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JOHN HUMPHRYS: The new crime bill is being
published this week ... another attempt to make the country safer for all
of us. The crime rate is beginning to rise again and that's a real problem
for a government that's supposed to be tough on crime and tough on the
causes of crime. Mr Blair has been talking in the past 24 hours about
drugs - threatening a new crackdown on the pushers.
The Home Office
Minister Paul Boateng is with me. Mr Boateng before we get on to that,
a quick question if I may about James Bulger. Clearly there's not very
much you can say about it because the Home Secretary is looking at it and
will announce something this week but what is the context in which he is
looking at it again. Is it before there are clearly political concerns,
I mean lots of people out there are deeply worried about this and what
happens to the boys because of the message that it sends, or will the decision
be taken purely in light of what is best for these boys?
PAUL BOATENG: John, the Home Secretary
has made it clear that he is reflecting on the European Convention of Human
Right Court's ruling in this matter and he will have to do that, he is
doing that and he will, as he promised, report in due course to Parliament.
When he is considering these matters and when he reports to Parliament,
he acts in the purely quasi judicial function. He doesn't act as a politician
and therefore it wouldn't be appropriate for me to seek to second guess
him and I'm bound to say that he will make his decision in accordance with
the law and he will uphold the rule of law in the best traditions of our
country.
HUMPHRYS: Let's move on to Tony
Blair talking about drugs. He gave an interview yesterday in which he said
he is going to be very stern on drug pushers and the like because he's
very worried about drugs, as indeed we all are. But it's just more rhetoric
isn't it.
BOATENG: No, far from it. We have
already seen in a prison context what effective focussed action can do.
In our prisons in the last three years we have reduced positive tests by
some twenty-four per cent. We will in this coming week be unveiling the
new Bill that will enable us to extend drug treatment testing orders across
the country. The early results of the pilots are very promising. I visited
on recently in the Wirral looking at pilots across the board. What we
have found is that they are able to reduce consumption and spending on
drugs from four hundred pounds a week to seventy pounds a week. Now that
makes an enormous difference in terms of acquisitive crime. It makes a
difference for instance to whether or not your car is broken into and your
CD player taken out, whether or not an opportunistic burglary takes place.
So yes, we know that effective focussed action can make a difference and
we are determined to see that rolled out across the country.
HUMPHRYS: But I mean the sort of
thing that he was talking about are confiscating the assets of drug dealers
- well that's done already as I understand it. He was talking about rehabilitation
and treatment centres. Well, we have those already. I mean it sounds a
bit like recycling.
BOATENG: On the contrary because
it reveals the purpose and the extent to which we as a government are applying
our minds and our actions to these issues. Like me give you an example
in relation to drugs confiscation. One of the things that makes it so hard
out there in the wider world is the way in which these drug traffickers
flaunt their wealth, whether it's the Mazarati on the local estate, whether
or not it's flash jewellery and what we need to do is to send a very clear
message that if you do engage in drug trafficking, not only are you going
to go to prison and we now have a minimum sentence of seven years for third
time convicted drug traffickers. But also, you are going to lose that
wealth and your family aren't going to be able to..
HUMPHRYS: You already can is the
point I'm making, that's the point.
BOATENG: Sure, but what we need
to do is to look at new ways, for instance of channelling some of that
wealth back into the communities and..
HUMPHRYS: So what are you going
to do, are you going to take it off the drug dealer, take it off Mazarati
Man or whatever and build a youth centre or something?
BOATENG: Exactly. There's no reason
why we shouldn't explore that as one of the options as to how in fact we
get the message over. How we can..
HUMPHRYS: Is that legal?
BOATENG: Well that's why we are
exploring a rang of options and what we are seeking to do and Keith Halliwell,
Mo Mowlam, working across government are working with us in the Home Office,
with the Department of Health, with the DETR, with the Foreign Office because
also we have to use the criminal intelligence at our disposal, working
in co-operation with allies. I was last year with the Director of the FBI
and one of the things that we were discussing then and indeed my colleague
Charles Clarke has discussed since with the Americans and our international
partners in Moscow is how we better co-ordinate our activities across international
boundaries...
HUMPHRYS: ..just stay with the
community thing..
BOATENG: ...in order to defeat
the drug traffickers at their source, very important.
HUMPHRYS: Sure. But stay with the
community idea for a moment which will intrigue a lot of people I imagine.
It will be in the interests of local people to say, look that guy is pushing
drugs and can we have our new youth club or something. I mean is that...
BOATENG: What we are seeking to
do is to be open to ideas and suggestions as to how we can mobilise a broad
coalition against those who come into our communities and peddle drugs.
The sort of experience that my constituents have, the constituents that
many MPs, not just in urban seats but in rural seats have of mums and young
children going out, bottom of a lift shaft, out in a park, their kids
picking up needles. We've got to mobilise the whole community and the drug
action teams, the focussed effort with the police, with the probation service,
with the prison service, with our international partners, with the Health
Service, that we are now applying to this is good news and it is right
that we should highlight it in the way that we do.
HUMPHRYS: There is already as I
understand it a drug section in this new Bill which means that - you touched
on it earlier - which means that if people are arrested for a whole series
of offences, almost anything, they can, if there is a suspicion that drugs
may have been involved in their actions, they can be tested for drug use.
Now it sounds fine but the problem with that is, is that what is then likely
to happen is that they will end up in jail and they will be - rather than
having bail for instance if they have been found using drugs - and they
will then be surrounded by guess who? - drug users. Not good for them.
BOATENG: First of all John, not
almost anything. When people are charged with acquisitive crimes and with
Class A offences it's right that they should be tested because what we
know is that if you get in early in terms of treatment, if you do actually
enable the magistrates when they...
HUMPHRYS: ..but they don't get
treated though, they go to jail and..
BOATENG: That isn't the case you
see because if you do enable magistrates when they are making decisions
about bail to say no we don't think it's best for you, either to go to
prison or back into your home where you are surrounded, potentially in
your home situation by a drug use, by an unhelpful environment, we think
it's a good idea that you should go to a probation hostel which specialises
in accessing treatment for drug abuse. Now, what we know that can do is
to reduce the likelihood for offending whilst on bail. What we also know
is that in our prisons now we have reduced by twenty-four per cent, now
that is a very considerable amount over the last three years the number
of positive tests for drugs.
HUMPHRYS: ..still an enormous amount
going on. I mean Jonathan Aitken I was reading, he said the prison he was
in smelt like the Casbah or something.
BOATENG: Well it isn't for Jonathan
Aitken to seek to make..
HUMPHRYS: Well he has this sort
of expert knowledge that neither you or I have been there.
BOATENG: Well it isn't for him
to seek to make penal policy...
HUMPHRYS: He's just telling it
like it, he's got experience, personal experience.
BOATENG: Well I also have. I also
have.
HUMPHRYS: Well I didn't think you've
been banged up have you - it's slightly different.
BOATENG: Let's put it this way
- I have a more varied experience of prisons than Jonathan Aitken because
I go into different ones every week and I speak to prisoners, I speak to
prison officers and they tell me what's happening. We are winning the
war on drugs in prison and we now have to go out and do that in the wider
community.
HUMPHRYS: Can I move to another
area and that's begging.
BOATENG: Yes.
HUMPHRYS: Sir John Stevens, Metropolitan
Police Commissioner, the new man in charge of the Met. Heck of a job he's
got. He talks about zero tolerance to sweep the beggars off the streets.
Now I seem to have heard this before.
BOATENG: What we know is that Chief
Constables, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, carry out the law. What
we also know is that it isn't for ministers to tell them how to do their
job when it comes to operational matters. I've got every confidence in
the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, every confidence too that our police
and the courts have adequate powers to deal with begging whether it is
of the passive or aggressive variety. But what I do have to say John is
that there is no reason for these people to beg. What they are engaged
in is a criminal act, is an act which all too often shows signs of organisation
and it's not on. It can't be accepted and the police are perfectly right
to explore every option in terms of ensuring that our streets are safe
for ordinary, decent law abiding people to go about their business.
HUMPHRYS: So the notion of zero
tolerance as you say it's up to him how he pursues it...
BOATENG: It's an entirely operational
matter for the police...
HUMPHRYS: Oh come on..... if a
police officer said, 'I'm going to do something very dramatic, a politician
is entitled to say - well he's got our support', so if he says, 'Zero
tolerance', you say - 'Go for it'?
BOATENG: John, the Metropolitan
Police Commissioner has got our one hundred per cent support and I have
no doubt that he will do the right thing by Londoners and by this particular
problem.
HUMPHRYS: But you see why I was
a wee bit sceptical about the notion of driving the, dare I say, 'Squeegy
merchants' as well as the beggars off the streets, that's precisely what
the Home Secretary told us a couple of years ago, you yourself talked about
travellers, the kind of travellers of whom you disapproved because of the
way they were going about things. 'This sort of anti social behaviour
is not to be tolerated. This government will not tolerate it.' Well what
we've actually seen since those comments were made is an increase in the
number of beggars so what's going to be different this time?
BOATENG: Well what you have seen
is concerted effort over the past two and a half years in government to
tackle the issue of homelessness, to tackle the issue of refugee and asylum
seeking..
HUMPHRYS: No, no, tackle specifically
the question of aggressive begging...
BOATENG: ..... so we're now in
a position in which nobody has an excuse to beg in this aggressive fashion
and the police have the powers in order to deal with it. If the police
John come back to us and tell us that they don't have sufficient powers
then of course we will look, because as a matter of criminal justice policy
this is an area of concern, we'll look at making sure that they do have
sufficient powers.
HUMPHRYS: What sort of powers?
BOATENG: But they have sufficient
powers and they haven't given us any indication that they need any more
assistance from government in tackling this problem...
HUMPHRYS: ...so in other words
it's simply that...
BOATENG: ...what we have got to
do is to back the police and the courts one hundred per cent when they
make it clear that this sort of conduct simply isn't tolerable. That's
what myself and the whole ministerial team in the Home Office and indeed
across government will do.
HUMPHRYS: One imagines that that's
what you have been doing for the last few years to...
BOATENG: ...and that is what we
will continue to do..
HUMPHRYS: ..but my point is that
the number of beggars as anybody can tell who walks around the streets
of London or many other big cities and indeed increasingly smaller towns
in England and Wales has actually been going up. So there has to be something
else doesn't there. It's not just good enough for you to say - the police
have got the powers - they've always had the powers...
BOATENG: One of the reasons for
that John is that there's an increase in the number of gypsies from Eastern
Europe on our streets who maintain that this is part of their traditional
lifestyle. Well if it is part of their traditional lifestyle it isn't
acceptable in this country and the police and the courts, backed up by
the government will bring that message home to them.
HUMPHRYS: Right, so you're telling
the police as well...
BOATENG: I'm supporting the police...
HUMPHRYS: You're supporting the
police and if they want to crack down on these asylum seekers from Romania
or whatever, you say - 'Good on you'?
BOATENG: I say the police can be
trusted to do their job and I support them one hundred per cent.
HUMPHRYS: Paul Boateng, than you
very much indeed.
BOATENG: My pleasure.
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