Public Disorder

Jack Straw Excerpts

Thursday 11th August 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I will certainly do that, and I was impressed, in the control room of the West Midlands police and emergency services yesterday, by how amateur photographers have been sending in footage to help the police to arrest those who are guilty. As has been said today, everyone has a responsibility. Media organisations, too, have a responsibility, and I hope that they will act on it.

[Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)]

No one disputes for a second the Prime Minister’s determination to meet what he describes as the first duty of Government to keep the streets safe, but does he not understand that his repetition of what amount to Treasury lines about police numbers and police budgets, and about prison numbers, sounds very complacent? I beg of him to recognise not only the reality that those cuts will lead to fewer police on the streets, but that he must reverse the softer sentencing plans of his Justice Secretary and stop the ludicrous plan that the Justice Secretary has to close prisons when there is patently now an urgent need for more prison places.

[The Prime Minister]

I do not accept what the right hon. Gentleman says about police numbers, and indeed neither do many chief constables. The chief constable of Thames Valley police said that

“what I haven’t done at all is reduce the number of officers who do the patrol functions, so the officers you see in vehicles, on foot, in uniform, on bicycles. We haven’t cut those numbers at all.”

Let me make this additional point to the right hon. Gentleman. One thing the past three days have demonstrated is that the Met, where we have 32,000 officers, actually could take the action to surge from 3,000 on the streets to 16,000 on the streets. I think that is a demonstration of using what you have to maximum effect.