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Policing in London

I certainly do—it is another excellent appointment. My only problem with the borough commanders that we have had in west London is that they are so good that they keep getting poached and promoted. I hope that I have not set off a whole sequence of 32 borough commanders being praised, because then we will have no time for anything else. Over the past five years—Conservative Front Benchers should take notice of this—crime in London has fallen by 20 per cent. It is all very well for the Conservative spokesman to say to his researchers, as he doubtless did, ““Please go away and find me some statistics, however obscure, to try to suggest that that is not the case.”” In almost every area of serious crime—whether it is murder, gun crime, robbery, rape or grievous bodily harm—reductions in crime have been in double figures. I am glad that I am not still at the criminal Bar, because I fear that I would find it difficult to earn a living; in fact, I always did, owing to the Government's appalling legal aid rates.