'Life on Mars' Policing

Shadow Home Secretary: We'll bring 'common sense' back to the beat.

David Davis MP, Shadow Home Secretary

ANDREW MARR: Now then, we heard something earlier about the concern over knife crime - more violence on the street, more fatal stabbings, more offences fuelled by alcohol and evidence that young girls are now getting involved in vicious street attacks.

But apart from saying how awful, what is to be done? The Shadow Home Secretary David Davis is with me.

Thank you for coming in.

DAVID DAVIS: Good morning.

ANDREW MARR: Good morning. When it comes to the way the police are able to operate on the streets, when it comes to stop and search, when it comes to bureaucracy, you have made a lot of the government's failures. But in practical terms, if you were Home Secretary next week or in six week's time, what can you do?

DAVID DAVIS: Well, last year at the time of the Rhys Jones murder we actually announced, reannounced frankly, a lot of the things we'd done, we divided it into three sub categories for short term things - liberalising the police to get them back on the streets which has got implications for stop and search, you mentioned earlier, it makes for bureaucracy and so on. In the medium term, doing something about sentencing and in prisons, making sure you've got the prison places, making sure the ones who go into prison you do something to get them off drugs, one of the big drivers, you didn't mention that one.

And the longer term as David has talked about a great deal, do something about family breakdown because very often this is about the background to the youngsters very often involved in murders and knifings and so on. The background is what creates the problem. All of those three categories are important.

ANDREW MARR: You've said you want less health and safety restraints on the police.

DAVID DAVIS: Yeah.

ANDREW MARR: Is this, is this sort of, we had Philip Glenister here last week, is this a kind of DCI Hunt policing, Life on Mars policing?

DAVID DAVIS: Now I've actually never seen Life on Mars although lots of people have bought me books about it. But the, no it's not about, what this arose out of was a feeling that our police were getting more and more hidebound and more and more rules and regulations.

We had that horrible example of the two PCSOs who had to stand, had to stand aside, while a youngster was drowning in a pond because they were told their head office that they couldn't ...

ANDREW MARR: They didn't have to stand aside, they could have jumped...

DAVID DAVIS: Well, funny enough last week one of the chief constables was saying actually we'll get to the situation, I think it was Hogan Howell, get to the situation where a policeman will have to turn to an ordinary member of the public and say you're not restrained in the way I am. And it isn't just police either, there was a coastguard...

ANDREW MARR: So perhaps you need to change the law to change this.

DAVID DAVIS: Well yes you do, because what you have to do is effectively say that when you're a member of the armed services, a police force, the uniform services, there to protect the public, that the safety of the public comes ahead of your own personal safety.

That's really simply the change that we're looking for. And I've talked to health and safety lawyers who agree with me. These are people who make their money out of this business, who've said yes this is a very sensible idea, this is the way we have to go.

ANDREW MARR: Because a lot of people will say well the Conservatives say things that we find appealing, in this area. But actually out there because of Europe, because of the vast amount of health and safety legislation that has built up over the years, when they get into power actually not much will change.

DAVID DAVIS: Well, one of the advantages, one of the oddities, I've been in this job for four and a half, nearly five years now, and it means I've had time to go through and look at this in some detail, and one of the differences actually. Now if we win the next election, as I suspect we will, but if we win the next election then we are determined when we come in to actually have a clear idea of what we're going to do in all these areas. This is one of them, you mentioned earlier...

ANDREW MARR: So we'll see less health and safety legislation?

DAVID DAVIS: You won't see the removal of health and safety, what you will see is a change in health and safety, the relevant part of the Act to actually deal with the treatment of... we're not going to say all of sudden to chief constables well you can throw your constables into any circumstance irrespective.

What we are going to say, when you have a situation where you're surrounding a murder scene, you don't hold back the paramedics to go in and save somebody who's bleeding to death, which is something that's happened once already. Those sorts of things we're going to have some clear common sense brought back in.

ANDREW MARR: And so it's a question of culture, I mean you want, frankly, a bit more risk taking by the police and by other public services on behalf of the public?

DAVID DAVIS: Yeah, and what was interesting, my press officer actually who's here with me today, said he was talking to some police officers only a couple of days ago and they thought this was a great idea because it allows them to do what they signed up to do.

ANDREW MARR: Right. You mentioned elections and polls and so on and I guess you're one of those people who've been tramping Crewe and Nantwich. What's your sense of what's going on there?

DAVID DAVIS: Well it's going quite well I think, as your polls show. Well very hard to know, look, in a mile race the lap that matters is the last lap, that's when all the changes of lead take place and so on.

And we're in the last lap here, it's going to be a hard fought thing, it will be quite extraordinary actually, for us to win. We've got 7,000 majority to overturn, we haven't won a by election against Labour in 30 years so it will be quite a battle to win. But we are pulling out every stop.

ANDREW MARR: Mmm. What about the overall condition of the two parties, because clearly the Labour Party are in some trouble? Are people like you sitting there behind your hands hoping that Gordon Brown stays in, or are you, I mean, you were involved at the time when John Major was facing all the trouble against his backbenchers. What's your reading of what's going on on the government side?

DAVID DAVIS: Well there are two components to their problems. One of them is a lot of things coming home to roost - over-centralisation, over-spending over ten years and so on.

And any change of leadership's not going to solve that. I mean people are still going to face mortgage problems, they're still going to face not enough money, not enough disposable income.

All those things are still going to be there. That being said Mr. Brown has surprised me at, I mean I was the Jeremiah, I said watch this man, be careful, he's dangerous. And for the first three months it looked like I was right. But actually the number of unforced errors he's made has been quite extraordinary in truth, quite extraordinary.

ANDREW MARR: What about particular specific policies that we're going to see, because the focus is going to come on you now.

DAVID DAVIS: Mmm, of course.

ANDREW MARR: On you personally. And your party, are we now going to see actual proposals for Conservative legislation, things that you would bring in within the first year of a Conservative government coming forward?

DAVID DAVIS: Yes, well you would. I mean for example you were taking to Commander Dizaei earlier about stop and search and stop forms. We're going to abolish the stop form, that's the form where a policeman if he stops you in the street to say what are you doing Mr. Marr, why are you here with that bag over your shoulder at two in the morning, or whatever it is? That has to fill in a form. We'll do away with that.

ANDREW MARR: That's definitely going to go?

DAVID DAVIS: That's going. The stop and search we're going to dramatically reduce, we're going to reduce that to actually a call on a radio rather than in filling in a form. And we're going to give somebody with the rank of sergeant the right to declare what they call Section 60, in other words say in this area you can stop and search with more freedom than you currently can.

And one of the reasons, and I had a conversation with Commander Dizaei actually just before we came in, one of the reasons is actually if you look at the 27 youngsters that were murdered last year in London, the majority of them were black and minority ethnic community members. You know, it's actually in the interests of the minority communitys...

ANDREW MARR: All right. What about alcohol, what about booze crimes?

DAVID DAVIS: Well a variety of things here. I mean firstly we, I would not have not have gone the route of the 24-hour drinking. We're now going to have to review that. I don't have an answer today but we will have before the election.

In terms of the, in terms of the actual approach to drink, I mean the government had a very heavy-handed approach in the budget. What I want to see is focused higher taxes so some of these bottles of high-strength lagers and high-strength ciders, these are only just to get you drunk in a hurry, are a lot more expensive than �2.50.

ANDREW MARR: So you can price them out...

DAVID DAVIS: Price some of them out. I mean this isn't an across the board strategy. No one mechanism is a panacea. You've got to add to that an approach to family stability and family breakdown, and you've got to add to that also how you deal with it. On drugs for example, most of, which is another big driver.

ANDREW MARR: Just one other area before we run out of time. In 42 days are you going to win that vote do you think?

DAVID DAVIS: Well ironically if we win in Crewe it might get more difficult because the... but at the moment it looks as though.

ANDREW MARR: Would you prefer to win, 42 days or Crewe.

DAVID DAVIS: I'd prefer to win both but for me, for me personally 42 days is extremely important, it's a major piece of legislation.

ANDREW MARR: Fraser Nelson who was reviewing the papers for us says in the News of the World that when you were discussing China you suggested to the Shadow Cabinet the correct policy was to invade the country, shoot the generals and feed the people, in Burma I should have said... or in China.

DAVID DAVIS: You're just about to start World War III.

ANDREW MARR: That would have been unfortunate.

DAVID DAVIS: The trend of it's not wholly inaccurate.

ANDREW MARR: Not wholly inaccurate. All right, David Davis thank you very much indeed for joining us.

INTERVIEW ENDS

Please note "The Andrew Marr Show" must be credited if any part of this transcript is used.

NB: This transcript was typed from a recording and not copied from an original script.

Because of the possibility of mis-hearing and the difficulty, in some cases, of identifying individual speakers, the BBC cannot vouch for its accuracy

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