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Policing in London

That sounds an ideal arrangement. As the hon. Lady will know, however, in many parts of London it has not been sufficient. Most ideas have been tried in those areas and have not worked; we need to become more aggressive. I am very conscious that young people have a terrible reputation which most of them do not deserve. We need to turn that around. One way that we can do so is to focus on, and deal with, trouble times and trouble spots. In certain situations, having a school bus rather than a policing strategy might provide the right answer—for example, having a special bus in circumstances in which many youngsters leave a location to travel to a destination some distance away that is not well served by public transport. Ironically, Transport for London will put on school buses for private schools with strange travel patterns—with pupils who travel unusual journeys. We must look at providing that service for at least one or two key schools in the state sector. Resources can be found. My party has said that we should scrap the plans for an identity card system. If that were done, we would have the necessary resources to put into police deployment. I also agree with the hon. Member for Putney (Justine Greening) that resources would be freed up if we were to deal with the whole red tape issue. However, I wish to make a cautionary statement. My daughter’s partner is a black American and when they visit us from the United States I am very aware of how difficult it still is in London to be black and, perhaps, someone who does not dress conventionally, such as in a suit. My daughter’s partner—my son-in-law, as it were—is regularly stopped. That happens at immigration control—the Minister knows about that topic—and he is also regularly stopped by police who might just happen to be looking for someone of his description. He is followed in almost all the shops he goes into, too. That is utterly wearing. He has been unaware that he has the right to have a piece of paper from the police explaining why that is happening; he will know in the future. There is pressure in respect of having that piece of paper. It is rarely offered; it has to be asked for. We must be careful about discarding such pieces of paper.