Public Disorder

Toby Perkins Excerpts

Thursday 11th August 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

We have been clear in encouraging those who are making decisions about charging and, indeed, those who will make sentencing decisions in the courts to consider these crimes in the context of the circumstances. My hon. Friend refers to the fact that no one has been charged with the very specific offence of riot. The police and the Crown Prosecution Service are making the right charging decisions, in the context of ensuring that they recognise the impact that people being on the streets can have.

No one doubts that the violence that we have seen over the past five days is a symptom of something very deeply wrong with our society. Children celebrated as they smashed their way into shops. Men in sports cars arrived at stores to steal goods. Women tried on trainers before they stole them. A teaching assistant was caught looting. Thugs pretended to help a injured young man but robbed him. They are shocking images, but they are in fact symbols of a deeper malaise in our society.

Almost 2 million children are brought up in households in which no one works. One in three children leaves primary school unable to read, write and add up properly. We have the highest level of drug abuse in Europe. Almost 100 knife crimes are committed every day and nearly 1 million violent crimes every year. Half of all prisoners reoffend within a year of their release from prison. Those are serious social problems, and we cannot go on ignoring them. No one is pretending that there are easy answers to such deep-rooted problems, but they are the reasons why the reform of welfare, schools and the criminal justice system cannot wait.

[Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

The right hon. Lady lays out the context of the difficult role that faces our police. In that context, is it not bizarre that the Government should choose to make such swingeing cuts to the Home Office budget and particularly to the police budget, in comparison with other budgets that have survived relatively intact? Why does she not fight her corner and ensure that we have enough police on the streets to do the job?

[Mrs May]

I am clear that there will be enough police on the streets to do the job that we and the public want them to do, and that police officers want to do. I say to any other Opposition Member who wants to make a similar point that I listened to the previous statement and it is now absolutely clear that the Labour party has abandoned any pretence of having a credible policy to deal with the deficit.