Violent Crime Reduction Bill

That question barely justifies a response, but I shall give it one. The hon. Gentleman’s opening remark was thoroughly unworthy, and he went on to mention the problems in mining villages, which nobody doubts. However, nobody doubts that problems also exist in other parts of the country where manufacturing is collapsing—he should visit MG Rover. We stand for a society in which everybody has an opportunity, and I am not just talking about stacking the shelves in Tesco. The worst thing is when people find that they cannot break out, however hard they try. The Government’s social policies have deprived poorer people of the two things that they need most in the world—personal dignity and the hope of improvement. Their criminal justice policies have left the most vulnerable in our society exposed to the rule of the thug and the bully. And their planning and housing policies are repeating the failures that condemned an earlier generation to growing up in crime-stricken communities. Those are the causes of crime. It is plain common sense that where a child grows up is a formative influence on how he or she comes to see the world. If people live in an environment strewn with burnt-out cars or on an estate with broken and boarded-up windows, or if people walk through stair wells littered with syringes and filth, they start out with a jaundiced view of life. The peer pressures are enormous, particularly for children from broken homes, and those pressures are nearly always bad in such conditions. In one sense, one can never remove the causes of crime, because those causes are locked into the deepest recesses of human nature, but one can let in the light, give people a chance and offer opportunity. I agree with the Prime Minister’s aspiration, but I deplore his lack of achievement. This Bill is a minor response to a massive problem. It is called the Violent Crime Reduction Bill, but in truth it will not reduce violent crime, although it may limit its increase in some cases. The Government’s criminal justice strategy, of which the Bill is a modest and undistinguished part, fails to engage with the roots of the problem. The Bill fails to attack the causes of crime, while again pursuing a plethora of headline-grabbing initiatives that attack the symptoms of crime. It is time to prevent drunk and disorderly behaviour, not merely to manage it; it is time to stop the plague of drugs that afflicts our youngsters, not merely to cope with the consequences; and it is time, at last, to be tough on the causes of crime, rather than, as in this Bill, merely treating the symptoms.