Reading crime cutting wins Blair respect
In parliament, PM Tony Blair recognised efforts made in Reading to cut crime and underlined the need to implement tougher actions still. Blair said that the new powers were making a difference. Really? I’m still seeing drunk and disorderly people, fights and evidence of vandalism. Must try harder, I think:
Martin Salter (Reading, West) (Lab): Yesterday, the Prime Minister launched the respect action plan to give communities better opportunities to tackle crime, drugs and antisocial behaviour. Does he recognise that, in Reading, under the dynamic leadership of the local Labour council, supported by Chief Superintendent Dave Murray, excellent progress has been made in cutting crime through the use of antisocial behaviour orders and getting drug-addicted criminals into treatment programmes? How will his respect action plan help us in Reading and throughout the country to do even better?
The Prime Minister: My hon. Friend is right that there is a dynamic leadership in Reading that has indeed delivered the action on antisocial behaviour that he describes. The important thing is that the powers that we outlined yesterday build on that. For example, they extend the ability to give fixed penalty notices and there are tougher actions for homes that are used forantisocial behaviour and for antisocial behaviour especially by younger kids. He is right that, in Reading and other areas, which I have seen for myself recently, such as east Manchester, Harlow and Swindon yesterday, where local authorities, local police and local residents use the powers, they make a real difference. Anybody who believes that they are simply a gimmick
or knee-jerk populism should go to those areas, hear what local residents say, see the difference that they have made and recognise that they are a major part of an agenda for restoring community life in this country for the time in which we live, and allow local communities to put the law-abiding citizen, not the criminal, at their heart.