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Mr. Edward Leigh (Gainsborough): For the avoidance of doubt, the grant settlement referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr. Hayes) was the settlement agreed after the general election, for the coming year.
If the record of Lincolnshire police is so wanting, why did the chief inspector of constabulary take particular care to single out for praise Lincolnshire's record in terms of efficiency gains?
Mr. Straw:
I should point out that the baseline on which we are working for the current financial year was established by the previous Administration.
Mr. Leigh:
The right hon. Gentleman altered it.
Mr. Straw:
Yes, I altered it--to provide additional police resources that the last Administration would not have provided.
Mr. Martin Linton (Battersea):
Does my right hon. Friend agree that the most important deterrent to crime is not the number of people in prison, but what they do when they are in prison? His statement that every pound saved will go back into education and probation will be enormously welcome in the probation service.
Does my right hon. Friend agree that the second most important way of preventing crime is stopping teenagers from getting into trouble in the first place? In that context, his £250 million crime reduction strategy will be a great relief. Can he tell us anything about the mentoring of teenagers in trouble, a scheme pioneered by Crime Concern and the Dalston youth project and, in the United
States, by Big Brothers and Sisters? Big Brothers and Sisters has set up a branch in my constituency, which hopes to launch its operations soon.
Mr. Straw:
My hon. Friend is right. The kind of regime that prisoners follow is crucially important; otherwise, to quote David--now Lord--Waddington, prison can end up by making bad people worse. My first responsibility is to ensure that there are sufficient places in prisons to meet the demands of the courts, which are entirely independent; but I must then ensure that the regimes are as constructive as possible. That applies not only to education, but to other activities.
My hon. Friend is entirely right to say that catching teenagers before they get into serious trouble is the crucial challenge. It is astonishing how negligent the last Administration were in simply ignoring the whole issue of the youth justice system.
I applaud the provision of mentoring schemes. I have seen the one at Dalston, but not the one in my hon. Friend's constituency. We are planning that the national Youth Justice Board should itself sponsor many more mentoring schemes than are currently under way.
Mr. Dominic Grieve (Beaconsfield):
May I welcome particularly the Home Secretary's comments on work for preventing criminality, which is set out in chapter 2 of "Reducing offending"? In that context, may I press the right hon. Gentleman a little further about the resources that will be allocated to deal with that work? When I raised the matter with him in the House a year ago, it was pointed out that the matter fell rather outside the Home Office's remit. Are we to take it, therefore, that the remit has been changed?
How much of the £250 million will go to working with parents with quite small children to prevent the growth of delinquency, or will another Government Department be doing that? What assurance can the right hon. Gentleman give me and the House on the proportion of the £250 million that will be going to that type of work rather than to issues raised by many hon. Members relating to older offenders or delinquents?
Mr. Straw:
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for the welcome that he gives. I cannot give him a precise answer today on the amount that will be allocated to specific projects on parenting because we have only just made the allocation, which will come into force from 1 April next year. I will ensure that he is provided with that information as soon as it becomes available to us and can be made public.
The £250 million represents a change in the way in which the Government operate. Quite a substantial proportion of it will be "spent" by other Government Departments. As we learned, not least from the safer cities project, if we want to cut crime we do it by ensuring that effort is made not by one Government Department or one local authority department but across a number of Departments. Quite a number of the programmes that we plan to sponsor will be education based and some will be social services based. Others will be sponsored, for example, by the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions because they are to do with the built environment. We are aiming to ensure, and we will ensure, that these programmes are properly co-ordinated,
are funded centrally and, critically, are evaluated, so we do not end up in a situation in which we have found ourselves too often in the past under Governments of both parties, where good work is done, is then forgotten and then has to be reinvented.
Ms Beverley Hughes (Stretford and Urmston):
May I congratulate my right hon. Friend on all the measures that he has announced, but particularly on the research, which is long overdue, and on the extra resources for the probation service, especially as, during the last three years of the previous Government, expenditure on the probation service was cut by about 25 per cent? During that period, the only contribution to criminal justice policy was the slogan "Prison works", with all the consequences of which we are aware.
Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is vital that some resources are invested in improving the national standards achieved by probation services and in developing much more effective and rigorous alternatives to custody in which the police and sentencers can have confidence?
Mr. Straw:
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for her welcome of the statement. Some of the resources should be devoted to improving national standards, although, to make a point that I have almost laboured, I draw attention to the fact that some probation services are already delivering a level of national standards within existing resources while others, which may be getting more resources, are doing less well.
My hon. Friend makes a very important point about the need for rigorous alternatives to custody that have the confidence of the police and sentencers. I know that an inquiry is under way by the Home Affairs Committee on this issue, and we look forward to its results. In the Crime and Disorder Bill, there is provision for a drug treatment and testing order, with mandatory and random drug testing. That is an example of the rigorous community punishment that we wish to see.
Mr. Alan Campbell (Tynemouth):
Does my right hon. Friend share the concerns expressed in the recent Public Accounts Committee report on the Metropolitan police? The Committee found that, on a typical day such as today, 1,500 officers will be on sick leave, which means the loss of about 400,000 days each year at a cost to the taxpayer of £122 million. Does my right hon. Friend agree that there must be scope for savings there so that we can secure added resources for front-line services?
Mr. Straw:
Yes, I do. I am grateful to the Public Accounts Committee for its report, which the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis takes seriously. It makes the important point that, through better
Ms Sally Keeble (Northampton, North):
I welcome my right hon. Friend's emphasis on dealing with the fear of crime. What is his response to the many representations made by pensioner groups on the matter, in particular Pensioners Voice in my constituency? What steps might the Government take to deal with the specific concerns of pensioners, who are often kept virtual prisoners in their homes by the fear of what they will find outside their front door?
Mr. Straw:
The research looked at a range of good initiatives across the country. I saw a scheme today in Merton, in south London, where the provision of alarms that are worn around the neck by the elderly has transformed the quality of life of people on an estate. I spoke to one of the women who have led the scheme. She said that people now feel safer. I commend the work of the Metropolitan police in that area in helping to get the scheme together. By the investment of a relatively small sum, the quality of life of people there has been transformed.
Madam Speaker:
Order. We must make progress on the business before us.
Mr. Norman Baker (Lewes):
On a point of order, Madam Speaker. Have you had a request from the Government for a statement on today's Court of Appeal decision, which ruled that the Government have acted unlawfully in allowing a genetic maize trial in Devon to go ahead? The Government admitted in court that they had acted unlawfully in dispensing with statutory legal requirements, which the judges called
4.25 pm
"a most remarkable and, indeed, regrettable statement".
The implication is that the Government will have to reassess the entire seed list process, affecting up to 163 genetically engineered seed trials across the United Kingdom. It is not possible for the Government to do nothing. They must do something in the light of the court ruling. Given the importance of the matter and its environmental sensitivity, have the Government asked to make a statement? If not, they should have done so.
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