Public Disorder

Lord Cryer Excerpts

Thursday 11th August 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

We must always back the police when they do the right thing. Much has been said about the police, police tactics and so on. Every year I attend—I know the leader of the Labour party also goes—the police bravery awards. There one sees police officers who have done extraordinary things—confronting people with guns and knives when they do not even have any body armour. So let it be on the record in the House that individual officers do incredibly brave things every day, and we praise them for it.

[John Cryer (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)]

It actually took four nights, not two nights, to put 16,000 police officers on the streets of London. That put businesses and people in danger, including my constituents. So far I have not heard a convincing explanation as to why that took so long. Can the Prime Minister give one?

[The Prime Minister]

In the end, the deployment and the numbers are an issue for the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, and that is a question that he will have to answer. It was a different situation Sunday night to Monday night to Tuesday night. We must look at that in finding the answer. The point that I was making is that it is possible to surge. The police demonstrated that that was possible, but we needed to surge more quickly.