To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what measures the Government are using to engage further public support for crime prevention schemes.

Encouraging the public to take an active part in helping to reduce crime is the main objective of the Government's crime prevention campaign, the most recent issue of which was crime prevention week. We shall be considering what further developments in the campaign are needed, but neighbourhood watch schemes are multiplying fast and numbers are now at record levels.

The safer cities programme will soon be up to its full complement of 20 projects, and other local projects are also being developed by Crime Concern, which receives a grant in aid from the Home Office.

My right hon. Friend deserves the congratulations of the whole House on that excellent record. Is there any merit in handing over those excellent schemes to local authorities, and, in particular, will the schemes receive adequate support in areas still controlled by loony Labour councils?

I think that there is no merit at all in handing the schemes over to local authorities. Try telling the people of Lambeth or the people of Liverpool that there is. It is the same sort of ill-thought-out Labour idea that would put police forces under the control of regionally elected police authorities with complete political control. Such ill-thought-out ideas are the brainchildren of the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley), who described his attitude to politics in the arts pages of The Sunday Telegraph last Sunday: I find the business of politics infinitely tedious. Perhaps that is why the right hon. Gentleman has not bothered to turn up this afternoon.