The Riots

Keith Vaz Excerpts

Thursday 13th October 2011 Westminster Hall

[Gavin Barwell]

Those are all factors. We could also look at family breakdown, and particularly a lack of male role models across the piece. As I said, the CSJ report has compelling analysis about what leads people to get involved. I look forward to the Government’s statement, which, the Minister may confirm, should be made in a couple of weeks’ time, on how they intend to respond.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

I, too, congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing the debate. I commend the role that he and my right hon. Friend the Member for Croydon North (Malcolm Wicks) played during the disorder. As he knows, the Home Affairs Committee is conducting an inquiry and is coming to Croydon on 21 October. Has he had an opportunity to look at the evidence that Bill Bratton and the new Metropolitan Police Commissioner gave to the Select Committee on Tuesday, when there was a comparison between gang culture in this country and in the United States? Does the hon. Gentleman think that that could be helpful, as we try to fashion an acceptable way of dealing with the problem?

[Gavin Barwell]

I am grateful to the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee. I have not had a chance to see that evidence. When I leave the Chamber, I will look at it. It is important to look at what has been achieved elsewhere in the UK and abroad to deal with these problems. I will now try to make a bit of progress, because I want to allow all the hon. Members here to contribute to the debate.

The second lesson is one that the Secretary of State for Justice has set out clearly: it is about changing how our prisons operate in order to tackle the issue of reoffending. Clearly, many of the people who were involved in these disturbances had been through our prison system, and it did not do anything to change their pattern of behaviour.

On the police response, the briefing that all London Members have received from the Metropolitan police tells us that there were 3,380 officers on duty on the Saturday, 4,275 on duty on the Sunday, 6,000 on the Monday when the disturbances in Croydon took place, and 16,000 on the Tuesday. It then, with commendable honesty, states:

“Were adequate resources deployed”

over the weekend and on the Monday?

“With the benefit of hindsight the answer would have to be no.”

I think that all hon. Members who represent London constituencies would share that judgment.

The third lesson for the Government is clearly that police numbers matter. Yes, the police cannot be exempt from the need to save money to deal with the deficit that we have inherited. Yes, we can do much, much more to ensure that more police officers spend their time actively and visibly on patrol on our streets. At the end of last year, however, the Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice said:

“I don’t think anyone…would make a simple link between the increase in the numbers of police officers and what has happened to crime. There is no such link.”

When the riots broke out, the response of the Government and the police was a two-and-a-half-fold increase in the number of police officers on the streets—and it worked. The Government are right to say that numbers are not the only game in town, but they are clearly an important part of it.

The performance of the police from Tuesday 9 August onwards was significantly better. I had the pleasure—on the Tuesday, when the Mayor of London came to Croydon—to meet the person who is now the new Metropolitan Police Commissioner, and was enormously impressed with a pep talk that I overheard him give to a number of officers who went through a very difficult time the night before. A much more robust approach from the police, in terms of breaking up groups of people who were attempting to form, is what prevented further disturbances from happening. It has also been enormously important to see police officers proactively going out, knocking down doors and arresting suspects in the early hours of the morning. It is important that the people involved in the disturbances do not feel, and their friends and neighbours do not feel, that they won—that they beat the police. The robust approach that we have seen since then is important.