Oral Answers to Questions

Stephen Lloyd Excerpts

Wednesday 27th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

First, let me say to my hon. Friend that I congratulate Gunner Lopresti on, and commend him for, the service he is giving to our country. We have been clear, in looking at the issue of Northern Ireland and the legacy there, that the current system is not working well for anyone. On that specific matter, we recognise that about 3,500 people were killed in the troubles, the vast majority of whom were murdered by terrorists. Many of those cases do require further investigation, including those relating to the deaths of hundreds of members of the security forces. That system does need to change, to provide better outcomes for victims and survivors of the troubles. But we are working on proposals across government to take those proposals forward and of course we are looking constantly to make sure that we can give maximum confidence to our brave servicemen and women, who, day in, day out put their lives on the line for us.

[Stephen Lloyd (Eastbourne) (Ind)]

Q7. We all know that policing has changed significantly over the past 50 years; we have seen that with cyber fraud and cyber-bullying, and the recent tragic increases in knife crime. On the way, the public have lost trust in politicians when it comes to policing. There is a way to restore that trust, Prime Minister: will you commit to setting up a police royal commission, so that facts and evidence, rather than political spin, prepare our police to properly tackle 21st century crime?

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to say that the nature of crime is changing—or we are seeing new types of crime being introduced. The police need to have the ability and resources to deal with those, and the understanding of how best to do so. I do not think we need a royal commission to do that; one of the things I did as Home Secretary was to set up the College of Policing, and one of the points of that college is to ensure that it is identifying new types of crime and identifying how best to deal with all types of crime, so that we have the confidence that our police are using the best tools available to them.