David Winnick
Main Page: David Winnick (Labour - Walsall North)Department Debates - View all David Winnick's debates with the Cabinet Office
(12 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Prime Minister
The Government will certainly do that. I was in Birmingham yesterday and joined a meeting of community leaders from all religions, all creeds and all races, who came together to make sure that the communities did not respond inappropriately to the dreadful events that had happened. I pay tribute to the chief constable of West Midlands police, the leader of Birmingham city council and all the people who went out from that meeting and spoke to their communities to appeal for calm. The scenes that we all saw on our television screens last night of communities coming together in Birmingham to try to stop the violence was a model of how these things should be done.
Mr David Winnick (Walsall North) (Lab)
Bearing in mind what the Prime Minister has just said, what justification can there be in the west midlands for very experienced police officers who have served for 30 years or more being forced to retire against their wishes because of the cuts? Where there is no adequate police presence, as has unfortunately been the case once or twice in the past few days, does not the mob take over?
The Prime Minister
The hon. Gentleman is entirely right. When I was in Wolverhampton yesterday, I heard that the number of police officers was roughly doubling overnight compared with the previous night. I suspect that the same was happening in Walsall, West Bromwich and other parts of the west midlands. One lesson we must learn is that we need the ability to surge the number of police in our communities very rapidly when such problems arise. Let me say again that the police do a difficult and dangerous job on our behalf. They learn from experience. The police in our country are hugely experienced in dealing with difficult situations. They do not always get it right. We must praise them when they do get it right. Here, we must say that some of the tactics need to change, but we should not substitute our own judgment for theirs—that would not be a sensible approach.