Clause 1 - Offences leading to penalities on the spot.
Criminal Justice and Police Bill
11:45 am
Mr Nick Hawkins (Surrey Heath, Conservative)
I will in a moment, but I think that before he responds, the Minister should hear about the situation that four years of Labour Government have caused. The article, by a serving police officer, says:
``It's a shambles. What kind of an image does it portray to the public when they run to a police station to report...to find it shut and are told to telephone the crime in? Police stations used to be seen as safe havens. More often than not now it is a derelict building with a `closed' sign on the front door and police officers are phantom figures tucked away in some Super Nick that the public have never heard of and will probably go nowhere near...It's the same with the control room. When we had our own control room on the ground, I would be in and out half a dozen times during the course of a night. I would talk to the CAD staff and from them I would know exactly what was happening anywhere on the ground and where each officer was. I can't do that any more. I don't know what's happening on my own ground and I am the supervisor of nothing and nobody.''
That is the reality of policing under a Labour Government in our capital city in 2001. I invite the Minister to apologise for the appalling situation that his Government have brought about.