The full text of shadow home secretary Dominic Grieve's speech to the Conservative Party conference on Tuesday September 30, 2008:
It is the lot of Home Secretaries to be bombarded by calls for action.
But 11 years of Labour has created the worst of all worlds.
People are not just fed up with the high levels of crime and anti-social behaviour in Britain and with an immigration system that strains public services and social cohesion.
They’re now also fed up with the creeping growth of a surveillance society which intrudes into their private lives and loses their personal data.
They’re fed up with the petty regulation that is making criminals of us all.
They feel demoralised and disempowered when, as we have seen in the presentations this morning empowered individuals can transform their own and the lives of others for the better.
We’re less free.
We’re less safe.
Because this government has its priorities upside down.
My brief is to secure law and order at home.
My task is to apply some conviction and common sense to unravel Labour’s mess.
When people feel that law enforcement is not on their side it corrodes trust.
Public frustration with crime and anti-social behaviour is up.
Whilst their confidence in the police is down from 72% in 2003 to 57% in 2008.
Don’t blame the police.
Sympathise with them.
The police can’t be on the public’s side if the government’s not on their side.
The government punishes law-abiding citizens who uphold the law, but lets too off many criminals with a slap on the wrist.
It resorts to gimmicks like suggesting parading knife offenders through A and E wards to meet their victims but rejects our calls for a presumption of prison for those carrying a knife.
And it wants to lock up people without charge for up to 42 days to look tough but lets convicted terrorists free under its early release scheme.
This government has lost sight of whose side it’s on.
Police Reform
The micro-management of police officers by the long arm of central government is the single biggest drain on police time, officer morale and public confidence.
Police officers don’t sign up to spend 14% of their time on patrol.
They don’t sign up to spend half a day processing a single arrest.
And they certainly don’t sign up to be, in Sir Ronnie Flanagan’s words ‘a slave to doctrine’ and ‘strait-jacketed by process’.
This is about more than paperwork.
It goes to the heart of the police’s relationship with the public.
Former head of the Police Federation, Jan Berry, says ‘We have lost the morality of successful policing.’
She’s right.
That’s why our Party has proposed to dramatically cut back the form-filling that drives a wedge between the police and the public.
I welcome the government’s decision to scrap the foot-long stop and account form just one of the many Labour created in the first place.
But if the Home Secretary was really serious, why not add to the shredder the paperwork that goes with stop and search?
Free up over a million police hours each year.
Returning over 500 officers back to the beat.
That’s what a Conservative government will deliver.
The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act is another classic example of Labour’s upside down approach.
On the one hand RIPA has been mis-used to allow council spies to follow children home from school to check their catchment area.
On the other hand I can’t see why RIPA authorisation is needed for sworn police officers to patrol in plain-clothes, watch a house to identify a suspect, or just keep an eye on a shopping centre.
It’s bread and butter police work.
We’ll get rid of the paperwork.
And we’ll trust officers to get on with the job.
If paperwork has absorbed police manpower Whitehall targets have distorted priorities and encouraged concentration on trivia.
Let me give you an example from one serving Inspector.
A youth in a shopping centre at Christmas tells a little girl with her Mum that Father Christmas is not real.
The mother reports the prankster.
Santa-denial is then classified as harassment and because a child is involved, a patrol has to be despatched urgently.
One more box ticked, One more crime detected, One more officer tied up in forms for a whole afternoon.
No wonder the President of the Superintendents Association complains that ‘the narrow focus of the Government on volume crime targets is skewing police activity’.
The government has squeezed itself in between the police and the public where neither side want it.
A Conservative government will get itself out of the police’s way, by cutting targets and consolidating the excessive police audit arrangements which led one force to undergo 15 different inspections in a single year.
We’ll back officers, not hold them back.
I want to see greater respect for the professional judgment of police officers on the frontline.
That means greater powers for sergeants – on the street, in their neighbourhood - to authorise stop and search for up to six hours, when they judge there to be an imminent threat to public safety.
That’s the kind of support that a Conservative government will give the police to deal with the scourge of drugs, guns and knives on our streets.
Practical measures. Not gimmicks.
Backing officers means trusting them. their professional discretion, their common sense.
A Conservative government would return charging discretion for all summary offences to the custody sergeant and review the scope for doing the same with offences triable either way.
Another proposal I’d love Jacqui Smith to steal because it will free up a million officer hours each year.
That’s another 500 officers on patrol. That a Conservative government will deliver.
When police officers are on patrol, they should be focused 100% on protecting the public, not worrying in the back of their mind about being prosecuted if they put a foot wrong under pressure.
We now have a health and safety regime which is so stifling that it delayed armed officers attending the victims of a shooting for an hour after the gunman had fled but prosecuted them for mistakes made during the heat of a counter-terrorism operation.
Health and safety legislation is holding police officers back making them more risk-averse.
It is dangerous.
It undermines public confidence.
And we’re going to change it.
We committed to reviewing this in January.
Today I can announce that a Conservative government will change the regime that applies to the police under the Health and Safety at Work Act.
We don’t want to put officers at unnecessary risk.
But public protection must come first.
We need transparency and accountability of our police forces.
But health and safety legislation is the wrong way to scrutinise a counter-terrorism operation.
A Conservative government will change the law. To support our brave officers.
And make the public safer.
Social Responsibility
It was Sir Robert Peel’s vision that the police are the public and the public are the police.
That bond is two-way.
We need strong communities to cut crime, not just the police.
In this country we have taken pride in a strong ethos of self-help, both as individuals and communities.
And it works.
People make use of technology to protect themselves, their homes, and their property with better alarms and other security measures with the support of the police.
People also want to get involved in protecting their neighbourhoods.
But if 75% are prepared to take an active role in helping tackle crime as Labour’s Respect Tsar Louise Casey reports, why do just 4 out of 10 people in this country say they would intervene to challenge yobs vandalising a bus shelter, fewer than any other comparable European country and compared to 6 out of 10 in Germany who would step in?
I can answer that question.
Three years ago in Piccadilly I came across a young man doing just that. I was incensed and suggested he stopped.
He proceeded to smash the shelter.
So I told him:
“You are now under arrest. Please wait there while I call the police.”
Perhaps fortunately for me he took one look at me.
And ran off, terrified, with me in pursuit.
He was foolish enough to head straight for Grosvenor Square and the US embassy where he was duly arrested by the numerous police on guard.
As a result of this episode, I was invited on radio chat shows.
And what did the people who phoned in say?
“The police only came because you are an MP”
“I tried to do that once and the police told me I shouldn’t”
“I tried to do that once and the police arrested me”
And the trouble is there are enough examples to suggest they are right.
Like Wendy Challis-Jones who chased a bike thief. wrestled him to the ground and arrested him.
When officers arrived they arrested her for assault, took her DNA and held her for 10 hours in a cell before releasing her without charge.
That’s no way to treat someone with two commendations for bravery won over twenty years working as a traffic warden and store detective in her community.
No wonder people in this country fear standing up to criminals.
You know what Home Office Minister, Tony McNulty, told Panorama you should do if you see a man attacking a woman in the street?
Don’t intervene, just try jumping up and down to distract him.
And he’s the Security Minister!
Well people are certainly jumping up and down with frustration.
A Conservative government will reverse this perverse approach to law enforcement.
It’s our duty to help, not hinder active citizens.
So today I can announce that we’ll scrap the Whitehall targets that encourage police to pick on soft targets.
We’ll amend the police guidelines so officers back those who use reasonable force to maintain the Queen’s peace.
And we’ll ensure that the Code for Crown Prosecutors is amended so it is clear - crystal clear - that it is not in the ‘public interest’ to prosecute those who perform a citizen’s arrest in good faith.
Under a Conservative government, those who help uphold the law won’t be arrested.
They’ll be thanked.
Immigration
Elsewhere, Labour priorities are just as warped.
The government pretends a points-based system with no upper limit is a solution.
We’ll introduce an annual limit to bring immigration back under control.
The government’s border controls are still a mess.
Take the blight of those trafficked into forced prostitution.
Last week Jacqui Smith proposed yet another law.
But what has she actually been doing about the problem?
Upper estimates of the number of women and girls trafficked into Britain for prostitution have quadrupled on her watch.
She’s not provided any extra places in rescue hostels.
And convictions of those who perpetrate these barbaric crimes are down by 40%.
We don’t need yet another Home Office Bill.
And changing the uniforms in the current border agency fools no-one.
We need - and a Conservative government will deliver - a dedicated Border Police force with all the powers necessary to stem the rising tide of this evil trade.
Security
For all its tough talk on terrorism, the government is dropping the ball on security and radicalisation.
Lax on fanatical preachers.
Silent on sharia courts.
Under a Conservative government there’ll be zero tolerance of those who incite violence against this country.
And let me make our position clear. sharia courts can be given no authority over criminal and family law matters in Britain. Our law must reign supreme.
The next Conservative government will make sure it does.
I am the beneficiary of a rather old fashioned thing an act of principle by a politician: David Davis.
David took a stand against Labour’s erosion of our freedoms.
He took some stick for doing it.
But let me tell you something.
Last year at the Labour conference Gordon Brown boasted about his ID card scheme.
This year, I listened carefully to Gordon Brown’s speech.
The words ID cards never passed his lips.
Jacqui Smith didn’t mention them either.
Nor 42 days.
We’re winning the arguments on freedom and David Davis deserves the credit for his stand.
Ladies and Gentlemen a Conservative government will reverse Labour’s skewed priorities.
We’ll meet the terrorist threat head on without sacrificing the freedoms that millions died defending.
We’ll secure our borders.
And we’ll back the police and the public so together we can start to mend what is broken in our society.
Dods Parliamentary Communications Ltd