how important it was to aspire to it, it would help. It might just persuade some of those who are now seduced into joining gangs or tempted by the false romanticism of weapons; it might just help a bit. We must make our prisons clean, rehabilitative places with no drugs, no violence. It is not a punishment while you are there; the punishment is being sent there and you are rehabilitated while you are there.
If we can try to inculcate a sense of pride in nation and community in our schools, fewer people will go to prison. That is the way we should seek to tackle this and I hope that any developed strategy for dealing with violent crime will bear in mind some of these things, but also bear in mind that there is no substitute in human life for the family unit. I was deeply disturbed last week when I read that a very senior judge had said that the day of the nuclear family was over—what an utterly irresponsible, reprehensible and silly thing to say.
Lord Cormack
My noble friend interjects to say that the judge was president of the Family Division. I must not criticise the judiciary on the Floor of your Lordships’ House, but all I say is that it is a pity that we do not have the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, doing that job, as she did so brilliantly for so long.