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Public Disorder (NUS Rally)

The right hon. Gentleman rightly draws attention to the importance of peaceful protest, as did I. We should reflect on the fact that the Metropolitan police must deal with around 4,500 demonstrations every year. It has always had to deal with demonstrations, and it will continue to have to do so. He asked about intelligence, and it is clear there are questions about that, but my response is to his wider point about the role of the Home Secretary. These are operational matters for the police, and it is right that the Commissioner should investigate them properly and review the failures that have clearly occurred. On the right hon. Gentleman's final point about resources, we are of course confident that sufficient resources have been provided to the police over four years as a result of the spending review to ensure that the public can be kept safe. We believe that savings can be made by police forces while protecting front-line policing services. I would counsel him against seeking to make political capital by trying to link the action that we have had to take to secure savings with this incident. So far as I am aware, no one is suggesting that inadequate resources were available to the Metropolitan police. There is, however, a question about how and when they were deployed. The Metropolitan police now have a record number of police officers and a budget of more than £3.6 billion. It has sufficient resources to deal with such incidents at the front line, and that will continue to be the case. He is very unwise to suggest otherwise and to make political capital out of the incident that has just taken place.