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Point of Order
3.30 pm
Mr. Andrew Robathan (Blaby): On a point of order, Madam Speaker. In the Chamber yesterday afternoon during the speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Mr. Maples), the Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the hon. Member for Leeds, West (Mr. Battle), asked him to confirm that, during the state visit of the President of China,
- "no one was charged or countercharged, and no one has reported having been arrested or charged as a result of the visit".--[Official Report, 22 November 1999; Vol. 339, c. 378.]
Madam Speaker: What does that point of order have to do with me?
Mr. Robathan: I wondered how that discrepancy between two ministerial answers can be corrected.
Madam Speaker: It can be corrected by either tabling a further parliamentary question or an early-day motion drawing attention to it. That has been done before.
Orders of the Day
Debate on the Address
[Fifth Day]
Order read for resuming adjourned debate on Question [17 November],
That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, as follows:
Question again proposed.
Most Gracious Sovereign,
We, Your Majesty's most dutiful and loyal subjects, the Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, in Parliament assembled, beg leave to offer our humble thanks to Your Majesty for the Gracious Speech which Your Majesty has addressed to both Houses of Parliament--[Dr Jack Cunningham].
Home Affairs, Education and Employment
3.32 pm
Madam Speaker: I have selected the amendment in the name of the Leader of the Opposition, and I have imposed a 15-minute limit on the speeches of Back-Bench Members.
Miss Ann Widdecombe (Maidstone and The Weald): I shall endeavour to set an example in my speech, Madam Speaker.
I beg to move, as an amendment to the Address, at the end of the Question to add:
One can think of many ways in which the Prime Minister might have rewarded his Home Secretary for such a performance, but he has decided to reward him with the biggest raft of legislation in the Government's programme, and I am bound to ask whether that is wise.
The chaos that the Home Secretary and his team have caused during the past year does not bode well for their ability to take on board eight or nine new Bills.
Who can forget the passports crisis; the backlog of asylum applications which rose and rose and is still rising; the fiasco of the Home Secretary's completely misleading announcement on police numbers at his party conference; the fact that he completely forgot to include certain key parts in the prevention of terrorism legislation; andthe utter farce of the spy-a-day revelations during the summer? Who can forget the Home Secretary's string of ill-judged comments, such as his famous views on people from Liverpool--"You know what scousers are like," he said, "they are always up to something."
We know what the Home Secretary is up to because more often than not his incompetence is all over the papers; a Home Secretary who has utterly failed so far to make any impact on the significant number of matters that are covered by his brief. For example, let us take his flagship measures included in the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 which have been complete flops. Not a single child curfew order has been issued after more than a year. The Home Secretary has been forced to announce that he will amend legislation that he introduced because no one uses it. Only a handful of anti-social behaviour orders have been issued. It is possible to count the number of orders that have been used against under-18s on fewer than the fingers of one hand. Yet at the neighbourhood watch conference, the Home Secretary claimed that the measures, which remain unused by the courts after a year, help to improve life in local communities.
What about the home detention curfew scheme under the Crime and Disorder Act 1998? It allows convicted criminals to get out of jail early. Those who are sentenced to six months get out in only six weeks. More than 2,000 convicted criminals are currently enjoying life in their own homes because they have been released early with electronic tags. Instead of improving the life of local communities, the Home Secretary is improving criminals' lives.
The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Jack Straw):
Will the right hon. Lady explain why the Conservative members of the Select Committee on Home Affairs supported home detention curfew?
Miss Widdecombe:
Yes. We always supported tagging as an alternative to prison--indeed, I supported that when we were in government. We do not support tagging as a means of releasing prisoners early. There is an enormous difference between seeking alternatives to prison and releasing people, who, according to the judge, should remain in jail. Will the Home Secretary deny--
Miss Widdecombe:
I shall give the Home Secretary an opportunity in a moment to deny that many people who have been released from prison are convicted of offending while tagged. Some offences are not minor; they include crimes as serious as burglary and assault. Will the Home Secretary apologise to the victims of those crimes?
Mr. Straw:
Home detention curfew has a successrate of 95 per cent., which far exceeds that of almost any
Miss Widdecombe:
I have made our view on tagging extremely clear. Will the Home Secretary apologise to the victims of serious offences committed by those who have been let out of prison early? I am prepared to give way, but the Home Secretary will not apologise. That clearly sums up his scale of priorities.
Against that background, it is no wonder that the sustained fall in the crime rate that began in the early-1990s under the previous Government is now grinding to a halt. It is no wonder that crime increased in 14 police areas last year and that violent crimes rose by 11 per cent. across the country. Yet the Home Secretary describes the figures as good news. How does a rise in crime of more than 4 per cent. constitute good news for the people of Merseyside? How does an increase of 5 per cent. represent good news for the people of Thames Valley? How is a rise in crime of nearly 7 per cent. good news for the people of Greater Manchester?
We learn that this year's figures are likely to be even worse.
Helen Jones (Warrington, North):
If the right hon. Lady is so worried about crime figures, why has she failed to apologise for the doubling of crime figures under the previous Government?
Miss Widdecombe:
As I have pointed out, crime fell throughout the last Parliament of our term in office. According to the Government's figures, we introduced measures that led to a fall in crime. That fall has not only seized up but is reversing. The Labour Government should apologise--they came to power on the basis that they would be tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime. Yet they have been weak on crime and tough on crime fighters.
"But humbly regret that the Gracious Speech makes no mention of the fact that the number of police officers in England and Wales has declined by more than 1,000 since the General Election, that a large proportion of the Government's measures have been ineffective, that crime is rising in many areas of the country and that, despite the large number of Home Office Bills listed in the Gracious Speech, there are hardly any measures to combat crime; further note the chaos in the Home Office over the past year which has been caused by the Government's mismanagement; deplore the Government's proposals to abolish the right to elect trial by jury; believe that the Government's proposals for Freedom of Information will result in greater secrecy; further regret the failure of the Government to reduce the burden of bureaucracy and regulation which places unnecessary restrictions on teachers and schools, particularly at a time when class sizes are rising, deplore the increasing centralisation and interference by Government evident in the measures contained in the Gracious Speech and condemn the failure of the Government to include any measures in the Gracious Speech to improve standards in schools; and call for effective scrutiny of the other measures proposed in the Gracious Speech to ensure that common sense prevails."
In proposing the amendment in the name of my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition, I am mindful of what he pointed out last week, which is that the Home Secretary has topped this year's league of incompetence. He is this year's winner of the prize, which is obviously so coveted by Labour Ministers, for departmental messes, ineffective legislation and ministerial bungling--so much so, that he even managed to beat the Deputy Prime Minister, the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and the former Secretary of State for Health.
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