Labour will give police the tools they need

Alan Johnson, Labour’s Home Secretary, Peter Mandelson, Labour’s Business Secretary and John Denham, Labour's Communities Secretary, today set out Labour’s tough policies on CCTV, DNA evidence, Community Payback and Labour’s crack-down on anti-social behaviour.

They rejected the Tories’ attempts to run Britain down and highlighted the risk posed by Tory and Lib Dem policies.

Alan Johnson said:

“David Cameron paints a bleak picture of Britain; grabs hold of tragic but isolated incidents to show Britain in the worst possible light.

“We do face serious challenges. But Labour offers an honest appraisal of these problems and real solutions – rather than statistical mendacity and trite homilies.

“Labour by contrast have made clear that we will give the police the tools they need to keep us safe.

“Earlier in the campaign I talked about our position on DNA technology – about how the Tories backed down in parliament, but still plan to weaken DNA technology if they ever take power. The Lib Dem position is the same.

“Today I want also to talk about CCTV. Labour spent £170m in the early part of the last decade on almost 700 CCTV schemes, and now we are focusing on improving quality and training, and on giving people a right to petition their council for more, and pressing police forces and authorities and councils to ensure all crime hotspots are covered.”

Peter Mandelson said:

"David Cameron and his party have spent a great deal of time simply running Britain down. What Britain needs is not just more diagnosis from the Tories, but answers to the problems that we face.

"This after all is the party who are so out of touch with the problems of deprived areas in Britain that before the electi on they thought over half of teenage girls got pregnant in some of our great cities. Half: wrong. The party which is warned repeatedly by the statistical watchdog and police officers in its misuse of violent crime figures. The party which exaggerates what it says about family breakdown and at the same time plans to cut Child Tax Credits.

"But even more important than their exaggerations is the fact that they have no answers or solutions. People who are faced with crime, with anti-social behaviour, problem families making their life a misery, don't want to hear about the Tories’ do-it-yourself approach to public services: telling people to sort it out for themselves because the government is out of here. They want to know that the police, the councils and public services will be there to help them."

John Denham said:

"As Alan has said, Britain is not broken but we realise there are particular stresses, particular problems in some communities which need to be tackled and we will make sure that no area is left behind. We will tackle the 50,000 dysfunctional families who cause problems through family intervention projects, no nonsense action which actually works.

"We have given councils and the police powers to work with communities to tackle anti-social behaviour using tough laws like ASBOs and closure orders, which didn’t exist in 1997. Because we’ve brought in those powers perceptions of anti-social behaviour being a 'problem in your area' has fallen to 15%. Confidence in the police in dealing with these issues has risen.

"And we know that there’s nothing more frustrating than reporting a problem into the system and not knowing whether action is being taken. So we will lay out standards so that every community knows what sort of action they can expect:
· Getting back to them to discuss the problems that’s been reported within 24 hours.
· Having a named person who is responsible for handling your case and dealing with it.
· Anti-social behaviour champions in each area to act as advocates for the victims of anti-social behaviour and to make sure their cases are dealt with effectively
· Ultimately the ability to say that somebody can take out an injunction against the people who are causing problems and to do it at the expense of the organisation which should have acted on their behalf.

"The Lib Dems have opposed anti-social behaviour measures nationally and dragged their feet where they have run local councils. The Tories have called some anti-social behaviour measures, things like community payback, a gimmick. They talk about a big society but it’s actually about walking away, saying to communities you are on your own, sink or swim with no support."