Crime (London)
Deferred Division
4:15 pm
David Ruffley (Shadow Minister, Home Affairs; Bury St Edmunds, Conservative)
My hon. Friend anticipates me. Our proposal is for instant access real-time live CCTV. It has taken my hon. Friend to come up with this innovative idea. The Mayor has had eight years in which to roll it out. Instant access real-time live CCTV would be particularly useful where a code red call is received. We could then prioritise calls that required emergency police assistance. Subject to the trial working as we believe it will, police officers would have the ability to dial into the system to see what was going on in real time, using mobile technology where that was available.
The police could also record the footage in real time and use it as instant evidence, rather than having to wait for the bus companies to send them recorded footage, as they do at present, which wastes huge amounts of time. I heard only this morning that one of the problems—an evidential problem—is that often the Crown Prosecution Service will not charge until it has reviewed the CCTV evidence, which can take weeks to reach the CPS and the police at the station. Everybody knows that. My hon. Friend has a solution to the problem; the Labour party in London has had eight years and done nothing about it.