Strong Local Voice, Strong Local Champion

Response to Queen's Speech

Mrs. Annette L. Brooke (Mid-Dorset and North Poole) (LD): I welcome in principle several of the Bills in the Gracious Speech. The first is the charities Bill, which will provide an important legal framework for regulating the charitable and voluntary sectors. The voluntary sector wants the Bill, and that is all-important. It will remind us of the importance of the voluntary sector, which plays a role in areas covered by many of the other proposed Bills. For example, where would we be on the issue of domestic violence without all the voluntary work that has been done over the years? It is the same with child protection, and there are other examples. I would like to see even greater input from the voluntary sector in the future. When we talk about public provision of services or private provision of services, or even a partnership between the two, we miss out on an important dimension. I hope that discussing the voluntary sector will enable it to progress further and provide even better services.

I welcome the Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Bill. It has been a long time coming and it is a great credit to the Government that they have finally introduced it. |However, I share the reservations of those hon. Members who have mentioned the protection of children, especially in cases of access visits for parents. Many people say that it is up to the courts, but we all have examples of cases that have torn at our heartstrings and not only aroused great concern, but involved physical harm to children. Children must be at the heart of everything we do.

I also welcome the children's Bill, although it has taken so long for it to be introduced. I visited Sweden earlier this year and discovered that it had had a children's ombudsman for 20 years. We have finally reached that point, and I am delighted. Other countries put children first and listen to them, and we have taken a long time to get to that point.

The Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Bill contains not only measures on domestic violence, but provisions for witnesses and victims. I welcome those provisions also, because I recently visited Dorset Victim Support on its open day for Members of Parliament. I was very impressed by all the work that it did. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the staff pointed out problems with funding. I mention that because I am not sure exactly what role Victim Support will play after the introduction of the new provisions. I tabled a parliamentary question earlier this year, which showed clearly that while the funding to Victim Support has increased, because it has been providing this incredibly important witness protection service and helping witnesses, its core activities have been squeezed in terms of money. I do not think that their activities have been cut back, but volunteers have been asked to do more and more, and barely get expenses for the work that they do.

I want to ask a question about what is included in relation to trafficking. Many Members welcomed the fact that trafficking will be addressed in the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002, but I fear that the important aspect of trafficking for child labour may not be included. I want to put it on record that that is really important. We have moved so far by including trafficking for sexual purposes in the Sexual Offences Bill, and many Members would also have liked trafficking in child labour and trafficking in children's organs to be dealt with at the same time, although, of course, that was not possible. I hope that in the near future it will be possible to address those important issues.

As many Members have mentioned, there have been many Bills relating to crime, yet the public's perception is that crime is going up and they do not feel entirely safe. Whatever the statistics, we must take on board the fact that people have a fundamental need to feel safe in their communities. It comes down to not only legislation, but police personnel engaged in prevention and successful detention. I am afraid that I will touch on funding again, because, like most other Members, I have received representations from my police authority, Dorset, which tells me that although the percentage increase in funding is perhaps a little more than it had hoped for, it is not enough to cover unavoidable cost increases, and certainly not enough to address what the public want. Dorset police have carried out a thorough consultation, and, not surprisingly, the answer has come back that people want a more visible, uniformed presence on the streets.

I want to mention a specific issue relating to my police authority. I was fortunate enough to have an Adjournment debate on funding for Dorset police not long ago, and, on behalf of the police, I raised the fact that they were concerned that £1 million in fines from the safety camera scheme was being returned to the Treasury. The Minister said that that was not the case, and that the money was allowed to stay in Dorset for use in safety schemes. I was delighted to hear that. I have received a further representation from Dorset police, however, which tells me that that is really not the case. It states:

"these criteria have subsequently changed and we are not able to seek the use of the fines revenue for anything other than safety camera enforcement. This has fundamentally undermined our approach to road safety."

It is really concerning that so much money is being channelled back into the Treasury and is not going into safety schemes. The mission of every Member of the House is crime reduction, but if we can introduce preventive measures, surely that is best. We need openness and honesty about what is happening to the fines. Most of all, the people who pay the fines and have got caught out would like to know what happens to the money that they are paying.

Ironically, the success of our police forces in reaching their targets means that we have the current crisis in prisons, to which Members have referred. We must remember that there is a crisis-some wonderful projects and wonderful work take place within the system, but the overall situation is appalling.

I visited Finland earlier this year while looking at different criminal justice systems. I want to quote briefly one statistic-while we were there, just one woman under 21 was in prison. Even multiplying that to take account of the size of the respective populations, it tells us something very sad about our own society that we have so many women in unsuitable prison settings, often miles from their homes and families. Equally, although we have made progress in decreasing the number of children in prison, we still have 2,000 children in adult prison settings, which is completely against the United Nations convention on the rights of the child. We must think about a whole package of things in relation to children when we consider all the Bills in the Queen's Speech.

Community sentences will become much more frequently used when the proposals in the Criminal Justice Act 2003 come on stream fully, but community sentences can play a greater role now and more should be done with them. The public do not seem to have confidence in community sentences. They see them as a soft option, but why should they be a soft option? Surely, if people can see something being put back into the community and offenders can be supported with education and drug treatment programmes and other forms of support, we will have a cheaper, more effective sentence that will, I hope, cut reoffending and certainly be far less disruptive to the social make-up of our society. It would be good to see Ministers visiting good community sentence programmes and showing people that such sentences work and that we can stop simply putting people into prison for more minor offences and genuinely address crime in this country.