DNA and CCTV (Crime Prevention)

Margot James Excerpts

Tuesday 6th July 2010 Westminster Hall

[Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) on securing this debate and on his courageous opening speech. For my constituents, crime and antisocial behaviour are consistently among the top three issues in all the surveys that I have done. There are persistent problem areas that would be ameliorated by the greater use of CCTV—I do not argue for the unregulated use of CCTV, but for its greater use.

In Stourbridge town centre we have good CCTV coverage and, like the right hon. Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint), I have been out with the local police force and seen the cameras in action. I have visited the viewing facilities, and it is an effective tool, but it covers only a small proportion of my constituency. The remainder of my constituency is covered by one single “Sherpa” camera, about which I will say a little more later, because there are some lessons to be learned from that. Technology is a vital tool in policing, and I am concerned that we should not go down the road of regulating it so that it becomes a problem for the police to deploy it. I am sure that that is not the Government’s intention.

We have heard a little about the image of CCTV from the hon. Member for Edinburgh West (Mike Crockart). There are arguments that CCTV is not effective, that half the time there is no film in it, that nobody—including the police—is watching it, or that the quality of the film and the resolution are not adequate to provide decent photographs that might aid a prosecution. However, those arguments are not against the deployment of CCTV but rather against the deployment of ineffective CCTV, which is not something that we ask for or promote. Of course, CCTV alone cannot solve crimes, but it is a fundamental part of the armamentarium held by the police in their battle against crime on behalf of society. The hon. Member for Edinburgh West also mentioned displacement, but one cannot have it both ways. One cannot argue that CCTV causes the displacement of crime at the same time as arguing that CCTV is not effective against crime. That does not seem to stack up.

Liberty and privacy are important, and I am hopeful that whatever regulation the Government have in mind, they will attend to those important issues without deterring the use of CCTV for rightful matters. We have heard a few quotes from my right hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert), the Minister responsible for the police, and I am encouraged to report another statement in which he said that our liberty is protected by ensuring that people can live safely. That is the point about liberty as far as I and the vast majority of my constituents are concerned. If we are to have more—or different—regulation, we need a system that is proportionate and facilitates proper usage, and that recognises the important role of CCTV when it is of decent quality and integrated with other policing methods.

I would like to speak briefly about the effectiveness of that tool within the overall armamentarium that the police have at their disposal as used in the Safer Leeds initiative, a crime and disorder partnership that operates in Leeds between the local authority and the police. The CCTV element is known as Leedswatch, and it is a powerful weapon against crime, according to the police and local authority members in that part of the world. The chief of police is quoted as stating:

“The CCTV cameras play a key role in the prevention and detection of crime and the recorded images provide vital evidence to law enforcement agencies to assist in the apprehension and prosecution offenders.”

I want to draw attention to the point about apprehension and prosecution, because sometimes CCTV is defended too much for its use in crime prevention, and not enough for its benefits in the detection of crime and in improving the rate of prosecution. The quality of some of the camera footage and the ability to zoom in and get close-ups can help with the identification of individuals, or rule people out of prosecution who might otherwise have been deemed to have been involved in a crime.

The identification of people who have committed a criminal act addresses one of the key public concerns about the criminal justice system in this country, namely that all too often, people assume that they can get away with crime. I am afraid that in large parts of my constituency, they can and they do because, as my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley maintains, the police cannot be on every street corner. There are vast swathes where antisocial behaviour is prevalent, and there is no real means of building up a decent evidence base to deal with the perpetrators and return to law-abiding people the right to a decent quality of life.

I have a few statistics from the Leedswatch initiative. The Leeds police installed 14 cameras in what was effectively a no-go area in east Leeds. Within 18 months, crime had come down by 48% and the number of burglaries had fallen by 65%. I do not argue that that was solely due to CCTV, but the Leedswatch management stated quite clearly that the introduction of CCTV was pivotal to that improvement. While doing my research, I noted that during one week in June this year, CCTV coverage in Leeds led to 57 arrests. Such statistics demonstrate the value that CCTV can provide, and we cannot afford to ignore that when our constituents’ fear of crime is very real.

When the Minister considers how best to regulate CCTV in future, I would commend to him the Leedswatch code of practice, which runs to 30 pages, and covers all the important issues concerning who accesses the photographs, the public’s human rights, data protection, how the system is operated, on what basis the photo footage is disclosed and so on. The Government will probably find everything that they need to know about how best to regulate CCTV nationally from observing the code of practice in Leeds.

I mentioned the sole roving camera that we have at our disposal in my constituency to cover areas outside the town centre. The regulations covering the use of that camera are stringent. Before putting the camera up, the police must demonstrate that they have deployed extensive preventive measures and that those measures have failed. They can erect the camera for only 72 hours before taking it down. I could go on, but my point is that the system is already pretty well regulated. I hope that the Government will look at existing codes of regulation around the country and develop a sensible system that protects the liberty not only of those who are concerned about privacy, but of the vast majority of people who are concerned about crime and who, I believe, are far better protected by the use of CCTV within the overall mix than they are by any fear of regulating it so that it becomes more difficult to deploy.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—