Former Home Secretary, Rt Hon David Blunkett MP, has reacted to today’s figures from the British Crime Survey, which have shown a fall in crime of 9% year-on-year – and that crime is now lower than at any point since records began in 1981.
The BCS also indicated that crime fell by 43% during Labour’s 13 years in power.
Mr Blunkett said: “This very welcome fall in the crime figures is a tribute first and foremost to the hard work of the police service, whose efforts we should applaud.
“It was said at the start of the global economic meltdown that recession would lead, as night follows day, to a rise in crime. The fact that that has not happened is a testament to the strategy which the Labour Government put in place – of neighbourhood policing teams at the heart of every community.
“It is a strategy which must not fall victim to either the coalition’s refusal to protect front-line spending on the police, or their widely-criticised plan for elected local police commissioners.”
Mr Blunkett added: “The contrast between the fall in crime under Labour during this economic downturn and the increase during the Tory recession of the early 1990s is marked. During the ’90s recession, crime shot up by 18%.
“It is therefore incredible to hear Ken Clarke attempting to claim credit for a fall in crime due to some bogus prosperity from the mid-’90s.
“The only parallel between his time in office then and now is the uproar across Britain at cutbacks in education spending – which were a hallmark of Clarke’s 1995 Budget.
“If these falls in crime are to be sustained, we cannot see the like of those cuts again.”
Mr Blunkett concluded: “The emphasis now must be on the development of imaginative community and restorative justice. It also has to be based on the harsh reality that PCSOs on our streets and wrongdoers in our prisons is a safeguard that allows people, through difficult times, to maintain the social fabric on which the coalition places so much of the burden of coping with its draconian spending cuts.”
ENDS
