Public Disorder

Keith Vaz Excerpts

Thursday 11th August 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

First, let me say to my hon. Friend that the police have access to baton rounds and they can make the decision to use them—in London, they came quite close to making that decision. That must be an operational decision for the police. The very strong advice from the police is that because, on the whole, they were not dealing with very large crowds, but with very mobile crowds who were intent on criminal behaviour, water cannon would not have been appropriate. That is the police view. The point that I have made is that we should be ready for every possible contingency in future, so we should know how we would answer future questions. That is why water cannon are now available at 24 hours’ notice.

However, I do not agree with my hon. Friend in that I think that the greatest possible deterrent to the lawlessness that we saw is for people to know that, if they do that looting and violence, they will be pulled out of the crowd, arrested immediately and be in front of a court that night. That is the answer. The key to that is more police on the streets so that they are able to be more robust in their interventions.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

I welcome all the steps that the Prime Minister has taken since the start of the disorders and join him and others in condemning the criminality and praising the police. Like him, I was out on the streets of London yesterday, and the key issue was police visibility. Is the Prime Minister saying that, if a police force has to dip into contingencies to pay for what has happened in the past few days, the Government will reimburse all the money?