At this point, it’s hard to think of a single political quarter, left or right, that wouldn’t welcome comprehensive reform of London’s embattled police force. Yet it endures.
Once again, it is time to get back to the basics of what people want from their police – to investigate, detect, and solve real crimes, not hurt feelings.
Like Hamas and Hezbollah, already banned under this act, the PFLP are a terrorist group. They have never hid this fact. Yet in Britain they, and support for them, remain legal.
Many of our criminal justice partners would prefer me to focus on ‘out of court disposals’. But for some offenders, and their victims, a custodial sentence is the proper outcome.
Events in Parliament Square, and the blockade of Tower Bridge last weekend, are simply the latest manifestation of extremism on display since 7 October attack on Israel.
The public are more intelligent when it comes to public spending than may politicians give them credit for, and they know the difference between organisations that waste money and those that don’t.
Social media is regularly awash with Brits understandably expressing their fury at violent criminals receiving risible sentences. People are now even hesitant to report crime because they feel, given the poor likelihood of justice, it is no longer worth the hassle.
Having seen the work my team and colleagues across the country do, I have no doubt that the public are best served by those who they can hold fully accountable.
But just 16 per cent of White British pupils eligible for free school meals leave school with adequate qualifications to even apply for university. This cannot be explained away by the odd family member making snitty comments.
What communities need from their police forces would be out in favour of top-down targets and threats of further action from the centre if chiefs don’t perform to the Labour mandate.
This is not something that needs to be buried in any arcana about the Ministerial Code. Rishi Sunak does not need an inquiry to tell him whether he asked for changes to Suella Braverman’s article or not.
But if such a programme extends beyond stemming the flow of cash (or at least attempting to do so), it is once again going to come back to law and enforcement. And that is thorny ground.
One can give the police more legal powers, update the official definition of extremism, and all that. But it won’t produce different outcomes without a sea-change in how senior officers approach public order policing.
At Cifas we see the value and impact of multi-sector data and intelligence-sharing on fraudulent conduct daily. With the right protections in place to safeguard privacy and security, data and knowledge are our best weapons against this crime.
A new body, modelled on the Serious Fraud Office, is needed to independently and expertly investigate allegations of criminal wrongdoing against medical professionals and institutions.