We can beat the yobs, despite Labour's failure

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/08/26/nrcrime326.xml

As Home Secretary, Michael Howard was advised that crime would rise, whatever he tried. He cut it by 18 per cent, and argues that tough measures can make us safer

The chilling tragedy of the 11-year-old Rhys Jones, gunned down in a pub car park, has rightly evoked a national outpouring of grief, anger and desperate concern. The incredible dignity with which Rhys's parents have responded to the shattering of their lives somehow makes it even harder to bear.

It strikes at our hearts in different ways. For me it brought back memories of the appalling murder of the even younger James Bulger, which occurred when I was Home Secretary.

Yet that horrific murder was one of its kind.

The murder of Rhys Jones is the latest in a string of deaths by shooting in different parts of the country which have claimed so many young lives in recent weeks.

So it is not surprising that many searching questions are now being asked about the failings of our society, about the nature of our responsibility, as parents, neighbours and citizens, and about our criminal justice system.

David Cameron was absolutely right to draw attention on Friday to the need to heal our fractured society. He is right to acknowledge that politicians do not have all the answers.

But, as he and David Davis, the shadow home secretary, know well, the area for which politicians are directly responsible is the criminal justice system. So perhaps this is the right moment to look back at what has happened to that system over the past 15 years.

I became Home Secretary in May 1993. I was told that the rise in crime, which we had suffered for decades under previous Governments, was inevitable. I was told there was nothing I could do about it - that my job was to manage public expectations in the face of this inexorable trend.

I didn't take that advice. And that autumn I announced a comprehensive system of measures - 27 in all - to make a start on tackling the problem across the board. They were designed to help deter criminals from committing crime, to help detect them if they did, to help convict them when they were brought to court and to help punish them properly when they were convicted.

Tony Blair, then shadow home secretary, described them as "gimmicks". But they were all implemented and they contributed to the unprecedented 18 per cent fall in crime which took place during my period in office.

That statistic is incontrovertible. Unfortunately many of those used in this debate are not. That is partly because there are two sets of crime statistics, those recorded by the police and those which are the result of a sample survey, the British Crime Survey. And partly because of the unscrupulous way in which Labour politicians have used, or abused, them.

Neither method of measuring crime is perfect. Many crimes are not reported to the police so do not appear in the recorded crime figures. The survey, on the other hand, excludes important categories of crime including murder and rape.

As it happens crime fell on both measures when I was Home Secretary - the first fall in the British Crime Survey ever recorded.

The same, alas, has not been true under Labour. And here we come to the first example of the unscrupulous way in which they use these figures. When they attack the record of the last Conservative Government - right back to 1979 - they always refer to the recorded crime figures. When they claim to have caused crime to fall since they came to office they refer to the British Crime Survey.

You will have guessed the reason. On the recorded crime figures crime has gone up under Labour, from 5.1 million in 1998/99 to 5.4 million in 2006/7.

Indeed even under the British Crime Survey, after small falls in recent years, the latest figures are back on the increase.

When it comes to gun crime Labour - yes, even under the "new" stewardship of Gordon Brown and Jacqui Smith - are equally devious.

The morning after the Rhys Jones tragedy, Jacqui Smith claimed on BBC Radio 5 Live that gun crime has been falling. That is true, on the confirmed figures, only if you just look at the past three years and include air weapons. Otherwise it has risen.

The statistical evidence, therefore, properly analysed and understood, shows up starkly the extent of Labour's failure on crime.

Why has this come about? After all the rhetoric has, in many ways, been indistinguishable from mine.

I believe there are two reasons. The first is that New Labour have always been more interested in the next day's headlines than in the often boring business of getting things done. So we had the endless stream of announcements - they really were gimmicks - from Mr Blair and his Home Secretaries. Rarely was there any proper follow-through.

The second reason is directly the responsibility of Gordon Brown. Even since 1997 Labour Home Secretaries have encouraged the courts to send more people to prison. But it is wanton irresponsibility to act in this way without creating the extra prison accommodation that is needed. Gordon Brown wilfully refused to heed warnings and to make money available.

This is not just a question of physical capacity. When there is severe overcrowding - with prisoners being moved around the estate in a desperate attempt to fit everyone in - the first things that suffer are the education and rehabilitation programmes which are so crucial in reducing reoffending.

This abject failure has led to the ignominious humiliation of having to order the early release of thousands of prisoners.

And just last week we were told that as a result of another Government failure, thousands of dangerous prisoners, those subject to indeterminate sentences for public protection, might have to be released as well. The judge in the case described the situation as "very worrying". That may yet turn out to be the understatement of the decade.

Labour's lamentable failure to discharge the first duty of government - the duty to protect the public - should be enough on its own to disqualify it from any prospect of re-election.

Yet, as we have shown in the past, such failure is not inevitable. The Conservative alternative, under David Cameron, is more than capable of remedying this shocking state of affairs. It is up to the electorate to give them the opportunity to do so.