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Public Disorder

My right hon. and learned Friend makes a good point, and obviously we will look again at the guidance. Let me be clear: there was no instruction to police officers to stand back, but as I have said, and I think police chiefs have been very frank about this, the balance between what is right for public order and what is right for stopping criminality—looting and thieving—was not got right to start with. They admit that, they accept that, but they were—to be fair to the police, who do that very difficult job on behalf of us all—facing a new set of circumstances. Yes, they have had riots before; yes, they have had looting before; and yes, there has been violence and vandalism; but we have not in our country before had the same thing happening in different places with different people all doing it at the same time. That was a challenge for the police—a challenge that I believe they are now meeting excellently—but they did not get everything right to start with and they are the first to admit that.