Crime and Policing

Part of Opposition Day — [4th Allotted Day] – in the House of Commons at 1:40 pm on 8 September 2010.

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Photo of Alan Johnson Alan Johnson Shadow Home Secretary and Shadow Minister for Women and Equalities 1:40, 8 September 2010

It is great to hear Conservative Members accepting that crime has fallen, as they spent so long dancing around the issue under Chris Grayling. They were told off by the UK statistics authorities and by everyone who looked at the matter. Some people in the police force are looking askance at what this Government are doing. I mentioned the record under the previous Conservative Government. Christopher Pincher is right that the conviction rate needs to be tackled as well, but under the previous Conservative Government, it was not just the conviction rate and the detection rate that had not been tackled, as crime reached 4.6 million-a doubling-under the Tories. There was a 168% increase in violent crime and a 405% increase in burglary. Of course, the Labour Government can be criticised for aspects of what happened over the last 13 years, but what no Conservative Member can do is to suggest that somehow crime has gone up when that was in fact their legacy. If Britain were ever broken, it was broken between 1979 and 1997. The statistics I am citing are not mine; they are the Home Secretary's.

The death of Fiona Pilkington and her daughter last year shocked this House and shocked the country. It had a profound impact on me as the incoming Home Secretary. That is why I wanted to intensify action. There is no evidence from this tragic incident that it is time to move beyond the ASBO. All the evidence, summarised so astutely by the coroner in that tragic case, showed that the police and local authority in Leicestershire were acting as if they lived in the pre-ASBO era, when no powers existed. One police officer said at the inquest that antisocial behaviour was nothing to do with the police. He was wrong. It is certainly not the responsibility of the police alone, but the police are responsible for it. That police officer was wrong, but 13 years ago, he would have been right. We have to be careful not to return to those days. The Home Secretary speaks of the need to tackle the root causes of this kind of behaviour as if she is unaware of Sure Start, free nursery education, family-nurse partnerships, family intervention projects, the education maintenance allowance, the huge increase in apprenticeships, the 30% increase in the number of kids from deprived areas going to university and all the other measures introduced by the Labour Government-yes, to be tough on the causes of crime, as well as on crime itself.