The Riots

Debate between Mike Weatherley and Lord Barwell

Thursday 13th October 2011 Westminster Hall

[Gavin Barwell]

I am grateful to the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee. I have not had a chance to see that evidence. When I leave the Chamber, I will look at it. It is important to look at what has been achieved elsewhere in the UK and abroad to deal with these problems. I will now try to make a bit of progress, because I want to allow all the hon. Members here to contribute to the debate.

The second lesson is one that the Secretary of State for Justice has set out clearly: it is about changing how our prisons operate in order to tackle the issue of reoffending. Clearly, many of the people who were involved in these disturbances had been through our prison system, and it did not do anything to change their pattern of behaviour.

On the police response, the briefing that all London Members have received from the Metropolitan police tells us that there were 3,380 officers on duty on the Saturday, 4,275 on duty on the Sunday, 6,000 on the Monday when the disturbances in Croydon took place, and 16,000 on the Tuesday. It then, with commendable honesty, states:

“Were adequate resources deployed”

over the weekend and on the Monday?

“With the benefit of hindsight the answer would have to be no.”

I think that all hon. Members who represent London constituencies would share that judgment.

The third lesson for the Government is clearly that police numbers matter. Yes, the police cannot be exempt from the need to save money to deal with the deficit that we have inherited. Yes, we can do much, much more to ensure that more police officers spend their time actively and visibly on patrol on our streets. At the end of last year, however, the Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice said:

“I don’t think anyone…would make a simple link between the increase in the numbers of police officers and what has happened to crime. There is no such link.”

When the riots broke out, the response of the Government and the police was a two-and-a-half-fold increase in the number of police officers on the streets—and it worked. The Government are right to say that numbers are not the only game in town, but they are clearly an important part of it.

The performance of the police from Tuesday 9 August onwards was significantly better. I had the pleasure—on the Tuesday, when the Mayor of London came to Croydon—to meet the person who is now the new Metropolitan Police Commissioner, and was enormously impressed with a pep talk that I overheard him give to a number of officers who went through a very difficult time the night before. A much more robust approach from the police, in terms of breaking up groups of people who were attempting to form, is what prevented further disturbances from happening. It has also been enormously important to see police officers proactively going out, knocking down doors and arresting suspects in the early hours of the morning. It is important that the people involved in the disturbances do not feel, and their friends and neighbours do not feel, that they won—that they beat the police. The robust approach that we have seen since then is important.

[Mike Weatherley (Hove) (Con)]

I ask this question as the chair of the all-party group on retail and business crime. A lot of retailers feel that crime against their shops is seen as a victimless crime. Does my hon. Friend agree that a lot of people who were committing these crimes felt that they were committing a victimless crime because in the past sentencing had not been robust enough?

[Gavin Barwell]

I will come on to sentencing in a second, but anyone under the illusion that those crimes were victimless should consider the experience in Croydon. As I am sure the right hon. Member for Croydon North will say, the devastated shops were not those of the major multinational businesses but of small businesses—family businesses on one premises—often owned by members of the black and minority ethnic community. The crimes were absolutely not victimless.

As of 10 October, 2,819 arrests had been made throughout London and 1,700 people charged. The cost of that operation so far to the police in Croydon is £1.4 million. Clearly, the police face a difficult time on budgets, so who will pay for that? On 11 August, the Prime Minister said on the Floor of the House:

“the bill for the Metropolitan police force for the past few days will be large and, if they continue to deploy in those numbers, it will get larger and the Treasury will stand behind that.”—[Official Report, 11 August 2011; Vol. 531, c. 1065.]

There is still uncertainty in the Metropolitan police about where the money is coming from, and I hope that the Minister will provide reassurance.