ConservativeHome's ToryDiary

Have the police earnt a big pay rise?

Former Shadow Home Secretary Ann Widdecombe has used her Daily Express column to suggest that the police must do more to merit a real pay rise.  She writes that the public, once likely to side wholeheartedly with the police, may be more mixed in their views today*:

"When we read of policemen like PC Chris Roberts, who died on duty on Boxing Day, we are angry both on his family’s behalf and the police’s behalf. But for every PC Roberts there are dozens of stories of the abandonment of the law-abiding by the police, of forces paralysed by political correctness and of a complete lack of any proportionality and common sense."

She then gives two examples of police failures to protect the law-abiding.  Read her column here.

The think tank Reform, which is thought to have made a significant contribution to the Conservative Party's plans on police reform, is also suspicious of the police's case.  Just before Christmas Reform republished the following graph from Sir Clive Booth's review of police pay.  It showed police pay rises outstripping both inflation and average pay rises in the public and private sectors:

Reform also questions whether police performance justifies extra remuneration:

"Evidence also suggests that police performance has not risen in line with pay increases.  Certain types of crime have certainly fallen since 1994, notably property crimes such as burglary and vehicle crime.  But much of this fall has been caused by private initiative.  For example, 63 per cent of main family cars now have an alarm, compared to 23 per cent in 1992 and 38 per cent in 1998.  This goes almost unnoticed in the political debate but will have put downwards pressure on crime.  Increased sentence lengths for burglars will also have had a positive effect.  But other types of crime, such as robberies and anti-social behaviour, have remained high.  This suggests that while a larger prison population and private spending has borne down on crime, the police have made much less of a contribution."

If Ann Widdecombe has her doubts they are not being shared publicly by her successor, David Davis.  This is the public line from his office:

"The Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, has shown disrespect, verging on contempt, for the police. She has cut its pay rise significantly in a cynical deal with the Chancellor – withholding the first three months’ increase.  The Police Federation is quite right to ask the Home Secretary to reconsider her behaviour.  This is no way to treat our police force. If we were running the Home Office, we would never have got into this position. A Conservative Government would have treated the police fairly, honestly and openly – and with the respect they deserve."

David Ruffley MP is now the shadow minister with the responsibility for progressing Nick Herbert's work on police reform.

* A recent YouGov survey found that the public appear to still be on the police's side: 58% said they were "inclined to disapprove" of Jacqui Smith's decision to phase in the police pay award.  22% were inclined to approve.

The unacceptable face of Islam in Britain

We linked to it yesterday - a post by MPACUK (the Muslim Public Affairs Committee UK) calling on its readers to "expose every last detail of the Sufis who tried to destroy their own community".  These Sufis have enraged MPACUK because they co-operated with Policy Exchange - "a pro Israel right wing, neoconservative think tank, which has gone out of its way to dig dirt on the Muslim community."

MPACUK writes:

"If you know who they are – please write in and we will expose these men and women for all the Muslim community to see."

Matt Sinclair has fisked the MPACUK article and concludes with this:

"This is a direct attempt to recreate the murder of Theo van Gogh. These people are not just wrong and ignorant. They're dangerous. Their nasty work threatens brave people with death. Of course, it isn't our job to enforce the law upon them if they have broken it by inciting violence."

We don't know if there is anything the police can or should do about organisations like MPACUK, but we have to hope someone is keeping an eye on them.  Their inflammatory post must certainly endanger "the Sufis who tried to destroy their own community".  Their post is clearly not the work of a responsible organisation.

Another day, another Labour scandal?

This txt msg arrived a little while ago at my Washington breakfast table.  No time to blog on it (off to Arlington Cemetery for David Cameron's first public call) but The Telegraph has the full story.  It appears that Straw knew about the issue for weeks, not years:

"Hundreds of criminals, including those accused of sexual offences, have avoided prosecution after a "cover-up" in magistrates' courts, The Daily Telegraph can disclose.  Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, is to admit that over a period of "many years" hundreds of cases never came to court because warrants were not issued for the arrests of defendants when they failed to show up at court.  It means that the offenders got away with their crimes. Mr Straw has known about the cases, which initially involved Leeds magistrates' court but are suspected could go much wider, for some weeks."

Away from the Labour meltdown, Gove and Herbert are building the case for a Conservative government

The Labour meltdown means that I have been neglecting to adequately cover significant Tory announcements.  There was last week's education announcements from Michael Gove and I recommend this webcameron video for a summary of those (there are also these Platform essays from Reform and Policy Exchange).  There was also Monday's announcement on prison reform by Shadow Secretary of State for Justice Nick Herbert.

There's a new campaign page at conservatives.com that summarises Mr Herbert's approach to prisons.  Here are the bullet points:

• Conservatives would scrap the disastrous early release scheme, and build emergency prison places.
• Double the sentencing powers of magistrates to 12 months and repeal any new restrictions on their ability to hand down suspended sentences.
• Introduce honesty in sentencing so that convicted criminals serve a minimum sentence handed down to them by the judge.
• Ensure sufficient prison capacity to hold all those sentenced by the courts – and reform prison regimes to break the cycle of re-offending.

Tories to review rape laws

5pm update: CWO Chairman introduced Cameron by saying she admired the challenge he put to Brown at conference to call an election, and that "If you have the women on your side you really can't go wrong!". Cameron then said that he had great diet advice: make a speech that everyone tells you is the most important one of your life, and don't use notes. He said he was advised to "ride the dip" during the summer's problems and that sometimes it felt like a journey to the centre of the Earth!

The audience was shocked by his recounting of the sad story of Lindsay Armstrong, and murmured strong approval when he cited the fact that half of young men believe there are times when forced sex is okay as an example of moral collapse. The hall was packed with over 700 women. In addition to David Cameron's end-of-day speech speakers included William Hague on human rights and Sir Christopher Meyer being interviewed by Iain Dale.

1.30pm: Read PDF of Cameron's full CWO speech.

At 5.7% of all cases reported to the police, Britain has the lowest conviction rates for rape in Europe, according to research by the Conservatives.

The research will be unveiled later today by David Cameron when he addresses the Conservative Women's Organisation in a speech he will deliver at the QEII Conference Centre in London.  Amber Rudd, our Hastings and Rye candidate, will be writing a report on the conference for ConservativeHome in the next day or two.

The Conservative leader will note studies that "have shown that as many as one in two young men believe there are some circumstances when it's okay to force a woman to have sex."  "To my mind," he will say, "this is an example of moral collapse."

The speech is covered throughout the newspapers but is splashed in the Daily Mail.  In addition to calling for cultural change to address "over-sexualisation" of British society, Mr Cameron will argue that consent should be taught as a central feature of sex education in schools.  In a further sign of his growing importance to the Tory leader, Nick Herbert, Shadow Secretary of State for Justice will oversee a review of legislation on rape to ensure that punishments are "proportionate to the crime".

PS Last Friday The Daily Mail's Ben Brogan wondered if David Cameron would address the issue of abortion in his CWO speech.  In his blog post he said that the Prime Minister will probably "follow the science and stick with the status quo" on the abortion time limit.  Ben also said that Mr Brown "may hope for signs that the Conservative frontbench is out of synch with public opinion".  I fear that both of Ben's two points are very debateable:

1. The science on the abortion time limit is contested with the majority of MPs on the science and technology committee saying that the current time limit is right but two Tory MPs dissented from that majority.  Ben's own newspaper recently editorialised in favour of the dissenters.  There is international evidence that a foetus can survive outside of the womb before 24 weeks.
2. Ben's second point on public opinion is also contentious.  Recent evidence suggested that the public could be persuaded of tighter abortion laws: "81% supported a "compulsory cooling-off period between diagnosis of pregnancy and abortion."  68% supported "a substantial reduction in the upper time limit for abortion to around 13 weeks, bringing us into line with our European neighbours.""

Time to give Aitken a second chance

Predictably, the first word used by media outlets such as PA, BBC, ITV, the Observer, the Mail on Sunday, the Sunday Times in reporting that Jonathan Aitken had been appointed by the CSJ to look into prison reform, was "disgraced". Once the media have settled on your prefix it's nigh on impossible to shake it off.

It was seven years ago when Aitken walked out of Belmarsh with an electronic tag attached to him. He'd served seven months of an eighteen month sentence for calculated perjury. Since then he's spent his time reading Theology at Oxford, looking into prison reform and talking to Christain groups about his experience. A convicted bank robber, who became Aitken's best friend during his time in prison, said:

"We were expecting an arrogant ex-Tory minister who felt hard done-by and who was going to be a complete pain in the arse... but it was the opposite straight away. He was one of the chaps."

Aitken wrote about his prison experience in his second autobiography Porridge and Passion. He "rediscovered the Bible" and came out a humble man with a new perspective on life:

"To be humbled makes you look at every aspect of yourself. There is relief in being who I am. Nothing can embarrass me, as everyone knows everything about me."

The key thing here is partly what David Cameron is getting at when he talks about politicians' right to have private lives before they worked in the public square. Yes we should reserve the right to judge the character of our politicians when they have an extra-marital affair, receive undeclared payments, and anything that causes us to question their trustworthiness. But if it is clear they are genuinely reformed characters then they should be given a second chance. George W Bush did all sorts of things in his youth but when he became a Christian the American people not only accepted the new man he'd become, but saw him as a regular guy in a way that isn't normally possible for a President's son.

"The sad futility of making the unacceptable illegal"

Within yesterday's Queen's Speech there is a promise of a Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill that will attempt to criminalise the incitement of hatred towards homosexuals. 

In yesterday's debate on the Government's legislative programme, responding to an intervention from Labour's Chris Bryant, David Cameron promised to "table an amendment to make sure that any such approach is about stopping people inciting violence and is not an infringement of free speech."  The Conservative leader said more in last weekend's Observer in an exchange with Henry Porter about civil liberties:

"Threatening actions, or words that incite violence, are generally outlawed, and that is surely right. But the big difference between me and Labour is that I don't think legislation is the answer to every problem. When I criticise some rap artists, or some companies for that matter, for things they do that I think are against the public interest but that don't incite violence, that doesn't mean I want to legislate against them. This is a crucial part of my political philosophy and my belief in social responsibility. As Burke said, politicians should know when to give a leaning, and when to give a law. From this government, it seems, all we ever get are laws. That's the road to an authoritarian state and I reject it."

There are worries within Britain's churches, in particular, that any laws might restrict the freedom of Christians to say that, from their interpretation of the Bible, homosexual acts are sinful.  The Christian Institute has produced a briefing setting out its concerns.

Matthew Parris has already raised doubts about the need for legislation.  He recently wrote: We gays are not so weedy that we can’t take insults.   Rowan Atkinson has joined the argument today.  Atkinson, of Blackadder and Mr Bean fame, was one of the comedians who led opposition to the Government's attempt to legislate against incitement to religious hatred.  In a letter to today's Times he writes:

"This “tick the box if you’d like a law to stop people being rude about you” is one way of filling the legislative programme, but there are serious implications for freedom of speech, humour and creative expression.  The devil, as always, will be in the detail, but the casual ease with which some people move from finding something offensive to wishing to declare it criminal — and are then able to find factions within government to aid their ambitions — is truly depressing."

Handling the issue for the Conservatives will be our new Justice team.  That includes Nick Herbert and David Burrowes.  Nick is gay and David is an evangelical Christian.  Between them we can hope that they will produce a response that protects gay people from hateful violence but also protects the freedom of Christians to follow traditional biblical teaching as they see it.

Thoughts on next steps for 'core vote' issues...

A little earlier I posted a few thoughts on 'next steps for modernisation'.  I urged the party to keep emphasising its commitment to the public services; adopt a more achievable environmentalism; embrace the social and international justice reports of IDS and Peter Lilley; defend the rights of adult gay people; recruit genuinely diverse candidates; and adopt a moderate tone.  This site has always stood for 'the politics of and' - a fusion of traditional and modern concerns - and whilst we welcome the recent rebalancing it is vital that it does not become a retreat into core vote territory.

It's also necessary that as we think about core vote issues again - tax, crime, immigration, Europe - we do so in an intelligent way.

I have just learnt that The Sun dropped more than 100,000 sales on Monday when it launched its EU referendum campaign.  That's a big drop for a newspaper in the middle of a circulation campaign.  Although 65,000 people have signed The Sun's referendum petition I'm far from convinced it's the most important core vote issue.  Last month's ConservativeHome survey of Conservative members suggested that you agree.

Only 3% thought Europe was likely to be the most decisive issue at General Election.  Nearly four times as many thought immigration would be issue number one (hence the importance of today's Mail splash) and 26% put crime as issue one.  I hope that the rebalancing will see a focus on crime and immigration - not Europe.  I'm only talking electoral strategy here - not about what necessarily matters most in reality.

The other important ingredient for a successful rebalancing is that we approach the issues in a different way and I have 100% confidence in David Cameron's ability to achieve this.  His approach to crime, for example, isn't just longer, tougher sentences.  There are also lots of ideas to help young people off the conveyor belt to crime.  And, on immigration, there's a more sensitive language and we've got rid of the ugly cap on asylum numbers that we had at the last election.

'Duracell Dave' should campaign on crime and the NHS

Remember this edition of The Guardian from February?  That was when all of the newspapers were in a herd-like rush to say that Brown couldn't beat Cameron.  Seven months later and we wake up to a very different Guardian splash...

The Guardian/ ICM poll shows that Labour has re-established a lead in all of 'the battleground issues'.   Its smallest lead over the Tories is 1% (on asylum and immigration); its biggest lead is 25% (on overall economic management).

A Populus survey for The Times (of just 504 voters on Monday) finds that the Brown-Darling lead over Cameron-Osborne has actually grown since the beginning of the Northern Rock bank run.  Labour had a 61% to 27% advantage before the 'crisis' but a 56% to 18% lead now.  Labour's standing has fallen but Cameron-Osborne have fallen further.  A leader in The Times describes the Conservative response to the banking saga as "intellectually lamentable and politically misjudged".

Last night's ToryDiary thread - below the news of Labour's 8% lead - had the smell of defeat about it.  It was more depressing than the poll itself.  Let's get things into a little more perspective.  Here are a few thoughts:

• The two Guardian frontpages show that things can change.  Brown had been written off but he's now - apparently - unbeatable.  The media over-interpret most things and I don't think Brown can take the next General Election for granted.  Even the biggest critics of Cameron should at least put some hope in events!
• Last week I predicted that Labour's lead would widen a little.  We had dominated the headlines in the second half of August and Labour had had the better of the news cycle since.  Labour's lead - according to ICM - has grown from 5% to 8% as a result.  Disappointing but not a seismic shift to Labour.
• Things might get a little worse yet.  We're in the Conference season which always distorts opinion polls.  The LibDems will get a boost after their Conference.  Labour will get a boost after theirs - particularly if Brown finally makes some big policy announcements that have so far been missing from his 'change agenda'.  The polls during the weekend that Conservatives gather in Blackpool might be particularly depressing but we must hold our nerve and wait for real public opinion to become clear towards the end of October.
• Some of you might fairly comment that we might not have until then.  Brown might have called an election before the end of October.  A unnamed Cabinet minister told Telegraph.co.uk that there was anything between a 30/70 to 40/60 chance of it happening.  He/ she might be behaving mischievously but, on balance, I still expect an autumn poll (and have done since the new year).  I have bet lunch with Ben Brogan that there will be one although I hope he's right and I'm wrong.  The critical thing is that CCHQ and all candidates are ready to campaign like they have never campaigned before should Brown blow the starting whistle.
• In terms of campaigning I suggest two main themes: crime and the NHS.  When David Cameron campaigned on crime and social breakdown in the second half of August we won excellent coverage and the polls tightened.  The big theme of the Blackpool Conference should be crime.  Crime - more than any other issue - is where David Cameron has perfectly blended a traditionalist approach (more prisons, honest sentences, no early release, scrap the Human Rights Act, stricter classification of cannabis...) with his progressive conservatism (ending educational failure, fixing the family, more drug rehab, more support for social entrepreneurs...).
• The NHS should also be bigged up.  Too many voters fear the Conservative leader is too much of a PR guy.  David Cameron is genuinely committed to the NHS and it shows.  Let's have more of that passion and commitment.
• Finally there is the issue of 'Duracell Dave'.  Our leader has hardly stopped over the last month.  He couldn't have worked harder over the last few weeks.  He's given speeches, announced new policies, been interviewed on every platform from This Morning to Today to The Telegraph website.  Jonathan Freedland makes the Mike Smithson point this morning that the more David Cameron is in the media the better the Tories do.  Despite this morning's poll I think there's a lot of truth to that.  David Cameron has given 110% in recent times.  Other members of the frontbench now need to do much more, too.  We need more Chris Graylings and where is Caroline Spelman?  Can anyone remember her doing anything since becoming Chairman?

And - please everyone - let's not have another Chicken Licken thread.  Is it too much to ask to try and have a positive, constructive discussion?

MORI: Lab 41, Con 36, LD 16

Going on the attack on crime gave the Conservatives some of the best headlines they've had in a long time, and no wonder.

Today's MORI poll for the Sun (click graphic to enlarge) continues the trend of law and order coming out as the most important issue for voters, and again the next biggest issue is shown to be race relations and immigration. Also see the recent ConservativeHome editorial on fighting the election on crime, and Jeff Randall's piece on the rise in the violent crime.

The poll gives Labour a 5% lead over the Conservatives, the same margin as three weeks ago but with higher shares due to a drop in the high percentage of "others". Brown's personal ratings are at 43%, 8% ahead of the government in general and 14% ahead of Cameron.

Deputy Editor

Cameron enjoys best ever headlines but row over green taxation looms

The above clippings from the three newspapers that have traditionally been vital components of a winning Tory coalition will be very welcome to the embattled Team Cameron.  Communications director Andy Coulson has helped the leadership to finally craft a message that resonates with the Conservative Party's natural supporters whilst still speaking to the wider nation's anxieties about crime and social breakdown.

The news pages' reaction to yesterday's announcements on crime are followed up with very positive leader commentary, too...

The Sun: "David Cameron starts by promising to restore honesty to sentencing. He wants to end the farcical situation which lets murderers and rapists free after a term which might once have been served for burglary.  He promises more powers for magistrates to clear courtroom backlogs.  And until more jails are built, he backs The Sun’s campaign for prison ships and converted army camps... It’s hard to see how anyone would disagree with these ideas — or why they haven’t been implemented already."

Daily Mail: "Not for the first time, David Cameron's Tories have proved themselves capable of serious thought about the causes of Britain's problems and their solutions.  They showed it when Iain Duncan Smith published his plans to support marriage. And again when John Redwood unveiled his proposals to boost competitiveness and ease taxes on hard-pressed families.  Now they've demonstrated it a third time with their mini-manifesto on tackling what they correctly identify as Britain's 'crime crisis' - whose very existence Labour refuses to acknowledge."

Telegraph: "Central to the policy is its all-encompassing approach and a deliberate avoidance of quick-fix solutions. Some things - more vigorous policing, tougher sentencing - can be tackled swiftly; others - indiscipline in schools, family breakdown, the deleterious effects of welfare dependency - will take years.  Refreshingly, Mr Cameron also shows he is prepared to take on the arbiters of popular culture by targeting violent computer games and music that glorifies thuggery. We face a colossal challenge. The Tory leader shows that he has a sure grasp of what needs to be done."

We are beginning to see the contours of a Conservative election campaign - should the currently strangely quiet new Prime Minister decide to go to the country:

• A major emphasis on crime and social breakdown;
• A very personal campaign by David Cameron to reverse NHS closures;
• Cuts in family and inheritance taxation paid for by green taxation.

The green taxation element is the big problem in this manifesto.  I don't think the public will buy it.  All of the good work of the last few days could be undone by the Gummer-Goldsmith report if the leadership fail to handle it properly.  Nick Ferrari monstered the air travel proposals when I discussed them with him on LBC this morning.  If the crime initiative is Cameron's best hope of killing the Brown bounce, the G-G green report could break the Tory coalition apart again.

Fighting back Tories announce multi-dimensional programme to tackle crime

I've just returned from a press conference given by David Davis, David Cameron and Nick Herbert.  At the event they launched a booklet summarising 'How a Conservative Government will tackle Britain's crime crisis'.  Here are the main measures included in the booklet:

'STOPPING THE CRIMINAL INDIVIDUAL'

• The 40 question stop form will be abolished in order to encourage effective neighbourhood policing.
• Extend stop and search in order to tackle carrying of knives, guns and other offensive weapons.
• Scrap targets so that the police can spend more time on the beat.  David Davis told the press conference that a 25% cut in police bureaucracy could double police time on the streets and deliver the beginnings of New York-style policing in Britain.  David Ruffley MP has been put in charge of finding ways of cutting this bureaucracy.
• Workplace reform for the police with a Sandhurst-type focus on training and leadership for talented individuals.
• New guidance to encourage judges and magistrates to remove anti-social offenders' driving licenses.
• Emergency capacity must be found within the prison estate so that the early release scheme can be scrapped.

Davis blasts Labour on gun crime

Shadow Home Secretary David Davis has penned a short article for today's News of the World entitled 'Act Tough And Beat This Evil' (click on the scan to enlarge and read).

The same messages are contained in an open letter he has just despatched to the Home Secretary:

"It is simply not good enough for the Government to say that gun crime is falling when on their own figures gun-related violence is up more than four-fold since 1998. If you don't count the figures properly how can you correct the problem?

We are long past the time that the Government should have introduced a number of practical measures to tackle the scourge of gun-crime. Including Conservative proposals for a dedicated border police force to help stop trafficking in guns and drugs; better controls of internet sales of guns from abroad into the UK, with proper screening of all incoming packages; and more clear-sighted leadership on drugs policy ranging from the proper provision of residential rehab places through to effective enforcement of tough penalties.

This must be in addition to getting our police out on the streets to uphold the law and crack down on gang culture.

These are the immediate overdue actions. In the longer term it is absolutely essential that the Government get a grip on the fundamental causes of these crimes - the breakdown of parts of our society through the loss of stable family life, discipline in schools and the collapse of order on the streets."

The Conservatives really are rising to the occasion at the moment.  David Cameron anticipated the public mood with his speech on Wednesday and Iain Duncan Smith's article for Friday's Daily Mail (welcomed here by Platform 10's Fiona Melville) showed the extent to which he is a thought-leader in this whole area.

5pm update: I missed this important article by Michael Howard in The Sunday Telegraph.

Labour get back into bed with Muslim extremists

Gordon Brown talks tough on terror but, as always with the Brown-Blair years, the actions are very different.

Last year Ruth Kelly - to her credit - broke off relations with the Muslim Council of Britain.  She criticised the MCB's boycott of Holocaust Memorial Day.  The MCB's extremism has been well-documented by the New Statesman's Martin Bright and by our own Michael Gove in Celsius 7/7.  Yesterday, as revealed by The Spectator's Coffee House blog, Hazel Blears has u-turned on Mrs Kelly's policy and appears to have restarted engagement with the MCB.

It is encouraging to see our frontbench pursuing the Government vigorously on this issue.  Paul Goodman MP, Shadow Communities Minister, has written to Hazel Blears demanding an explanation:

"As you know, Ruth Kelly announced last year in a major speech "a fundamental rebalancing of our relationship with Muslim organisations from now on".  She continued: "In future, I am clear that our strategy of funding and engagement must shift significantly towards those organisations that are taking a proactive leadership role in tackling extremism and defending our shared values.". She said that it was "not good enough" to pay lip service to combatiing extremism.

The speech was briefed by the Government as signallling the end of its engagement with the MCB as a partner in preventing extremism.  Indeed, Ms Kelly specifically criticised the MCB's boycott of Holocaust Memorial Day, as follows: "I can't help wondering why those in leadership positions who say they want to achieve religious tolerance and a cohesive society would choose to boycott an event which marks, above all, our common humanity and respect for each other."

Yesterday, your Department conspicuously failed to deny that the Government has once again engaged the MCB as a partner.  This is a significant policy U-turn.  I write to ask what's changed in less than a year.  On what basis do you believe that the MCB is now proactively tackling extremism?  Does it plan, for example, to attend Holocaust Memorial Day?"

This re-engagement with the MCB follows Gordon Brown's failure to act against Hizb ut-Tahrir.

On a not unrelated matter ConservativeHome has given space to Michael Ancram to make the case for talking to Hamas.  I greatly respect Michael Ancram but I think he's profoundly wrong on this issue.  Hamas must moderate considerably before they can be allowed at the negotiating table.  Again on the indispensable Coffee House blog, James Forsyth highlights the following quote from the representative of Hamas that Mr Ancram has met:

“The final goal of the resistance is to wipe that entity [Israel] off the face of the earth. This goal necessitates the development of the resistance until the entity has been destroyed.”

Fight the election on crime, Mr Cameron

Earlier today I noted an important interview that David Cameron gave to the Yorkshire Post.  In that interview he promised to emphasise social breakdown in a likely autumn General Election.  Although the party must have strong and coherent policies on economic issues I think Mr Cameron may be judging things about right.  It's not quite a Jamie Bulger moment but last night's tragic shooting of Rhys Jones is a terrible confirmation of how rotten much of British society is becoming.  The accounts of Rhys' mum cradling her eleven-year-old son as he lay dying is truly horrifying.

In his excellent speech yesterday David Cameron set out a three dimensional approach to fighting social disorder.  He promised action to improve the criminal justice system by giving more power to magistrates.  He undertook to free the police from the bureaucracy that means that they're off the beat for 80% of the time.  And, vitally, he promises to rebuild the social structures that help young people to escape from the conveyor belt to crime.  In the last two areas he has been given a very strong set of policy options by Nick Herbert and Iain Duncan Smith.  Nick's police reform agenda and IDS' 'Breakthrough Britain' report mean that the Conservative Party can offer Britain a thought-through approach to turning the tide on crime and anti-social behaviour.

It's also good to see David Davis running hard on all of these issues.  Writing for tonight's Evening Standard he holds the Government responsible for the offensive Chindamo decision.  Extracts are printed below this editorial.

The Conservative approach to these questions is David Cameron's greatest achievement as Tory leader.  There's still the familar Conservative commitment to punish serious and repeat offenders.  There's still belief in the Michael Howard doctrine that 'prison works'.  There are new and welcome policies to scrap the Human Rights Act.  David Davis is certainly the right man to convince core Tory voters that the party will be tough on crime.  But alongside the familar policies there is a commitment to be tough on those infamous causes of crime which have only become more powerful in the Brown-Blair years.  Tory action against drug and alcohol addiction, measures to help families stay together and support for the social enterprise sector give the party a strong anti-crime agenda.  These should be the issues that now stand at the heart of David Cameron's bid to be Britain's next Prime Minister.

'Anarchy in the UK'

David Cameron is about to give a speech on the "anarchy" of youth crime from a community centre in Darwen, Lancashire. He told GMTV today that the government's approach was one-dimensional, saying that there needs to be focus not just on criminal justice but on:

• reforming police bureaucracy - "free up police from targets and paperwork and make them accountable to the local community"
• strengthening families and communities -  "in the end it is stable homes - good values taught in the home- that is the best way to tackle crime in the long term".

Cameron will also advocate giving more sentencing power to magistrates.

Update: You can download a Word doc of the full speech here (and pdf here). One of the stand-out lines was a very appropriate quote from Sir Robert Peel (the Conservative Home Secretary and PM who created the police as we know it):

"The test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with it."

In the Q&A afterwards Conservatives from the region asked about banning outside drinking, fear on the streets, bringing the concept of shame back into society, and how political correctness affects apprenticeships. Cameron has now headed off to the local police station.

Deputy Editor

4.30pm update: I've just read the speech and think these lines are spot on:

"We need to make men realise that having children is an 18-year commitment – not a one-night stand.

We need to make mothers realise that it’s work, not welfare, that offers their family the best future.

We need to help couples stay together, not drive them apart with the tax and benefits system.

And we need to make society as a whole – that’s you and me – realise that we all have duties to our neighbours."

Cameron repeats call to scrap Human Rights Act

The Press Association is reporting that the Conservative leader has repeated his call for the Human Rights Act to be scrapped and replaced with a British Bill of Rights.  Interviewed by BBC radio in the West Midlands he accused Labour of being "blind" to the HRA's failings.  Speaking after yesterday's news that the HRA would prevent Learco Chindamo, the killer of headmaster Philip Lawrence, from being deported, Mr Cameron said:

"The fact that the Human Rights Act means he cannot be deported flies in the face of common sense.  It is a shining example of what is going wrong in our country. He is someone who has been found guilty of murder and should be deported back to his country... what about the rights of Mrs Lawrence or the victim?"

The Government has decided to appeal against the Chindamo verdict.

Open Europe Director Neil O'Brien has warned that EU plans for harmonisation of justice will only increase the extent of public powerlessness over justice issues: 

“This ruling is the thin end of a very long wedge.  Harmonisation of justice and home affairs laws will throw up more and more cases in which politicians are powerless to act in cases where most of the public expect them to.  The Government tend to dismiss concerns about harmonisation of justice and home affairs law as ‘scaremongering’.  But the reality is that there really is a tension between the development of EU criminal law and the public’s desire for accountability in this area.  While majority voting and harmonisation might be appropriate for product standards in the single market, they are inappropriate in home affairs and criminal law.  The Government appears to be in denial about what they have signed up to.  The next phase of harmonisation under the constitutional treaty would take justice and policing further out of the control of ordinary voters.  It would mean more power for EU judges who cannot be held accountable to anyone.”

Is Britain policing or appeasing Islamic extremism?

That's effectively the question being asked by Paul Goodman MP.  Paul will take part in a Policy Exchange seminar this lunchtime that will discuss the recent decision of the West Midlands police to refer Channel 4 to Ofcom.  The West Midlands police made the decision after they had decided not to prosecute a number of Muslims featured in a Dispatches programme entitled 'Undercover Mosque', broadcast earlier this year (Google video).  The programme uncovered a number of quotations including:

“No-one loves the kuffaar, no-one loves the kuffaar, not a single person here from the Muslims loves the kuffaar, whether those kuffaar are from the UK or the US. We love the people of Islam and we hate the people of kufr, we hate the kuffaar.”

“Whoever changes his religion from Islam to anything else – kill him in the Islamic state.”

“Do you practise homosexuality with men?  Take that homosexual man and throw him off the mountain.”

“I don’t agree with those individuals [the 7/7 bombers], but at the same time they are closer to me than those criminals of the kufr.”

“He’s better than a million George Bushes, Osama Bin Laden, and he’s better than a thousand Tony Blairs, because he’s a Muslim.”

The West Midlands police decided that these quotations may have been taken out of context and decided that no action should be taken against those who made them.  That decision will seem extraordinary to some but more extraordinary was the decision of the police and CPS to refer the programme makers to Ofcom on the grounds that they may have stirred up racial hatred.

In a letter to the Home Secretary Paul Goodman seeks to highlight the danger that in behaving in this way our police and law enforcement agencies are choosing to deal with extremist voices by effectively appeasing them.  Mr Goodman's letter (which is attached here_as_a_pdf) concludes with these words:

"This referral is likely to encourage extremists, discourage moderates (including those who appeared on the programme), damage public confidence in the CPS and West Midlands Police, compromise media freedom and undermine the Government's stated community cohesion policy.  As you know, Ruth Kelly, the former Communities Secretary, said last year that "our strategy of funding and engagement must shift significantly towards those organisations that are taking a proactive leadership role in tackling extremism and defending our shared values. It is only by defending our values that we will prevent extremists radicalising future generations of terrorists."

Davis and Herbert attack Labour for prisons crisis

New Shadow Secretary of State for Justice Nick Herbert has linked the sharp increase in the number of prison suicides to the problem of prison overcrowding:

"These are deeply troubling figures and there must be a real fear that the increase in suicides is linked to overcrowding.  The Government's failure to plan for sufficient prison capacity doesn't just compromise public safety - it also has a human cost."

The "public safety" consequences of the failure to build more prison places has been highlighted in another statement from CCHQ - but from Shadow Home Secretary David Davis:

“The Government need to realise that not building extra places is a false economy. Non-custodial sentences simply fail to punish or rehabilitate. The Government’s flagship ISSP programme has a youth re-offending rate of 91 per cent. As for tagging - which was extensively rolled out by Jack Straw when he was Home Secretary - the IT has a 15 per cent failure rate, offenders can breach curfews for 3 years without penalty and perverse targets mean breaches are ignored. In fact six murders and 1,000 violent crimes have been committed by those on tags.
 
Lack of custodial places not only means that offenders who should be in jail are not in jail. It also means that prisoners are released early or constantly moved around and not allowed to settle. Either way they do not receive effective and sustained rehabilitation and re-offending continues to increase under Labour. If you don’t address overcrowding you won’t improve rehabilitation rates. If you don’t improve rehabilitation, you won’t cut re-offending which makes up half of all crime. After ten years the government and Gordon Brown still don’t get this.”

'Crime and security' is set to be one of the Tories top four election issues - alongside the family, the NHS and the environment.  On crime it is vital that Brown's failure to fund prison building is blamed for the overcrowding and associated endangering of the public.

Double the number of prisoners to save £45bn

That's the proposition of David Davies MP, who is this week's Cornerstone blogger and an occasional police constable.

In a robust response to "the bleeding heart brigade", he argues that investing another £3bn on prison places could reap at least ten times that amount in revenue as a result of fewer crimes being committed:

"Another government report states that most crime is committed by a hard core of 100,000 criminals, of whom only 15,000 are in prison at any one time. Removing these career criminals would double the prison population and therefore double the cost of prison spending from the current spending level of £3billion to £6billion each year. However, by the Government’s own estimate, in return for this £3billion outlay we could expect crime rates to be halved saving the country between £30-£45 billion."

Deputy Editor

David Cameron's message to the Police Federation

In a speech to the Police Federation today, David Cameron sets out some of the key themes in his approach to restoring order to Britain's streets: social responsibility, 'tough-on-the-causes-of-hoodies', elected police chiefs and reform of police working practices.

Fighting crime isn't just the role of the police: "Crime, anti-social behaviour, disorder and incivility on our streets: these are the consequences of a breakdown in society – of a collapse in social responsibility.  In the home.  In schools.  In our culture and values.  And ultimately it is you, the police, who have the responsibility of picking up the pieces of our broken society.  But if we actually want to reduce crime - instead of just responding to it - we can’t go on just picking up the pieces.  We have to mend our broken society.  And that is not your responsibility.  We broke our society – all of us, as parents, as citizens, as members of society – we broke it, and we have a shared responsibility, with government, for fixing it.  If we sit back and expect the police to do all the work, we will forever be managing the social problem of crime, rather than solving it."

Hug-a-hoodie and all that: "A year ago I made a speech about young people and crime.  Yes, the one about hoodies.  It has been more misunderstood and more misrepresented than anything I’ve ever said.  In fact it was three words I never said.  So let me try again.  Aggressive hoodies who threaten the rest of us must be punished.  They need to know the difference between right and wrong, and it’s our job to tell them.  But what do we really want, a society where more and more kids are out of control, a rising tide of crime and punishment?  Or do we want those kids to behave properly in the first place? If we do, we’ve got to stop the problems before they start, and that means making sure every child grows up in a stable loving home.  That’s not soft – it’s serious.  Politicians who attack me for saying it, even though they privately agree with me, are not tough – they’re cynical, short-term and profoundly wrong."

Tagging isn't working

Grant Shapps MP has compiled a short report on the increasingly ineffective tagging scheme:

“Far from saving money, the fact that 1 in 9 of those wearing tags re-offends means that the social cost of the Home Detention Curfew programme is much higher than had originally been thought. It’s now very clear that the prison population crisis has led to thousands of additional crimes by prisoners who have been selected for electronic tagging and thereby released too early from prison."

Parliamentary Questions revealed that the reoffending rate of "taggers" has quadrupled in the last five years, with 4000 offences being committed by those on Home Detention Curfew in since 2005 alone, the brutal murder committed by Danny Cann being the most high profile in recent years. Hardly "prison without bars".

The Ministry of Justice say the increased reoffending rate is because they are putting prisoners on the scheme earlier and therefore for longer, which is hardly an excuse. According to this factfile by the Prison Reform Trust, the prison population is predicted by the Home Office to reach 106,550 by 2013 yet it is only planning to add another 8000 places to the current 70,000+ by 2012. It's a shame the once effective HDC scheme is failing at such a time as this. Grant Shapps is calling for a review:

"Electronic tagging should be used as an addition to prison, not simply as a cheap alternative as a result of the Government’s monumental failure to address the chronic lack of capacity in Britain’s jails."

This is the fourth report that he has written in the last couple of months, and published on his excellent website.

Deputy Editor

Problem families "need the nanny state"

Tony Blair writing in today's Telegraph says he disagrees with both the Blair of 1992 and the Cameron of 2007 in his analysis of crime and anti-social behaviour.  I don't follow his logic in parts but his underlying idea seems to be that a rising tide doesn't lift all ships, that a disruptive minority in society haven't responded to public investment or societal pressures and needs to be controlled:

"What I have learnt over these 10 years is that the original analysis I had was incomplete and therefore misguided, ie, guiding us to the wrong policy conclusion, not in the sense that investment in poorer neighbourhoods and regeneration was wrong - it has been absolutely right - but in the sense that it will not deal with this small and unrepresentative minority.

Likewise, when David Cameron argues that ASB laws are "counter-productive" because we all have to take responsibility, that is also misguided. Repealing ASB laws is the last thing we need. And it's not the state that is using them. It is local communities; and, where used, they make a real difference.

The true point is that they are not enough. I now think that the proper answer is to add to the ASB laws measures that target failing and dysfunctional families early, and place those families within a proper, structured, disciplined framework of help and insistence on proper behaviour."

Anti-social behaviour is one area in which a dose of authoritarianism has its popular appeal, but when talking about societal problems Cameron has often been careful to say that it's not the government's place to use coercion on them. Blair appears to have given up on being "tough on the causes of crime", the causes being concentrated in a rotten core of families that need disciplining.

Deputy Editor

Seventy police officers are attacked every day

Using Freedom of Information requests the above statistics are revealed in a report prepared by Tory MP Grant Shapps.  Speaking to ConservativeHome, Grant said:

"My report highlights how the very people who are charged with protecting the public are themselves under constant attack. That seventy Police Officers are attacked every day says much about society and whereas the standard response would be a plethora of new Government initiatives, programmes and prescriptive Whitehall driven targets, I hope that the Home Office uses this investigation to think about these problems from a more long-term perspective."

Embracing David Cameron's focus on the social roots of incivility he continued:

"The answer is to work to heal the deep problems in society, to work out why it is that respect for the police has sunk to the level where it's acceptable to assault the police. Government needs to realise that passing another fifty Home Office Acts of Parliament, will do little to fix the problem. We need to work on mending society through helping families stay together and changing attitudes, every bit as much as simply providing our police with more body armour."

The report is covered in this morning's Express and Telegraph. 

The civil libertarian Tories

In another sign of the extent to which the Conservative Party has become the party of civil libertarianism a Communicate Research poll for The Independent finds that Labour MPs are much more likely to support police calls for an increase in the maximum time that suspected terrorists can be detained.

It is one of the last remaining issues - including ID cards - on which Labour appears closer to the public mood.

David Cameron has called Labour's 'security measures' "ineffective authoritarianism".  He has promised a border police force with the money that will be saved by scrapping ID cards.

In a recent article for The Sunday Telegraph, Shadow Home Secretary David Davis emphasised greater investment in intelligence, the use of intercept evidence and improved "resilience" to inevitable terrorist attacks.

Related link: The Tories' Molotov-Ribbentrop pact against anti-terror measures (3 November 2005)