John Baron

Conservative Party | Billericay and District

Reply Letter on Essex Enquirer - Law and Order

Dear Madam,

The Labour parliamentary spokesperson was wrong in her letter last week not to recognise that crime is rising. Recorded figures clearly show that, during the last five years, crime in Essex has risen by 40% whilst violent crime has soared by 150%. The reason - Labour is soft on crime.

A tough law and order policy does work. The only consecutive four year period since WWII that crime fell in this country was when Michael Howard was Home Secretary in the 1990s - crime fell 18%.

However, people are rightly more interested in the future than the past.

Part of the problem today is that, because of the paperwork mountain created by this Government, research shows officers spend half their time in police stations.

This is clearly wrong. People want to see more police on our streets, as evidenced by the 6,000 constituents who signed my ‘more bobbies on the beat’ petition.

A Conservative government will again get much tougher with the criminal, and this will include scrapping a lot of silly police paperwork and recruiting an extra 40,000 police to patrol our streets – Essex would gain an extra 1,000 police.

And, although she may believe discussing immigration is morally irresponsible, these extra police will largely be paid for by reforming the asylum system and curbing illegal immigration into this country.

Immigration has more than doubled under Labour, whilst only 1 in 5 failed asylum seekers is removed from the UK. Figures show there are now at least over 250,000 failed asylum seekers living in Britain.

All this is costing large sums of money – humanely returning home failed asylum seekers would save this country a small fortune. Political correctness must not stop us discussing this issue.