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Policing in London

I wish to make some progress first. If the Minister will not accept statistics in black and white, surely there is one thing on which we can agree: the need for greater police visibility in London. Surely there is common ground on that. There is, however, a huge difference between our prescriptions and those of the Labour Government. I am sure we can agree that if there are more police on the beat, they deter more crime and more arrests are made. After 11 September 2001, the police redeployed 1,500 officers from outer London to the city centre. At the time, Ian Blair described the impact of that redeployment on crime levels. He said:"““On 13 September, street crime began to rise in the outer boroughs and go down in the centre. By Christmas, the rise in street crime everywhere except central Westminster had become almost vertical, with nearly 7,000 robberies and snatch thefts in January””," which, he said, represented an increase of more than 50 per cent. After the July bombings, the redeployment of officers on the streets—for which my hon. Friend the Member for Henley has argued so powerfully in the past few weeks, and will argue powerfully in future weeks—had a similar effect. A study in the aftermath of 7 July found that, in the six months following the incident, increased police deployment in six key London boroughs had led to a significant fall in crime. That is why London Conservatives, and Conservatives nationally, are serious about cutting the bureaucracy that is heaped on our hard-working police officers. It is not acceptable that, in London, the amount of time spent on patrol decreased from 13.7 per cent. in 2003-04 to 12.8 per cent. in 2006-07.