Public Disorder

Alun Michael Excerpts

Thursday 11th August 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right that that was in the manifesto, and it is indeed in the coalition agreement. The coalition agreement, where the two parties take a different view, makes allowance for that, and I remain a strong supporter of that proposal.

[Alun Michael (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)]

As a member of the Home Affairs Committee, I am confident that our report will make a serious and significant contribution, but does not the Prime Minister accept that something more than that is needed? We need an in-depth, wide-ranging, full-time report, led by somebody with an authority and independence equivalent to that of Lord Scarman, and we need that quickly if the issues to which the Prime Minister has referred are to be fully explored.

[The Prime Minister]

Let me make a couple of points to the right hon. Gentleman, who I know served in the Home Office. First of all, sometimes the need for wider commissions of inquiry has come about because the House of Commons Select Committees could not get to the bottom of an issue; we are not even at that point yet. Secondly, these events are still continuing, so to start talking about what sort of inquiry there should be now is, I think, wrong. The third point that I would make is this: of course one should not jump to conclusions, but I think everyone is clear on the differences between what we have seen in the last three days and what we saw in 1981. This was not political protest, or a riot about protest or politics—it was common or garden thieving, robbing and looting, and we do not need an inquiry to tell us that.