Theresa May heckled and jeered during police conference speech

The home secretary defended 20% funding cuts in a speech to a rowdy Police Federation conference in Bournemouth

The home secretary, Theresa May, had to endure heckling and jeering by rank and file police officers as she defended 20% funding cuts to policing and reforms to their pay and conditions.

May’s 25-minute set-piece speech to the 1,200 strong Police Federation conference in Bournemouth ended in complete silence.

But she had to sit stony-faced through huge cheers and applause when one officer told her she was “a disgrace” and was no longer trusted by the police, and she was heckled when she promised not to privatise the police. “You already are,” shouted one officer.

When May took to the stage at the Bournemouth conference centre she was greeted by a sea of banners saying “Enough is enough” and “20% cuts are criminal” held up by the audience of 1,200 officers. The home secretary had already taken pre-emptive steps to ensure she did not have to deliver her speech in front of a conference backdrop saying “20% cuts are criminal”.

The home secretary insisted that the police funding cuts were “affordable and manageable” and directly answered accusations that policing had been singled out to take the pain. “Let’s stop pretending the police are being picked on,” she told them. “Every part of the public sector is having to take its share of the pain.”

She also responded to growing voices within the Police Federation calling for them to be given the right to strike. “The right to strike is off the table. Keeping our communities safe is simply too important.”

The home secretary strongly defended her reform programme and said whatever final conclusions came out of the Winsor review of their pay and conditions she promised the police would remain the best paid of the emergency services.

She also tried to allay concerns about the creeping privatisation of policing by promising that it would only be warranted police officers who made arrests, who led investigations and directed operations.

“We will not privatise patrolling,” she said, but when she added: “It is because the police are crime-fighters that we will never privatise policing,” one officer shouted: “You already are.”

The home secretary had to sit through a 40-minute speech by Paul McKeever, the Police Federation chairman, who told her that 5,200 officers had already been lost, and that she was on the precipice of destroying a police service that was admired throughout the world.

“We are about to go through some fundamental change that will alter policing for ever,” McKeever said.

“This is a bad deal for police officers, it’s a bad deal for the service and most of all it’s a bad deal for the British public.”

During her speech, the home secretary announced that the police prosecution powers are to be extended to take over nearly 50% of the cases that go through magistrates’ courts. She said they, rather than the Crown Prosecution Service, would have the power to prosecute 500,000 uncontested traffic cases where defendants either did not enter a plea or failed to turn up at court. She was considering extending police prosecutions to other low-level offences and would make an announcement later this summer, she said.

Met to use software that can crack mobile phones even with locked SIM

Police will be able to capture evidence for court without sending phones off to lab or confiscating for duration of legal proceedings

The Metropolitan Police is to use software that can extract mobile phone contents, including call records and past GPS location data, even if the SIM is locked, as part of a new scheme to speed up crime investigation.

But it will not necessarily be able to break onboard encryption on devices, such as that used by RIM’s BlackBerry smartphones, which were blamed for being used to coordinate some of the 2011 riots in the UK.

The Aceso software, from Southampton-based Radio Tactics, will be used by boroughs across the capital and is intended to enable police officers investigating crimes to capture data from mobile phones in ways that are “evidentially sound” – that is, can be produced in court – so phone owners do not have to give up the devices for the duration of a case.

Other forces around the UK already use similar or the same software. Speaking on Tuesday, Bernard Hogan-Howe, the Met’s new Commissioner, said that the force’s technology was out of date and needed fresh investment. “If we ended up with less people but better technology, and ended up being better at fighting crime, I’d say that wouldn’t be a bad thing,” he was quoted as saying.

The key use is expected to be tackling people suspected of petty crimes such as burglary. At present, suspects’ phones have to be sent for data extraction to a central or outsourced laboratory. That can slow down processing of alleged crimes, said Andy Gill, chief executive of Radio Tactics.

Another key use would be to prove disputed ownership of phones by allowing police to access the content if a phone is suspected of being stolen, and to let witnesses to crimes submit videos or photos as evidence and then retain their phone, rather than having to hand it in as evidence.

Even if the SIM is locked, the new software can bypass it if the police apply to the relevant network operator for a “Pin unlock code”. Gill said that the use of such PUCs is, however, regulated by the Regulation of Investigatory Power Act (RIPA) and the Police and Criminal Evidence Act (PACE). He emphasised that the software “is not a hacking tool”: “that isn’t how it’s used,” he said. “It’s an evidence-gathering tool.”

Stephen Kavanagh, deputy assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service, said that “mobile phones and other devices are increasingly being used in all levels of criminal activity. When a suspect is arrested and found with a mobile phone that we suspect may have been used in crime, traditionally we submit it to our digital forensic laboratory for analysis. Therefore, a solution located within the boroughs that enables trained officers to examine devices and gives immediate access to the data in that handset is welcomed.”

He said that having the ability to act on “forensically-sound, time-critical information, from SMS to images contained on a device quickly gives us an advantage in combating crime, notably in terms of identifying people of interest quickly and progressing cases more efficiently”.

Gill said that as more people are using smartphones – latest estimates suggest they are used by 53% of the mobile-owning population – there is significantly greater amount of data available to the police from the phones. GPS location data, which is often collected automatically by the phone, “means that you can retrospectively make qualified assumptions about where the phone – and presumably the person – has been”.

BlackBerry devices were “an interesting challenge”, Gill said: “they’re built from the ground up to be secure, which isn’t true for other phones which are more aimed at the consumer.” The onboard encryption on BlackBerry devices means that if it is used, no useful data can be extracted from it without the decryption key. “But from day to day, at the more consumer end, it’s quite routine for people not to use the maximum level of security,” he noted.

Gill said that the more rapid processing of phones during the arrest and charging process should mean that the police will rapidly see a significant saving in costs and time.

Young man jailed as a teenager over death of trainee chef in London to challenge guilty verdict after new evidence emerges

A young man convicted of murder will take his case to the court of appeal on Wednesday after new evidence emerged raising doubts over key parts of the prosecution case against him.

The appeal court will examine evidence that questions the safety of the murder conviction of Sam Hallam, 24, from Islington, north London.

Hallam – who was 17 at the time – was convicted in 2005 of murdering trainee chef Essayas Kassahun in Hoxton in October 2004. He was sentenced to life with the recommendation he serve 12 years.

But his family and friends, including the actor Ray Winstone, have campaigned to have his case reopened for a number of years.

After Hallam failed to have his conviction overturned at his first appeal, his case was referred to the criminal cases review commission (CCRC), which spent three years examining the evidence. They instructed Thames Valley police to carry out inquiries on their behalf, which involved examining the whole of the original Metropolitan police murder investigation.

Their report is key to Hallam’s claim of innocence, and unearths new evidence said to undermine the disputed identification evidence from two witnesses that put Hallam at the scene of the killing.

The Thames Valley report is also understood to contain criticism of the original Met police investigation into the killing. The original inquiry did not analyse mobile phone cell site evidence or CCTV footage, it is understood.

That inquiry was led by then Detective Chief Inspector Michael Broster, who was recently criticised by the coroner in the inquest into the death of MI6 officer Gareth Williams over his role as the liaison point with MI6.

The Westminster coroner, Fiona Wilcox, criticised Broster – now a detective superintendent in the anti-terrorist unit, for failing to inform the head of the Williams investigation that he had found nine memory sticks and a holdall belonging to the dead man at his MI6 office. Instead of passing these to the inquiry team he left MI6 to examine them.

It is understood in the Hallam case there is further criticism. Broster’s murder investigation is found to be of poor quality and to lack control.

Hallam, was a kitchen fitter who planned a career in the army when he was arrested for the murder of Kassahun in 2004. Kassahun, 21, had come to the aid of a friend, Louis Colley, who was being attacked on Old Street, in central London, by a mob of youths over a trivial perceived insult.

Hallam was convicted on the basis of disputed identification from two witnesses who placed him at the scene of the killing. In his defence, Hallam claimed he was playing football with a friend at the time. He said he knew there was going to be trouble on the night of the killing as a mob set off to look for Colley and had wanted to avoid it.

One of seven charged with the murder, Hallam initially, on the advice of his lawyer, declined to answer police questions, something his supporters claim may have counted against him at the trial.

Another man, Bullabeck Ringblong, was also convicted of the murder and is serving life. The trial judge recommended Hallam, who is in HMP Bullingdon, should serve a minimum of 12 years.

The CCRC said it decided to refer the case after deciding there was “the real possibility that the court of appeal would now quash the conviction”.

Hallam’s appeal is set to last two days in the Royal Courts of Justice in London.

UK police arrest three on terror charges
3 Irish dissidents have been arrested on a multitude of terrorism charges in Britian

UK police to quiz terror suspects
UK police have been granted extra time to question two men on allegations of terrorism.

The home secretary defended 20% funding cuts in a speech to a rowdy Police Federation conference in Bournemouth

The home secretary, Theresa May, had to endure heckling and jeering by rank and file police officers as she defended 20% funding cuts to policing and reforms to their pay and conditions.

May’s 25-minute set-piece speech to the 1,200 strong Police Federation conference in Bournemouth ended in complete silence.

But she had to sit stony-faced through huge cheers and applause when one officer told her she was “a disgrace” and was no longer trusted by the police, and she was heckled when she promised not to privatise the police. “You already are,” shouted one officer.

When May took to the stage at the Bournemouth conference centre she was greeted by a sea of banners saying “Enough is enough” and “20% cuts are criminal” held up by the audience of 1,200 officers. The home secretary had already taken pre-emptive steps to ensure she did not have to deliver her speech in front of a conference backdrop saying “20% cuts are criminal”.

The home secretary insisted that the police funding cuts were “affordable and manageable” and directly answered accusations that policing had been singled out to take the pain. “Let’s stop pretending the police are being picked on,” she told them. “Every part of the public sector is having to take its share of the pain.”

She also responded to growing voices within the Police Federation calling for them to be given the right to strike. “The right to strike is off the table. Keeping our communities safe is simply too important.”

The home secretary strongly defended her reform programme and said whatever final conclusions came out of the Winsor review of their pay and conditions she promised the police would remain the best paid of the emergency services.

She also tried to allay concerns about the creeping privatisation of policing by promising that it would only be warranted police officers who made arrests, who led investigations and directed operations.

“We will not privatise patrolling,” she said, but when she added: “It is because the police are crime-fighters that we will never privatise policing,” one officer shouted: “You already are.”

The home secretary had to sit through a 40-minute speech by Paul McKeever, the Police Federation chairman, who told her that 5,200 officers had already been lost, and that she was on the precipice of destroying a police service that was admired throughout the world.

“We are about to go through some fundamental change that will alter policing for ever,” McKeever said.

“This is a bad deal for police officers, it’s a bad deal for the service and most of all it’s a bad deal for the British public.”

During her speech, the home secretary announced that the police prosecution powers are to be extended to take over nearly 50% of the cases that go through magistrates’ courts. She said they, rather than the Crown Prosecution Service, would have the power to prosecute 500,000 uncontested traffic cases where defendants either did not enter a plea or failed to turn up at court. She was considering extending police prosecutions to other low-level offences and would make an announcement later this summer, she said.

Theresa May takes powers to strip Met of counter-terrorism role

Bill clause would allow home secretary to transfer responsibility for anti-terror policing to national crime agency

The home secretary, Theresa May, has quietly taken powers to strip Scotland Yard of its national counter-terrorism role in the aftermath of the Olympics.

The move, which could lead to counter-terrorism policing being assigned to the new national crime agency (NCA) after it is set up next April, is contained in an enabling clause in the crime and courts bill, which is to be given a second reading in the House of Lords on Monday 28 May.

The 2,000-strong counter-terrorism command of the Metropolitan police was created in 2006 but has its roots in the early 1970s when the anti-terrorist branch and the “bomb squad” was set up to counter the threat from anarchist groups, such as the Angry Brigade, as well take part in the campaign against the IRA.

The home secretary has publicly said that no wholesale review of the future of the Met’s anti-terrorism role will be undertaken until after the Olympics but there is growing belief within Scotland Yard that a firm view already exists within the Home Office.

The national crime agency will include separate commands covering organised crime, border policing, economic crime and child exploitation. It will also include the national cybercrime unit and will for the first time have a national police intelligence role with the authority to “task” other police forces and law enforcement agencies.

Clause two of the crime and courts bill gives the home secretary the power to transfer counter-terrorism functions to the NCA by making an order. The enabling clause specifically rules out any NCA officers conducting operations in Northern Ireland without the express agreement of the chief constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland.

A decision to remove such a key national function from the Met is likely to fundamentally change the nature of the force. Cressida Dick, the assistant commissioner in charge of the Met’s specialist operations, which includes the counter-terrorism command, holds a higher rank than Keith Bristow, the Warwickshire chief constable, who is due to become the head of the national crime agency when it is set up next April.

A Home Office spokesman said: “The government has been clear that decisions on the future of counter-terrorism policing will not be taken until after the 2012 London Olympic and Paralympic Games and the NCA is fully established.”

The possibility that the home secretary would seek parliamentary approval for the power to strip Scotland Yard of this role was first set out in the Home Office’s plan for the national crime agency that it published last year. Home Office sources said that it simply negates the need for primary legislation should a decision be taken in future.

John Graham, director of the Police Foundation, an independent criminal justice thinktank, said counter-terrorism work was one of the things that the Met did extremely well. But he said that it took up a large share of resources and if the force were no longer responsible it might lead to an improved performance in its other roles.

Graham added that those setting up the NCA were already “running to catch up” and had a lot of work to do to prepare it for the functions already assigned to it.

Some senior Scotland Yard sources are concerned at the possible disruption to the existing working relationships between the Met and MI5, the regional special branch network, and other police forces. But it is understood that the Met police commissioner, Bernard Hogan-Howe, is relaxed about whether the move goes ahead or not.

Police commissioner elections leave voters baffled and indifferent, says poll

Poll results show elections for newly created posts are at risk from very low turnout, which could benefit extremist candidates

The risk of extremist candidates being elected to police and crime commissioner posts has been exposed by a poll showing that nearly 80% of the public know nothing or very little about the elections, underlining the likelihood of a low turnout of voters.

Elections for police and crime commissioner jobs are being held in November, covering 41 constabularies in England and Wales. They have been presented as part of David Cameron’s attempt to make forces more accountable.

Sir Hugh Orde, president of the Association of Chief Police Officers, has described the elections as the biggest change to policing since 1829.

But a survey looking at voters’ knowledge about the poll shows few people know the elections are to take place or understand the purpose of the new posts.

The Comres poll, commissioned by Centreground Political Communications, revealed that 57% of those questioned did not know anything about the elections, and a further 24% “not know much about them”. Of women polled, 71% said they had not heard anything about the elections.

The home secretary, Theresa May, has promised to do more to build up awareness, but the poll suggests she faces an uphill task to prevent pitiful turnouts.

Lack of awareness about the elections is highest among those in the east of England, where 74% had not heard anything about them. This compared with 48% of those in Yorkshire and Humberside, and 48% in the south-west who knew nothing of them. It is possible that the announcement by the former deputy prime minister John Prescott that he will stand for a post in Humberside has increased awareness in the region.

Paul Richards, standing to be Labour’s Ccommissioner candidate in Sussex, said: “There is a real danger that a low turnout will benefit extremist candidates. That would be a disaster for the police force.

“We have already seen in the European parliament elections how low turnout can lead to extremist parties like the BNP being elected. A member of the English Democrats has been elected mayor in Doncaster.”

Labour is due to select its candidates after postal ballots in June. The Conservatives are to select at all-member meetings in July.

The Liberal Democrats seem unlikely to put up a slate of candidates.

Although it is expected that many independent candidates, including former chief constables, will stand, only a few announcements have been made so far.

Of those people asked how they would vote, 28% said they would probably choose a candidate from the political party they normally supported; 26% said they might vote for an independent candidate.

Older people were more likely than younger people to vote for an independent candidate; 10% of those aged 18 to 24 would do this, rising to 39% of those aged 65 and over.

The Comres poll, which was conducted on 8 May, showed that being tough on crime was regarded as the single most important quality for a candidate (47%), followed by experience (44%). Being able to work across communities was regarded as important by only 29%. Labour was seen by those polled as most likely to produce the best candidates (19%), followed by the Conservatives (13%).

Darren Murphy, chief executive of the consultancy Centreground Political Communications, said: “These elections are unique in our democratic history. The challenge for the political parties is to engage the public interest in new ways whilst not appearing to be politicising policing.”

Police officer dies from gunshot wounds

Met officer found injured at North Woolwich police station, police are not seeking anyone else in connection with the shooting

A Metropolitan Police officer has died at a police station after suffering gunshot wounds.

The officer, aged in his 30s, was serving within the Aviation Security Command at London City Airport when he was found injured at North Woolwich police station in east London on Monday afternoon, police said.

London Ambulance Service attended but he was pronounced dead just after 2.50pm.

The force is not seeking anyone else in connection with the death of the PC, who has yet to be formally identified.

His next of kin have been informed and a report is being prepared for the coroner by officers from the Directorate of Professional Standards, the Met said.

The home secretary defended 20% funding cuts in a speech to a rowdy Police Federation conference in Bournemouth

The home secretary, Theresa May, had to endure heckling and jeering by rank and file police officers as she defended 20% funding cuts to policing and reforms to their pay and conditions.

May’s 25-minute set-piece speech to the 1,200 strong Police Federation conference in Bournemouth ended in complete silence.

But she had to sit stony-faced through huge cheers and applause when one officer told her she was “a disgrace” and was no longer trusted by the police, and she was heckled when she promised not to privatise the police. “You already are,” shouted one officer.

When May took to the stage at the Bournemouth conference centre she was greeted by a sea of banners saying “Enough is enough” and “20% cuts are criminal” held up by the audience of 1,200 officers. The home secretary had already taken pre-emptive steps to ensure she did not have to deliver her speech in front of a conference backdrop saying “20% cuts are criminal”.

The home secretary insisted that the police funding cuts were “affordable and manageable” and directly answered accusations that policing had been singled out to take the pain. “Let’s stop pretending the police are being picked on,” she told them. “Every part of the public sector is having to take its share of the pain.”

She also responded to growing voices within the Police Federation calling for them to be given the right to strike. “The right to strike is off the table. Keeping our communities safe is simply too important.”

The home secretary strongly defended her reform programme and said whatever final conclusions came out of the Winsor review of their pay and conditions she promised the police would remain the best paid of the emergency services.

She also tried to allay concerns about the creeping privatisation of policing by promising that it would only be warranted police officers who made arrests, who led investigations and directed operations.

“We will not privatise patrolling,” she said, but when she added: “It is because the police are crime-fighters that we will never privatise policing,” one officer shouted: “You already are.”

The home secretary had to sit through a 40-minute speech by Paul McKeever, the Police Federation chairman, who told her that 5,200 officers had already been lost, and that she was on the precipice of destroying a police service that was admired throughout the world.

“We are about to go through some fundamental change that will alter policing for ever,” McKeever said.

“This is a bad deal for police officers, it’s a bad deal for the service and most of all it’s a bad deal for the British public.”

During her speech, the home secretary announced that the police prosecution powers are to be extended to take over nearly 50% of the cases that go through magistrates’ courts. She said they, rather than the Crown Prosecution Service, would have the power to prosecute 500,000 uncontested traffic cases where defendants either did not enter a plea or failed to turn up at court. She was considering extending police prosecutions to other low-level offences and would make an announcement later this summer, she said.

Why insults are a political issue

The Feel Free to Insult Me campaign wants to repeal the law against insulting words or behaviour. But do we really want more unpleasantness?

The problem with campaigns against political correctness is that the people who front them always sound like cocks. I hope they won’t be offended when I say that. Not because I am afraid I might be arrested, just because they would get a kick out of it.

So this week saw the launch of Feel Free to Insult Me, a campaign – backed by a very rainbow of opinion – to get section 5 of the Public Order Act of 1986 repealed. This makes it illegal to engage in “insulting words or behaviour”. Those who have signed up to it include the National Secular Society and the Christian Institute, the Peter Tatchell Foundation and Big Brother Watch. The Daily Mail called this an “unlikely alliance”, but in fact there’s nothing unlikely about it – the sorts of people who are likely to come in for insults that they feel really insulted by are exactly the sort of people who are likely to insult people. We can give them the umbrella term “people who feel strongly about stuff”. So Tatchell is campaigning against the “insult” clause having been arrested under it, for a different campaign, in which he waved a placard at some Islamic extremists who were preaching death to homosexuals. On balance, he would rather they be allowed actively to seek his death, so long as he could protest against them, than that neither be allowed openly to protest against one another at all. I have some sympathy with this view, even while it led Tatchell to argue – against Sarah Montague on the Today programme yesterday morning – that it was fine for Westboro Baptist church to picket the funeral of a man who had been beaten to death for being homosexual, with signs saying “Death Penalty for Fags”.

I understand free speech and how great it is, but I cannot help remarking that people who make it their business to defend insults are generally defending the hegemony against the outlier – or, if you prefer, the strong against the weak. They are defending the rights of people to make racist comments, which is to say, the racial majority against the minority. Or they are defending people such as Frankie Boyle and Ricky Gervais, because what kind of a world is this if you can’t get a simple laugh out of a disabled person who probably can’t read anyway? And if anybody ever made a joke that was so nuclear funny about a person with a disability that my tonsils shot out of my mouth in sheer exuberance, then I would have to revise this. But at the moment, I can’t help thinking, is that really a good use of your time? Defending the rights of unpleasant people to be unpleasant? Aren’t there better civic causes for you to concern yourself with? (I don’t think this about Tatchell, incidentally; he fights for a thousand civic causes).

However, if you look at the arrests made under section 5, you will have to admit that it’s making us look a little sensitive. A student was arrested for telling a policeman his horse was gay. A teenager was arrested for whispering “woof” at a labrador. A Christian street preacher, Dale McAlpine, was arrested for telling someone homosexuality was a sin. Another teenager was arrested for holding a placard outside the Church of Scientology’s London headquarters, saying it was a dangerous cult. These are all charges that we should be able to weather, especially the mounted policeman who wasn’t even taking offence on his own behalf. It’s salient to point out that none of these arrests ever amounted to anything, so what we are really looking at is not a flaw in the law, but a handful of overzealous policemen, over a relatively long period (the 26 years since the law was passed).

The libertarian Claire Fox says: “It’s true these cases were just overzealous policemen. But it’s also a sign of the fact that we have become more censorious and people are encouraged to have a thin skin. I don’t think that insults, however extraordinarily crass or unpleasant, should be the subject of the law. It might well be that you abhor what people say, but that shouldn’t be a matter of police intervention.” She mentions Twitter and how quickly disapprobation snowballs, so that someone making an obnoxious remark will be deluged with rage and reported to the administrators from thousands of other users, most of whom were never following the offender in the first place. “There’s a very snitchy atmosphere.”

But since we raise Twitter, we may as well admit that those insults are overwhelmingly racist or misogynist. Not to challenge them would be to sanction a system of prejudice that you don’t just abhor, that actively makes people’s lives harder, in a more unpleasant world. But here’s the thing, Fox returns: not reporting someone doesn’t mean not arguing with them. “I would rather these things were said. I would rather that we dealt with them. Fight back. Shout. Say: ‘That’s unacceptable.’ Find your version of sending people to Coventry. Tolerance means you are not frightened of any opinions or any words.”

A lot of the legal framework around things you are not allowed to say is based on words having this incendiary power, being able to make people do things. Racist cant is criminalised on the basis of its ability to “incite violence”. Sexist catcalls are “harassment” not because they are physical, but because they foster an atmosphere in which women feel harassed. Brendan O’Neill, a writer and contrarian (to use his full title) says this demonstrates a “real conflation of words and actions, a total inability to distinguish the two”. He is against any controls of “any speech whatsoever”, on what I think a legal mind would term the “sticks and stones defence”. I am mellowing horribly, rotting like fruit from the inside out. Listening to Fox and O’Neill, I came round almost entirely to their point of view. But I can’t shift the belief that when racist or sexist or any other kinds of attacks occur – when the stones are thrown – it’s never out of nowhere, is it? It’s always in the context of a perceived tolerance of bigotry overall.

It is true, however, that regardless of over-keen policemen trying to lock people up for a laugh, there is a wider sense that once somebody is called something “offensive”, the conversation is supposed to end. As Fox says: “You do tread on eggshells if you want to say complicated things, for fear of insulting someone. So, for instance, I might say something about child protection having gone too far. And someone might say: ‘I find that insulting, if you’d been abused like me …’ Immediately, that’s a personal front that can’t be breached. It gets in the way of political conversations that are actually quite important to have.”

As Mark Davies, director of campaigns for the charity Rethink Mental Illness, points out: “I’m not convinced that the law is the best way to tackle insulting and stigmatising language around mental illness. People often use words such as ‘schizo’ with the law already in place, so it seems irrelevant whether it’s changed or not.”

If large conversations about politics and political identity and policy are shut down by a manoeuvre that makes all political questions personal, it is interesting to note that insults that are personal continue unabashed. You are still, broadly, allowed to call people ugly. With women there might be a taint of sexism, but with men it’s open season. You are still allowed to run riot with people’s body shape and hair (I crowd-sourced this to Twitter: “@robbielumsden: You can talk to me when you’ve found your chin, you fat faced fuck”; “@thelittlejen: I’m naturally quite skinny, which prompted someone on the tube to tap me on the shoulder and ask if I was dying of Aids”).

Overwhelmingly, there are some who almost take it as a duty to insult people who are exercising. If you go jogging, people shout: “Run, Forrest, run”, or they sing the theme tune to Rocky sarcastically, or they shout: “Get a fucking taxi.” One guy got chased by a bull mastiff, and its owner said: “It’s because you’re hairy and sweaty, like prey.” Another woman had someone come up and bark in her face. If you cycle, people shout: “Legs, legs, Byker Grove!” A woman doing tai chi in a park said: “Someone yelled: ‘Nurse, prick my boil’, and threw a satsuma at me.”

What do people who exercise have in common? They are not the underdog, they are the overdog. They are doing the right thing; they are keeping it together; they can go to their work medical without having to spend the whole thing with their eyes closed. The joy of insulting them is opaque (but it is definitely there), and yet one thing is quite clear: an exercising person, insulted, would never call the police, and if they did, the police would never arrest anybody.

So what we have effectively criminalised here is not the act of insulting, but the act of insulting with an agenda, and that agenda is normally one of persecution. We criminalised meanness. And even if we could not make it work – because identity politics just aren’t that simple, and one person’s underdog is another person’s oppressor – even if it has to be repealed, I think we should still look back on that moment in 1986 and say, we made it a criminal offence to Be Mean. It probably wasn’t right, but it was quite sweet.

Sam Hallam to appeal against murder conviction

Young man jailed as a teenager over death of trainee chef in London to challenge guilty verdict after new evidence emerges

A young man convicted of murder will take his case to the court of appeal on Wednesday after new evidence emerged raising doubts over key parts of the prosecution case against him.

The appeal court will examine evidence that questions the safety of the murder conviction of Sam Hallam, 24, from Islington, north London.

Hallam – who was 17 at the time – was convicted in 2005 of murdering trainee chef Essayas Kassahun in Hoxton in October 2004. He was sentenced to life with the recommendation he serve 12 years.

But his family and friends, including the actor Ray Winstone, have campaigned to have his case reopened for a number of years.

After Hallam failed to have his conviction overturned at his first appeal, his case was referred to the criminal cases review commission (CCRC), which spent three years examining the evidence. They instructed Thames Valley police to carry out inquiries on their behalf, which involved examining the whole of the original Metropolitan police murder investigation.

Their report is key to Hallam’s claim of innocence, and unearths new evidence said to undermine the disputed identification evidence from two witnesses that put Hallam at the scene of the killing.

The Thames Valley report is also understood to contain criticism of the original Met police investigation into the killing. The original inquiry did not analyse mobile phone cell site evidence or CCTV footage, it is understood.

That inquiry was led by then Detective Chief Inspector Michael Broster, who was recently criticised by the coroner in the inquest into the death of MI6 officer Gareth Williams over his role as the liaison point with MI6.

The Westminster coroner, Fiona Wilcox, criticised Broster – now a detective superintendent in the anti-terrorist unit, for failing to inform the head of the Williams investigation that he had found nine memory sticks and a holdall belonging to the dead man at his MI6 office. Instead of passing these to the inquiry team he left MI6 to examine them.

It is understood in the Hallam case there is further criticism. Broster’s murder investigation is found to be of poor quality and to lack control.

Hallam, was a kitchen fitter who planned a career in the army when he was arrested for the murder of Kassahun in 2004. Kassahun, 21, had come to the aid of a friend, Louis Colley, who was being attacked on Old Street, in central London, by a mob of youths over a trivial perceived insult.

Hallam was convicted on the basis of disputed identification from two witnesses who placed him at the scene of the killing. In his defence, Hallam claimed he was playing football with a friend at the time. He said he knew there was going to be trouble on the night of the killing as a mob set off to look for Colley and had wanted to avoid it.

One of seven charged with the murder, Hallam initially, on the advice of his lawyer, declined to answer police questions, something his supporters claim may have counted against him at the trial.

Another man, Bullabeck Ringblong, was also convicted of the murder and is serving life. The trial judge recommended Hallam, who is in HMP Bullingdon, should serve a minimum of 12 years.

The CCRC said it decided to refer the case after deciding there was “the real possibility that the court of appeal would now quash the conviction”.

Hallam’s appeal is set to last two days in the Royal Courts of Justice in London.

Police need training to section vulnerable people | Mark Brown

Restraining people with mental health problems is a delicate task – tactics used against criminals are not appropriate

The case of Peter Russell, a 58-year-old man with Alzheimer’s, being repeatedly tasered by police officers as he resisted being taken into hospital under section, was horrifying. It’s hard to imagine how it would feel looking on as a loved one was acted against in that way, but beyond the shock, it is always worth asking: what could be done instead? Why, in 2012, is our treatment of people with severe mental health or cognitive difficulties still so entwined with the apparatus of policing? The answer, from the point of view of mental health services at least, seems simply to be “it’s a dirty job and someone else is going to do it”. But this doesn’t go far enough.

Sectioning, or taking away someone’s right to freedom so he or she can be taken for treatment or assessment, is one of the most challenging areas in mental health. To be physically restrained at a time of great personal disorder, desperation or distress is never going to be a good experience, and as such it requires a sensitive and thoughtful approach. .

In Russell’s case, because of his dementia, it is difficult for him to give a detailed account of the ordeal. But “sectioning” is used across the spectrum of mental illness and cognitive impairment. So what do those who have been on the receiving end think? I spoke to a 36-year-old woman with dissociative identity disorder about her experience of the police taking her to a place of safety so that she could be assessed under the Mental Health Act:

“I had gone ‘missing’ so there had been a six-hour manhunt by the local force. There were around five officers present the entire time and I was fortunate that my community psychiatric nurse (CPN) was also there. I was confused, scared and surrounded by what I perceived to be threatening people. It was never explained to me what was happening, why the police were there and what their role was.
“I was taken out to a police van by five officers and locked in. I was taken to the local acute ward by two officers who then had to wait with me until the ward took over my ‘care’ again. This took hours. The police made it clear they were unhappy at having to babysit me. I don’t think it’s too much to ask that should police involvement be necessary to prevent us endangering ourselves or others, that some sort of mental health professional be present [as well].”

As ever, some of this comes down to resources. Police are not the only people who can legally carry out restraint in cases where someone is being sectioned involuntarily, but are often the professionals on the scene. Section 136 of the Mental Health Act allows a police officer to hold someone for up to 72 hours until they are assessed by a relevant professional, meaning mental health care experts do not need to be present while an individual is detained by the police. Speaking to blogger Mental Health Cop, a police inspector himself, about the general role of police in cases like this, he told me:

“The officers were under a legal duty to get [the person] safely admitted. It’s a common problem across the UK that community-based nurses and staff don’t appear to have the training or they aren’t deployable. I have a strong view, and I know many cops share it, that if the NHS and mental health professionals want to be in the coercion business, and especially if they object to police safety and restraint tactics – let’s remember, they were designed for burglars, rapists and drunks – then they should train and deploy their staff to do therapeutically appropriate restraint.”

Being sectioned is often a highly unpleasant and distressing experience. If cases like Russell’s make us feel uncomfortable, but we accept that to get people treatment we sometimes have to move them there against their will, we have to think about how we can do it differently, and, in the current climate, how we find the money.

We need to look beyond individual cases and ask whether, as a society, we are comfortable with the interaction between law enforcement officers and vulnerable people. Police involvement is not anyone’s solution of choice in cases like this, but if police officers do remain the people most regularly involved in such cases, then they must have appropriate training and support that helps them to differentiate people who are unwell from people with criminal intentions.

Restraining people with mental health problems is a delicate task – tactics used against criminals are not appropriate

The case of Peter Russell, a 58-year-old man with Alzheimer’s, being repeatedly tasered by police officers as he resisted being taken into hospital under section, was horrifying. It’s hard to imagine how it would feel looking on as a loved one was acted against in that way, but beyond the shock, it is always worth asking: what could be done instead? Why, in 2012, is our treatment of people with severe mental health or cognitive difficulties still so entwined with the apparatus of policing? The answer, from the point of view of mental health services at least, seems simply to be “it’s a dirty job and someone else is going to do it”. But this doesn’t go far enough.

Sectioning, or taking away someone’s right to freedom so he or she can be taken for treatment or assessment, is one of the most challenging areas in mental health. To be physically restrained at a time of great personal disorder, desperation or distress is never going to be a good experience, and as such it requires a sensitive and thoughtful approach. .

In Russell’s case, because of his dementia, it is difficult for him to give a detailed account of the ordeal. But “sectioning” is used across the spectrum of mental illness and cognitive impairment. So what do those who have been on the receiving end think? I spoke to a 36-year-old woman with dissociative identity disorder about her experience of the police taking her to a place of safety so that she could be assessed under the Mental Health Act:

“I had gone ‘missing’ so there had been a six-hour manhunt by the local force. There were around five officers present the entire time and I was fortunate that my community psychiatric nurse (CPN) was also there. I was confused, scared and surrounded by what I perceived to be threatening people. It was never explained to me what was happening, why the police were there and what their role was.
“I was taken out to a police van by five officers and locked in. I was taken to the local acute ward by two officers who then had to wait with me until the ward took over my ‘care’ again. This took hours. The police made it clear they were unhappy at having to babysit me. I don’t think it’s too much to ask that should police involvement be necessary to prevent us endangering ourselves or others, that some sort of mental health professional be present [as well].”

As ever, some of this comes down to resources. Police are not the only people who can legally carry out restraint in cases where someone is being sectioned involuntarily, but are often the professionals on the scene. Section 136 of the Mental Health Act allows a police officer to hold someone for up to 72 hours until they are assessed by a relevant professional, meaning mental health care experts do not need to be present while an individual is detained by the police. Speaking to blogger Mental Health Cop, a police inspector himself, about the general role of police in cases like this, he told me:

“The officers were under a legal duty to get [the person] safely admitted. It’s a common problem across the UK that community-based nurses and staff don’t appear to have the training or they aren’t deployable. I have a strong view, and I know many cops share it, that if the NHS and mental health professionals want to be in the coercion business, and especially if they object to police safety and restraint tactics – let’s remember, they were designed for burglars, rapists and drunks – then they should train and deploy their staff to do therapeutically appropriate restraint.”

Being sectioned is often a highly unpleasant and distressing experience. If cases like Russell’s make us feel uncomfortable, but we accept that to get people treatment we sometimes have to move them there against their will, we have to think about how we can do it differently, and, in the current climate, how we find the money.

We need to look beyond individual cases and ask whether, as a society, we are comfortable with the interaction between law enforcement officers and vulnerable people. Police involvement is not anyone’s solution of choice in cases like this, but if police officers do remain the people most regularly involved in such cases, then they must have appropriate training and support that helps them to differentiate people who are unwell from people with criminal intentions.

Why insults are a political issue

The Feel Free to Insult Me campaign wants to repeal the law against insulting words or behaviour. But do we really want more unpleasantness?

The problem with campaigns against political correctness is that the people who front them always sound like cocks. I hope they won’t be offended when I say that. Not because I am afraid I might be arrested, just because they would get a kick out of it.

So this week saw the launch of Feel Free to Insult Me, a campaign – backed by a very rainbow of opinion – to get section 5 of the Public Order Act of 1986 repealed. This makes it illegal to engage in “insulting words or behaviour”. Those who have signed up to it include the National Secular Society and the Christian Institute, the Peter Tatchell Foundation and Big Brother Watch. The Daily Mail called this an “unlikely alliance”, but in fact there’s nothing unlikely about it – the sorts of people who are likely to come in for insults that they feel really insulted by are exactly the sort of people who are likely to insult people. We can give them the umbrella term “people who feel strongly about stuff”. So Tatchell is campaigning against the “insult” clause having been arrested under it, for a different campaign, in which he waved a placard at some Islamic extremists who were preaching death to homosexuals. On balance, he would rather they be allowed actively to seek his death, so long as he could protest against them, than that neither be allowed openly to protest against one another at all. I have some sympathy with this view, even while it led Tatchell to argue – against Sarah Montague on the Today programme yesterday morning – that it was fine for Westboro Baptist church to picket the funeral of a man who had been beaten to death for being homosexual, with signs saying “Death Penalty for Fags”.

I understand free speech and how great it is, but I cannot help remarking that people who make it their business to defend insults are generally defending the hegemony against the outlier – or, if you prefer, the strong against the weak. They are defending the rights of people to make racist comments, which is to say, the racial majority against the minority. Or they are defending people such as Frankie Boyle and Ricky Gervais, because what kind of a world is this if you can’t get a simple laugh out of a disabled person who probably can’t read anyway? And if anybody ever made a joke that was so nuclear funny about a person with a disability that my tonsils shot out of my mouth in sheer exuberance, then I would have to revise this. But at the moment, I can’t help thinking, is that really a good use of your time? Defending the rights of unpleasant people to be unpleasant? Aren’t there better civic causes for you to concern yourself with? (I don’t think this about Tatchell, incidentally; he fights for a thousand civic causes).

However, if you look at the arrests made under section 5, you will have to admit that it’s making us look a little sensitive. A student was arrested for telling a policeman his horse was gay. A teenager was arrested for whispering “woof” at a labrador. A Christian street preacher, Dale McAlpine, was arrested for telling someone homosexuality was a sin. Another teenager was arrested for holding a placard outside the Church of Scientology’s London headquarters, saying it was a dangerous cult. These are all charges that we should be able to weather, especially the mounted policeman who wasn’t even taking offence on his own behalf. It’s salient to point out that none of these arrests ever amounted to anything, so what we are really looking at is not a flaw in the law, but a handful of overzealous policemen, over a relatively long period (the 26 years since the law was passed).

The libertarian Claire Fox says: “It’s true these cases were just overzealous policemen. But it’s also a sign of the fact that we have become more censorious and people are encouraged to have a thin skin. I don’t think that insults, however extraordinarily crass or unpleasant, should be the subject of the law. It might well be that you abhor what people say, but that shouldn’t be a matter of police intervention.” She mentions Twitter and how quickly disapprobation snowballs, so that someone making an obnoxious remark will be deluged with rage and reported to the administrators from thousands of other users, most of whom were never following the offender in the first place. “There’s a very snitchy atmosphere.”

But since we raise Twitter, we may as well admit that those insults are overwhelmingly racist or misogynist. Not to challenge them would be to sanction a system of prejudice that you don’t just abhor, that actively makes people’s lives harder, in a more unpleasant world. But here’s the thing, Fox returns: not reporting someone doesn’t mean not arguing with them. “I would rather these things were said. I would rather that we dealt with them. Fight back. Shout. Say: ‘That’s unacceptable.’ Find your version of sending people to Coventry. Tolerance means you are not frightened of any opinions or any words.”

A lot of the legal framework around things you are not allowed to say is based on words having this incendiary power, being able to make people do things. Racist cant is criminalised on the basis of its ability to “incite violence”. Sexist catcalls are “harassment” not because they are physical, but because they foster an atmosphere in which women feel harassed. Brendan O’Neill, a writer and contrarian (to use his full title) says this demonstrates a “real conflation of words and actions, a total inability to distinguish the two”. He is against any controls of “any speech whatsoever”, on what I think a legal mind would term the “sticks and stones defence”. I am mellowing horribly, rotting like fruit from the inside out. Listening to Fox and O’Neill, I came round almost entirely to their point of view. But I can’t shift the belief that when racist or sexist or any other kinds of attacks occur – when the stones are thrown – it’s never out of nowhere, is it? It’s always in the context of a perceived tolerance of bigotry overall.

It is true, however, that regardless of over-keen policemen trying to lock people up for a laugh, there is a wider sense that once somebody is called something “offensive”, the conversation is supposed to end. As Fox says: “You do tread on eggshells if you want to say complicated things, for fear of insulting someone. So, for instance, I might say something about child protection having gone too far. And someone might say: ‘I find that insulting, if you’d been abused like me …’ Immediately, that’s a personal front that can’t be breached. It gets in the way of political conversations that are actually quite important to have.”

As Mark Davies, director of campaigns for the charity Rethink Mental Illness, points out: “I’m not convinced that the law is the best way to tackle insulting and stigmatising language around mental illness. People often use words such as ‘schizo’ with the law already in place, so it seems irrelevant whether it’s changed or not.”

If large conversations about politics and political identity and policy are shut down by a manoeuvre that makes all political questions personal, it is interesting to note that insults that are personal continue unabashed. You are still, broadly, allowed to call people ugly. With women there might be a taint of sexism, but with men it’s open season. You are still allowed to run riot with people’s body shape and hair (I crowd-sourced this to Twitter: “@robbielumsden: You can talk to me when you’ve found your chin, you fat faced fuck”; “@thelittlejen: I’m naturally quite skinny, which prompted someone on the tube to tap me on the shoulder and ask if I was dying of Aids”).

Overwhelmingly, there are some who almost take it as a duty to insult people who are exercising. If you go jogging, people shout: “Run, Forrest, run”, or they sing the theme tune to Rocky sarcastically, or they shout: “Get a fucking taxi.” One guy got chased by a bull mastiff, and its owner said: “It’s because you’re hairy and sweaty, like prey.” Another woman had someone come up and bark in her face. If you cycle, people shout: “Legs, legs, Byker Grove!” A woman doing tai chi in a park said: “Someone yelled: ‘Nurse, prick my boil’, and threw a satsuma at me.”

What do people who exercise have in common? They are not the underdog, they are the overdog. They are doing the right thing; they are keeping it together; they can go to their work medical without having to spend the whole thing with their eyes closed. The joy of insulting them is opaque (but it is definitely there), and yet one thing is quite clear: an exercising person, insulted, would never call the police, and if they did, the police would never arrest anybody.

So what we have effectively criminalised here is not the act of insulting, but the act of insulting with an agenda, and that agenda is normally one of persecution. We criminalised meanness. And even if we could not make it work – because identity politics just aren’t that simple, and one person’s underdog is another person’s oppressor – even if it has to be repealed, I think we should still look back on that moment in 1986 and say, we made it a criminal offence to Be Mean. It probably wasn’t right, but it was quite sweet.

• Unemployment falls by 45,000
• Bank of England lowers 2012 growth forecast to 0.8%
• My PMQs verdict
• Lunchtime summary

2.00pm: Here’s a lunchtime summary.

• David Cameron has suggested the Greece leaving the euro could be a possible solution to the Eurozone crisis. He made the comment during PMQs in response to a question from the Tory MP Sir Peter Tapsell.

It either has to make up or it is looking at a potential break up. That is the choice they have to make.

He made the comment even though George Osborne said only yesterday that “open speculation” about Greece leaving the euro was damaging the whole of Europe.

• Cameron has welcomed the news that unemployment has fallen by 45,000. But, speaking at PMQs, he also insisted that he was not complacent.

It is welcome that we have had the largest rise in employment for over a year. The number of people in work since the last election is up by 370,000 and private sector jobs are now up by over 600,000. We are not remotely complacent about this because although there is good news about youth unemployment and the claimant count coming down, there are still too many people in part-time work who want full-time work, and also we still have the challenge of tackling long-term unemployment.

As Heather Stewart reports, the total number of jobless fell to 2.63 million, according to the Office for National Statistics, its lowest level since last summer. That brought the unemployment rate in the first quarter of 2012 down to 8.2%, from 8.4% in the last three months of 2011.

• The Bank of England has revised its growth forecast for 2012 down from 1.2% to 0.8%. At a news conference, Sir Mervyn King, the Bank’s governor, said there was a “risk of a storm heading our way from the continent”.

We have been through a big global financial crisis, the biggest downturn in world output since the 1930s, the biggest banking crisis in this country’s history, the biggest fiscal deficit in our peacetime history, and our biggest trading partner, the euro area, is tearing itself apart without any obvious solution. The idea that we could reasonably hope to sail serenely through this with growth close to the long-run average and inflation at 2% strikes me as wholly unrealistic.

The Bank also said the Diamond Jubilee celebrations could depress growth by 0.5% in the second quarter of 2012.

• Jack Straw has told the Leveson inquiry that Rupert Murdoch enjoyed “playing with political leaders”. Straw also said that someone in Number 10 (but not Alastair Campbell) was responsible for the leaking of the Macpherson report into the police inquiry into the murder of Stephen Lawrence. There are more details on our Leveson live blog.

• Theresa May, the home secretary, has told the Police Federation that it must take its share of public spending cuts. “Every part of the public sector is having to take its share of the pain,” she told the federation’s conference. She received a frosty reception and, in the Q&A afterwards, one officer told her she was “a disgrace”.

I’m winding up early today, but I’ll be back as usual tomorrow.

Thanks for the comments.

12.35pm: PMQs Verdict: I don’t know about you, but I found that uninspiring. Ed Miliband asked good questions about frontline police officers and nursing jobs, which David Cameron didn’t really want to answer, and he had what was potentially a very good question about what conversations Cameron has had with François Hollande about an EU growth plan (answer – none) which failed because Cameron sidestepped it quite easily. He was also wise to use the frontline cuts quote from Cameron’s appearance on the Andrew Marr show on the Sunday before the general election (here, at 10.30am) which is so damaging that Miliband should probably use it every week. But Cameron struck the right note on the unemployment figures, and he had a robust line on Labour’s record on spending (particularly on the police, where Labour at times is sounding like the parliamentary wing of the Police Federation).

The jokes were good. Cameron’s line about Gordon Brown’s phone-chucking habits was okay, and Miliband used the LOL revelation brilliantly.

But perhaps what was most interesting was Cameron’s attempt to depict the appointment of Jon Cruddas to head Labour’s policy review as a lurch to the left. Cameron has almost certainly got Cruddas wrong; he’s not a union lackey, and his politics are much more subtle and unconventional than Cameron implied. (Patrick Wintour summarised them well in his story yesterday.) But Cameron was right to say that Liam Byrne, who was sidelined yesterday, is at the far end of Labour’s deficit-acknowledging spectrum.

And I also found myself wondering whether Miliband’s “out of touch” line is really such a good idea. That’s because I’ve been reading Northern Lights, a Policy Exchange report on voting behaviour based on extensive polling and focus group research (pdf). (If you’re a hardcore politico, it really is a must read.) One of the many findings in the report is that people think all politicians are out of touch. Here’s what it says about the findings of focus groups involving soft Tory and Labour voters.

[The political leaders] were all accused of “not living in the real world”. Attitudes to all were quite similar: “David Cameron isn’t any more posh than Ed Miliband. They’re cut from the same cloth, with slightly different views” according to one participant. As well as having similar backgrounds, the leaders tended to behave in the same way, breaking promises and behaving in a typically “political” way.

This is a problem for all the political leaders, not just Miliband. But, interestingly, one of the people who seems to understand the alienation of the political class best is Jon Cruddas.

12.32pm: Labour’s Alan Johnson says Hull was included in round one of regional growth fund announcements. Thirteen months later, no money has been paid, he says.

Cameron says half the regional growth fund projects are underway. He will look into the Hull case.

12.31pm: Labour’s Peter Hain asks Cameron if he agrees that building a barrage across the Severn to produce energy is a “no brainer”.

Cameron says he heard Hain making the case for this on Farming Today this week. He will listen to the representations Hain makes.

12.30pm: Tessa Munt, a Lib Dem, asks Cameron to ensure that all employees paid by the state pay their taxes properly.

Cameron says he agrees. He says the government was “shocked” to discover how many state employees were being paid through private companies to cut their tax liability.

12.29pm: Labour’s Dan Jarvis asks Cameron to accept that the sharp increase in care costs revealed today is due to local government cuts.

Cameron says he does not accept this. The government has put money into care. A white paper will be published later this year.

12.28pm: Cameron says there are been an 80% increase in the number of pupils taking science at GCSE since 2010.

12.26pm: Labour’s Simon Danczuk asks about the Rochdale case. He pays tributes to the girls who gave evidence. Will Cameron support a serious case review.

Cameron agrees with what Danczuk said. And he says Danczuk has been “brave” to talk about this as a problem affecting particular communities. He will consider the need for a serious case review, he says.

12.25pm: Cameron says he hopes to deliver more than 400,000 apprenticeships this year.

12.24pm: Labour’s Tony Lloyd asks Cameron if, in the light of the Rochdale case, he will order an inquiry into what went wrong at children’s homes.

Cameron says Michael Gove has asked the children’s commissioner to look into this. It is important to get to the bottom of this “truly, truly dreadful case”.

12.23pm: Cameron says a 1% interest rate increase will add £1,000 to the annual cost of an average mortgage.

12.22pm: Labour’s Ian Austin asks Cameron what has caused the “calamitous collapse” in his reputation.

Cameron says the Bank of England governor said today the government was coming up with a textbook response to the problems left by people like Austin.

12.21pm: Stuart Andrew, a Conservative, says that, as someone who grew up in a council house, he knows how proud tenants were when they could buy their homes. Will Cameron encourage this?

Yes, says Cameron. He is increasing the discount.

12.20pm: Nigel Dodds, a DUP MP, says the police force in Northern Ireland kept body parts from murder victims without telling their relatives. Other forces in the UK have done the same. Will Cameron order an independent review of this practice?

Cameron expresses sympathy for the families. He is sorry the report was leaked. It was meant to be announced on Monday. The Northern Ireland secretary will consider the case for an inquiry.

12.19pm: Cameron says the fact that there are so many adults with reading difficulties is “a tragedy”.

12.18pm: Labour’s Hugh Bayley asks Cameron to reverse the VAT increase.

Cameron says VAT had to go up because Britain had the biggest budget deficit anywhere in Europe. In his memoirs, Alistair Darling said he too was in favour of raising VAT.

12.17pm: Jo Johnson, a Conservative, asks Cameron to welcome the news that Britain is a net car exporter.

Cameron says the deficit has been cut by a quarter. Britain is on the way to balancing the budget. And it is “extremely good news” that Britain has a trade surplus in cars.

12.15pm: PMQs Snap Verdict: A rambling, inconclusive PMQs largely devoted to a repeat of the “out-of-touch versus weak” contest that we’ve seen so many times already. More later …

12.11pm: Miliband says Cameron will have training before he goes before Leveson. It should include anger management. How many nursing jobs have been cut?

Cameron says the number of clinical staff has gone up. Miliband says spending on the NHS is irresponsible, he says. But the numbers waiting for less than 18 weeks have gone down.

Miliband says the number of nurses has done down by 3,500 since Cameron became prime minister. That’s because Cameron spent money on a top-down reorganisation that no one wanted. The government is just on the side of top earners. They are unfair and out of touch and stand up for the wrong people, he says.

Cameron says the government has cut tax for every working person in the country. And council tax has been frozen. Miliband’s big decision this week was to replace Liam Byrne, who acknowledged the need to deal with the deficit, with Jon Cruddas, who is close to the unions. Cameron says he often wonders whether Miliband’s problem is that he is weak or leftwing; in fact, Miliband’s problem is that he is both, says Cameron.

12.07pm: Ed Miliband says Cameron did not address the question about Hague’s advice. And Cameron is trying to claim Hollande as an ally. “What is he on?” Miliband asks about police job cuts.

Cameron says it is not surprising Miliband wants to stop talking about the economy. He says interest rates would be higher under Labour. On the police, he says HM Inspector of Constabulary has said the proportion of officers on the frontline has gone up.

Miliband says, on the economy, we are in a double dip recession. Cameron says the “proportion” of frontline officers is going up. But that’s because he is sacking so many backoffice staff. The overall numbers are going down.

Miliband says Cameron said before the election that any cabinet minister proposing frontline reductions would be sent back to think again. No wonder the police are furious.

Cameron says whoever was in power would have to cut police budgets. But if you do not have the courage to cut pay and allowances, you would have to make the case for deeper cuts. He quotes a Labour spokesman says he does not accept the need for pay to be cut.

12.03pm: Ed Miliband rises to a big cheer (because his poll ratings are up, presumably). He pays his own tribute to the dead servicemen.

He asks Cameron what discussions he has had with the new president of France about a growth plan.

Cameron welcomes the fact that Miliband has welcomed the fall in unemployment.

He says he had a brief discussion with the new president after his election. He will have a longer discussion with him at the G8 summit. Cameron says he has proposed many ideas to encourage growth in the EU.

Miliband says Cameron should have seen François Hollande when he came to London. But he is sure a text message and an LOL will go down well.

Does Cameron really agree with William Hague that the solution to the crisis if for people to work harder.

Cameron says he may have been using his phone too much, but at least he knows how to use a mobile phone – unlike Gordon Brown, who just threw his at those working for him.

He says Hollande agrees with Cameron on the need to cut his deficit.

Ed Balls himself said long-term low interest rates were the best measure of financial stability, he says.

12.02pm: Paul Maynard, a Conservative, welcomes the fall in unemployment, and the rise in employment. Will Cameron continue to invest in back-to-work schemes?

Cameron says the largest rise in employment for over a year today is welcome. But he is “not remotely complacent”. There are too many people in part-time work, he says.

12.01pm: David Cameron starts with a tribute to two soldiers killed in Afghanistan on Saturday. They were both courageous men, he says.

12.00pm: David Cameron arrived early for PMQs, apparently. He sat through a chunk of Northern Ireland questions.

11.59am: PMQs is about to start.

11.53am: It sounds as if the justice committee hearing on the Freedom of Information Act this morning was quite fun. Dominic Grieve, the (Conservative) attorney general, was up first up. According to PoliticsHome, he said the FoI could have a “chilling effect” if it led to officials communicating through non-official channels because they did not want their advice to be revealed under the FoI.

The possibility of a chilling effect if routinely this material were put in the public domain is clearly a real issue … The real risk is that you end up starting getting decisions made which are not recorded and people are, you know, so worried that everything that is going to be said is going to go out into the public domain at an early stage that they may not express their views and I do think that’s important.

But then Lord McNally, the (Lib Dem) justice minister, popped up and said he disagreed. He said there was an “overclaiming of the chilling” effect and that he had not noticed officials holding back on their advice.

11.43am: Theresa May, the home secretary, is speaking at the Police Federation conference now. Before she started she had to listen to Paul McKeever, the federation’s chairman. My colleague Alan Travis has been using his Twitter feed to give a flavour of the occasion.

Theresa May insists her podium is moved at Police Fed conf so she is not standing in front of logo say ‘Cutting police by 20% is criminal’

Police Federation conference audience stood up and held up banners saying “Enough is Enough” as Theresa May takes to the stage

Poice Fed chairman Paul McKeever says 700 officers have left in Devon and Cornwall alone and links it with 127% rise in road traffic deaths

Pol Fed chair says the British model of policing is being changed with large swathes being privatised and office of constable under threat

Theresa May has had to sit through nearly 40 minutes of this speech from Police Fed chair Paul McKeever warning about the cuts

Pol Fed chair Paul McKeever tells Theresa May that almost every off-duty police officer marched in London last week to say enough is enough

May has just told the police in her speech that they are wrong to think that they are being picked on. All sections of the public sector are facing cuts, she said.

11.37am: The Times story about the civil service contracting out policy work to thinktanks (see 10.38am) came up at the 11am Downing Street lobby briefing. The prime minister’s spokesman seemed happy to stand it up.

We’re working on a civil service action plan. One of the areas we’re looking at is policy development. I think that specific idea [contracting policy work to private sector] was raised by the cabinet secretary at an Institute for Government event back in March and reported by some of you at the time. If you think about how we reform the civil service, build on the strengths of the civil service, address some of the weaknesses of the civil service, we’ll be looking at all the areas of civil service work, including policy.

11.11am: The full text of Sir Mervyn King‘s comments at the start of his quarterly inflation report press conference is now on the Bank of England website (pdf).

Here are the key points.

• Sir Mervyn King said that he expected the economy to recover, but that recovery would be “slow and uncertain”.

The economy will continue to face strong headwinds over the forecast period. Underlying concerns about balance sheets, especially in the financial sector with its exposure to the euro area, mean that the path of recovery is likely to be slow and uncertain … In the near term growth is subdued, but the recovery gradually strengthens as consumption is supported by a gentle recovery in real take-home pay, investment picks up from its current low levels, and there is continued support from net trade. By the end of the forecast period there is judged to be as much chance that growth will be above as below its long term average rate.

• He said the Eurozone crisis was already having an effect on the UK economy and that it was impossible to predict what would happen if it got much worse.

The biggest risk to the recovery stems from the difficulties facing the euro area, our main trading partner. As in recent Reports, the Committee believes that there is no meaningful way to quantify the most extreme possible outcomes, and they are therefore excluded from the fan charts. But even the threat of those more extreme outcomes is enough to affect the outlook for
the UK, through its effect on bank funding costs, asset prices, including theexchange rate, and the confidence of households and businesses.

• The Bank now believes the economy will grow by just 0.8% this year. Previously it was predicting growth of 1.2%.

My colleague Graeme Wearden has more on his Eurozone debt crisis live blog.

10.51am: Here’s some reaction to the unemployment figures.

From Liam Byrne (pictured), the shadow work and pensions secretary

Any increase in employment is welcome, but today’s figures show that hard working Britain is doing anything and everything to battle through this double-dip recession made in Downing Street by David Cameron and George Osborne’s failed economic policies.

Part-time work and self-employment has now hit record highs as British families pull out all the stops to make ends meet. It is really worrying to see the soaring long-term costs as the number of long term unemployed surges towards the one million mark – the highest since the Tories were in government last time.

From Ian Brinkley, director at the Work Foundation

These are surprising but very welcome figures. Claims that further deregulation of the labour market is needed to stimulate job generation look to be unjustified. Private sector employers clearly felt confident enough to hire in large numbers over the three months to March 2012.

However, the overall numbers disguise some underlying weaknesses. The economy is still shedding full-time jobs, with all the increase accounted for by part-time work. The latest figures confirm that underemployment is emerging as a significant problem in the UK labour market, with the number of people in part-time work because they could not find a full-time job up by 33% over the past two years.

From Dave Prentis, the Unison general secretary

Unemployment may have fallen but we still face the worst jobs crisis in a generation. A huge growth in part-time working and in people accepting lower pay is masking the real impact of austerity. No wonder growth has stalled and we are back in recession. We need real action to boost growth and create jobs to jump-start the UK out of recession.

From Graeme Leach, chief economist at the Institute of Directors

These figures raise half a cheer for the economy. Both headline unemployment measures are down, which is obviously good news, but there’s bad news in the average earnings figures. Average earnings growth including bonuses has collapsed from 1.3 per cent to just 0.1 per cent.

Excluding bonuses, average earnings growth stands at 2 per cent, which is way behind inflation. This means the real squeeze in household incomes continues to act as a dragging anchor on consumption and high street spending.

From Brendan Barber, the TUC general secretary

Today’s figures are mixed, with the welcome fall in unemployment driven entirely by part-time jobs. However the collapse in wages is terrible news for those in work and threatens our chances of an economic recovery. The falling number of full-time jobs and the 6% fall in real wages over the last two years means that people are having to make huge salary sacrifices and put their careers on hold just to stay in work.

From Tony Dolphin, chief economist at the IPPR thinktank

The fall in unemployment in the first three months of this year, compared to the last three months of 2011, is very welcome news. It suggests the current recession in the UK – if it is not revised away when the next set of GDP data are released – is likely to be a very mild one.

From David Kern, chief economist at the British Chambers of Commerce

With the eurozone crisis worsening and economic pressures facing the UK, these figures are encouraging. But there are still some worrying features. Youth unemployment, though down, remains above one million which is a jobless rate for young people of more than 20%.

From Paul Kenny, the GMB general secretary

That there are 2.63 million people without jobs shows the extent to which the government’s gamble with the economy has failed. So instead of borrowing to support the economy and to continue the recovery the government has had to borrow to fund the recession.

10.38am: You can read all today’s Guardian politics stories here. And all the politics stories filed yesterday, including some in today’s paper, are here.

As for the rest of the papers, here are some stories and articles that are particularly interesting.

• Benedict Brogan in the Daily Telegraph says that one of the Tories’ problems is that they don’t hate their opponents enough.

[Steve Hilton's] intention before leaving was to put a handover note on the Prime Minister’s desk, detailing the work he’d like to see done in his absence and his thoughts on what Mr Cameron’s priorities should be. I don’t know if he put pen to paper in the end, but I have an inkling of what he might have said: “The problem is that they hate us more than we hate them.”

For those tracking the current disputes inside the Conservative parliamentary party, it is tempting to point out that the real problem is that the Tories are once again spending more time hating each other than their common enemy. But the question that is so exercising the party is fundamentally one of leadership and attitude. Mr Hilton was among those who grew frustrated by the club-class complacency of some colleagues, and of Mr Cameron himself. They have found themselves in power, yet struggle to match the hunger to keep it that saw Mr Brown up at all hours, chewing his nails as he plotted terrible plans to destroy his opponents.

This absence of appetite may stem, in part, from the comforts of Opposition. For too many top-level Tories, being out of power is no hardship. Indeed, for some, it is far more lucrative. For the Labour front bench of new talent and old stagers, defeat has not dented a desperation to claw their way back into office. Yet there is despair in parts of Downing Street that you will not find junior Tory hacks willing to spend a dark February evening infiltrating Labour meetings with a tape recorder, to catch out an enemy frontbencher.

• Liam Fox in the Financial Times (subscription) says David Cameron should adopt tax cuts and deregulation – even if the Lib Dems object.

It is becoming clear that the concept of labour market deregulation and tax cuts funded by deeper reductions in public expenditure are anathema to many – but not all – Liberal Democrats in government. The coalition is right to put debt reduction and welfare reform at the centre of its agenda in response to the economic emergency we inherited. But without serious supply side reform, these may not produce results in time to persuade voters by a 2015 election. A change of trajectory is quickly needed. It would be a tragedy if the good work of this government was jettisoned and we followed the unfolding disaster on the continent.

• Robert Winnett in the Daily Telegraph says that Steve Hilton, David Cameron’s outgoing strategy chief, has proposed welfare cuts worth billions in a policy paper presented to the prime minister.

Mr Hilton, who left Downing Street yesterday for a post at a Californian university is understood to believe that another £25 billion can be cut from the welfare budget although this level of saving is regarded as “absolute nonsense” by Mr Duncan Smith …

A Downing Street source said: “There is some really radical thinking going on around welfare, which is the most successful area of government policy so far. Why should people only work part time? Why are young people who are out of work not living at home? Why are we incentivising people to have more children?

“The Prime Minister is very keen on the next stage of welfare reform and there are some properly worked out plans which have been submitted by Steve [Hilton} before he left."

Another senior Government source said: "What we are engaged in is the mark-two stage of welfare reform. Its how do you take the universal credit into the next phase… encourage people to work longer hours, not just languish on 10, 15 or 20 hours.

"These things are part of a much bigger extended programme from where we are, to take us forward. There are longer term saving by getting more people into work, by giving people greater control of their lives, by making them essentially the masters of their destiny again, we will reap massive rewards and thus massive savings."

• Andrew Grice in the Independent says Lib Dem MPs are rebelling against government plans to stop many blind people receiving disability living allowance.

Government plans which could reduce state benefits paid to thousands of blind people have sparked a revolt by Liberal Democrat MPs in the latest sign of tension inside the Coalition over cuts.

The Liberal Democrat rebels are demanding a U-turn after it emerged that many blind or partially-sighted people who currently receive disability living allowance (DLA) of up to £120 a week could lose out when it is replaced by a new personal independence payment (PIP) from next April.

Although Nick Clegg is defending the Government's plans, he is under intense pressure from his MPs to lobby for changes before the new system is implemented. Jo Swinson, his parliamentary aide, has written to Iain Duncan Smith, the Work and Pensions Secretary, urging a rethink after taking up cases on behalf of her constituents. Critics of the shake-up claim that the points system under which DLA claimants will be reassessed is biased against the blind because it puts too much emphasis on tasks such as the ability to walk and not enough on the special needs of those who cannot see.

• Jill Sherman in the Times (paywall) says private consultants or thinktanks will be asked to take over some civil service policy work.

Policy development is to be outsourced to private companies under radical reforms to beef up government strategy with a smaller Civil Service, The Times has learnt.

The move, part of an overhaul of Whitehall, comes after a series of policy fiascos and growing frustration within No 10 about the performance of civil servants.

Under the scheme, to start this autumn, departments would commission consultants or think-tanks to draw up policy, develop it and "torture test" it instead of using civil servants. Officials said that the policies could range from revising business regulations to cutting billions from welfare payments or wider public sector reform.

• Tim Ross in the Daily Telegraph says Jon Cruddas, who was appointed to lead Labour's policy review yesterday, is in favour of a referendum on Britain's membership of the EU.

In a message to supporters of The People's Pledge, Mr Cruddas said: "This is about democracy. At certain stages, the political classes should invite the people into the discussion that affects their everyday lives; none more important than Europe.

"I think we should use every opportunity to push the case for a referendum, simply on the basis of the democratic principles involved.

"Irrespective of where you stand on the issue, it is a question of your rights as a citizen of this country to be able to participate in discussions that affect your material everyday life and our culture."

10.34am: Sir Mervyn King, the governor of the Bank of England, is presenting the Bank's latest quarterly inflation report. Here's an extract from the summary.

Output had barely grown for a year and a half and was estimated to have contracted slightly in the past two quarters. The euro-area economy remained weak, but global activity overall continued to expand at a moderate pace. A number of one-off factors are likely to affect the pattern of quarterly growth of domestic output during 2012. Looking through those effects, underlying demand growth is likely to remain subdued in the near term, before a gentle increase in households' real incomes and consumption helps the recovery to gain traction. Stimulus from monetary policy should continue to support demand, although headwinds from the external environment, tight credit conditions and the fiscal consolidation are likely to persist. The possibility that the substantial challenges within the euro area will lead to significant economic and financial disruption continues to pose the greatest threat to the UK recovery.

10.05am: And here are the unemployment figures for January to March region by region.

Region - total unemployed - change on previous quarter - rate

North East - 148,000 - plus 6,000 - 11.5%
North West - 329,000 - plus 11,000 - 9.6%
Yorkshire/Humber - 241,000 - minus 24,000 - 9%
East Midlands - 182,000 - minus 6,000 - 7.8%
West Midlands - 228,000 - minus 19,000 - 8.5%
East - 207,000 - minus 6,000 - 6.7%
London - 426,000 - minus 1,000 - 10.1%
South East - 279,000 - plus 1,000 - 6.2%
South West - 175,000 - plus 10,000 - 6.5%
Wales - 132,000 - minus 1,000 - 9%
Scotland - 221,000 - minus 10,000 - 8.2%
N Ireland - 57,000 - minus 5,000 - 6.7%

10.02am: Here's the top of the Press Assocation story about the unemployment figures.

The government was given some welcome good news on the jobs front today when unemployment fell by 45,000 and the number of dole claimants dipped for the second month in a row.
The jobless total was 2.6 million in the quarter to March, the lowest since last summer, while the number of people claiming jobseeker's allowance last month was down by 13,700 to 1.59 million.
The number of people in work increased by 105,000 to almost 30 million, but this was entirely due to a rise in part-time workers.
Almost eight million people are now in a part-time job, the highest since records began in 1992, while those working part-time because they cannot find full-time work increased by 73,000 to a record high of 1.4 million.
Self-employment has also reached a record figure of 4.1 million, up by 89,000 since the previous quarter.
Average earnings increased by 0.6% in the year to March, down by 0.5 percentage points on the previous month because of lower bonuses in the private sector.
Average weekly pay in private firms in March was £2 lower at £460 compared to a year ago.
The 13,700 fall in the so-called claimant count last month was the biggest since July 2010.
But other figures from the Office for National Statistics showed that the number of people unemployed for more than a year increased by 27,000 to 887,000, the worst total since 1996.
In the three months to March, a third of all unemployed people had been out of work for more than a year.
The number of people unemployed for more than two years rose by 5,000 to 428,000.
The UK's unemployment rate has fallen by 0.2% to 8.2%, lower than the European average of 10.2%.
Spain has the highest unemployment rate in the EU at 24.1%, while Austria has the lowest at 4%.
Youth unemployment has also fallen, down by 17,000 over the latest quarter to 1.02 million.
There were 9.25 million economically inactive people in the three months to March, a fall of 35,000, mainly due to a reduction in the number of people under the age of 65 taking retirement, as employees work longer and the female state pension age increases.

9.51am: Here's Chris Grayling (pictured), the employment minister, on the unemployment figures.

These figures are a welcome step in the right direction. For a number of months now, employment has been growing and this is starting to feed through into improving unemployment figures. However, we still face significant international uncertainty so we need to hold firm on our current economic strategy and continue to do everything we can to ensure unemployment continues to fall.

9.30am: Unemployment is down. Here are the headline figures.

• Unemployment fell by 45,000 between January and March to 2.63m.

• The number of people claiming jobseeker's allowance last month fell by 13,700 to 1.59m.

• Average earnings increased by 0.6% in the year to March, 0.5% down on the previous month.

You can read the Office for National Statistics news summary here. And the ONS bulletin, with the full details, is here (pdf).

9.22am: The gay rights campaigner Peter Tatchell (pictured) is supporting David Davis in his campaign to scrap section 5 of the Public Order Act, the one banning "insulting" language or behaviour. Tatchell explained why on the BBC this morning. I've taken the quote from PoliticsHome.

I think this is quite dangerous in a democratic society where we pride ourselves on freedom of speech and the right to protest. And there's many many examples where this law has been misused, for example a Christian street preacher, or several Christian street preachers have been arrested for merely saying that homosexuality is sinful or immoral. Now I disagree with them, but I defend their right to express their point of view, and I don't think they should be criminalised.

9.08am: For the record, here are the YouGov GB polling figures from last night.

Labour: 43% (down 2 points from Monday night)
Conservative: 32% (up 1)
Ukip: 9% (up 1)
Lib Dems: 8% (up 1)

Labour lead: 11 points

Government approval: -37

9.00am: We've got the first PMQs of this session of parliament today, as well as some important economic indicators, but before 12pm the most lively drama may come from Brighton, where Theresa May, the home secretary, is addressing the Police Federation annual conference. The police have already marched in London to protest about cuts to their pay and pensions and about changes to their working conditions and, as Alan Travis reports, Paul McKeever, the federation chairman, is expected to tell May in his own speech that she is "on the precipice of destroying a police service that is admired throughout the world". Here's an extract from Alan's story.

Paul McKeever, the federation's chairman, will tell May she can't expect officers, who understand the fiscal situation and accept some cuts are necessary, to take an unfair share of those cuts and "just sit there and be content with their lot".

"This is a bad deal for the police service," he will say. "We have less resilience; fewer warranted officers, a weakened frontline and a radically altered model of British policing. You are on the precipice of destroying a police service that is admired and replicated throughout the world.

"Home secretary, we are seeing proposals, things being put in place without infrastructure, that will fundamentally change the dynamics of policing."

Will the home secretary get heckled? We'll see at 11am.

Here's the full agenda for the day.

9.15am: Dominic Grieve, the attorney general, Lord McNally, the justice minister and Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office minister, give evidence to the Commons justice committee about the Freedom of Information Act.

9.20am: Andrew Lansley, the health secretary, speaks at a Reform conference.

9.30am: Unemployment figures are published.

10am: Jack Straw, the Labour former cabinet minister, gives evidence to the Leveson inquiry.

10.30am: The Bank of England publishes its quarterly growth and inflation forecasts.

10.45am: Nick Hurd, the civil society minister, releases details of the latest National Citizen Service pilot.

11am: Theresa May, the home secretary, speaks at the Police Federation conference.

11.15am: David Davis, the Tory MP, launches a campaign for reform of the Public Order Act. He and others are opposed to the clause banning the use of "insulting" words or behaviour.

12pm: David Cameron and Ed Miliband clash at prime minister's questions.

2pm: Voting opens in elections to the executive of the Conservative 1922 committee. The results will be announced after 6pm.

As usual, I'll be covering all the breaking political news, as well as looking at the papers and bringing you the best politics from the web. I'll post a lunchtime summary at around 1pm.

If you want to follow me on Twitter, I'm on @AndrewSparrow.

And if you're a hardcore fan, you can follow @gdnpoliticslive. It's an automated feed that tweets the start of every new post that I put on the blog.

Trade in sensitive personal data uncovered by secret investigation

C4's Dispatches records private investigator selling bank details and criminal and medical records to reporters

The ease with which private investigators can access highly personal and sensitive information stored in secure government databases has been exposed by a report that will intensify calls to regulate the industry.

An investigation by Channel 4's Dispatches programme reveals how a London firm of private detectives sold personal data on individuals, including details of bank accounts, benefit claims and even a national insurance number.

Undercover reporters also recorded Stephen Anderson, director of private investigators Crown Intelligence, disclosing medical details including the name of one of the volunteers' doctors, recent appointments with a GP and, in one instance, confirmation of a medical condition. On several occasions, the investigator provided information for payment that appears to be covered by the Data Protection Act, which makes it an offence to "obtain or disclose data without permission or procure the disclosure to another person".

The investigation, conducted against the backdrop of the Leveson inquiry, which has intensified scrutiny on private investigators, highlights the apparent simplicity with which data that is not possible to obtain legally can be found. Anderson insists that all the data he unearthed was obtained legally.

On Monday the home affairs select committee, which is conducting an inquiry into the activities of private investigators, will hear evidence from the Channel 4 investigation as MPs examine whether tighter safeguards on the industry are required. The committee will also hear about developments in surveillance equipment and the views of former information commissioner Richard Thomas on data protection. and the experiences of two people exposed to the techniques of some private investigaters.

Volunteers used in the Dispatches investigation describe how they were left feeling "exposed and vulnerable" after their personal details were discovered by Crown Intelligence.

The programme, to be shown tomorrow, also shows Anderson making extraordinary allegations that Scotland Yard secretly and frequently uses private detectives to assist with investigations.

Hidden cameras film him claiming that the Met had approached him to uncover information that the police could not.

At one point, Anderson asked a Dispatches undercover reporter whether they were working for the Met. When questioned why he would ask that, Anderson replied: "We've had over the years, surprisingly or not surprisingly, quite a lot of requests from the police to do investigations."

He said that the police were governed by rigid processes that meant they sometimes needed to rely upon private investigators, and was recorded claiming: "The police have to follow a strict routine in order to investigate. You can't investigate someone without enough proof about their innocence or guilt. It's Catch-22. You can't get in there to look at people, but you can't find information out about them without getting in there and they have to hold back because there's no evidence. So someone gets approached [and is told]: ‘Look, erm, we’d like some information on this person’.”

When asked again if he had undertaken requests from Scotland Yard in the past, Anderson said: “Unofficially, and I wouldn’t admit that, but yes.”

The Met denied it ever used private investigators. A statement read “the Metropolitan Police Service does not use and has no need for such practices,” adding that the force had never used Anderson or Crown Intelligence.

A statement by Anderson said that he acted “within the acceptable parameters of the profession” and “within the framework of the Data Protection Act”. He added that the programme’s requests for data – on activists who the programme said were intent on targeting a client – were acted upon in good faith and with a view to prevent and detect a crime being committed.

Anderson said all relevant information was obtained legally and denies any allegation of wrongdoing. He added that he was given the impression that all the information would be passed on to the clients “who were in discussion with the police with a view to preventing or detecting the commission of crime”. He added that because Dispatches had received the consent of their volunteers to gather personal information, no offence had been committed under the Data Protection Act.

A British FBI has no chance against London’s very own KGB | Simon Jenkins

Theresa May’s desire to nationalise crimebusting will always founder on a far more powerful force: the Metropolitan police

Police protesting in London on Thursday should relax. They have won a great victory. The government is doing what governments always do in trouble. They flex their pectorals, kick sand in the opposition’s face and invent “a British FBI”. Tony Blair did it twice. Now David Cameron is doing likewise. It is a great headline but it never works.

Cameron clearly feels he must soothe the brow of his home secretary, Theresa May, who has gone bonkers over Abu Qatada and roams St James’s Park at night, howling for a J Edgar Hoover. The Queen rummaged in her handbag on Wednesday and tossed out yet another FBI. I wonder sometimes how she keeps a straight face.

Government attempts to nationalise crime-busting began back in 1992 with the National Criminal Intelligence Service. In 1998 Blair inflated this into a National Crime Squad, with its own image-boosting BBC series, NCS Manhunt. When this came to nothing, Charles Clarke renamed it the Serious Organised Crime Agency which was launched in 2006 with an identical remit – “to combat organised crime, class A drugs, illegal arms dealing, human trafficking, computer and hi-tech crimes, money laundering, extortion, kidnapping and murder”. Macho title, macho minister.

A year later, in 2007, Soca’s boss admitted to scant progress as he wrestled with “360 different IT systems and 60 pay grades” and a lack of co-operation from “outside the agency”. Headlines proclaimed “little to celebrate” and “dissatisfaction rife”. Soca’s staff duly joined the hundreds of desiccated constables languishing in the Home Office attic, covered in cobwebs and dust and dreaming of Al Capone.

Today’s National Crime Agency was actually announced in the summer of 2010, when it was spun as “not an imitation of the FBI”. It is pure cosmetics, Soca under another name, with added bits of paedophilia, border policing and cyber crime. Why it needs its own act of parliament is a mystery. Soca’s website already burbles on about having “the combined powers of police, customs and immigration officers” not to mention responsibility for “class A drugs, people smuggling and human trafficking, major gun crime, fraud, computer crime and money laundering”.

The ministerial craze to accumulate ever more power to the centre is obsessive, illiberal and pointless. Thatcher’s home secretary, Willie Whitelaw, told a story of how his police and security chiefs would troop into his office for an annual chat. They always said the same thing. They needed more power, more weapons, more phone taps, more surveillance, more powers of detention, more general curbs on the freedom of British subjects in the name of national security. Whitelaw would roar with laughter and shout: “Well done, chaps.” The chaps would smile and reply: “It’s always worth a try, chief.” Whitelaw would order a round of drinks and send them packing.

That stopped under Blair. Whitelaw was a man in charge. Home secretaries have since become cringing servants of the headline culture. What security wants, security gets. You can scan the memoirs of Blair’s home secretaries and find not one who stood up for civil liberty against the securocrats. There was a crime bill and a terrorism bill virtually every year. Blair created a new criminal offence for each day of his administration. By 2006 he had introduced over 3,000 new crimes, against 500 in the equivalent period under the Tories. He packed the courts, bust legal aid and put more people in prison than ever in British history.

Cameron is doing likewise. The Home Office was the big winner from the Queen’s speech, a fact little noted since the Liberal Democrats had mocked their own name by giving in to the Tories on hacking and surveillance. The security lobby has won more secret courts, more powers for border police, more powers against drivers, and more powers to tap real-time emails, texts and mobile phones. The last is covered by a bizarre “promise” by state hackers to avert their ears and eyes from content and only read names and addresses. This recalls past promises not to use anti-terror laws except on terrorists. The liberty lobby in Britain today is all but defunct. It has the clout of the League of Empire Loyalists.

Theresa May will have more power than any home secretary in history. But her desire for her own FBI will not succeed, since a power greater than her will stop it: the Metropolitan police. In the long and impressive list of evils always attributed to the British FBIs, one is always missing, the glamour threat of terrorism. The reason is simple. Terrorism – and its handmaid, “fear politics” – is the jealously guarded preserve of the Met and its counter-terrorism command. The Met has fought off every attempt by the Home Office to grab what used to be the job of the old Special Branch. Counter-terrorism is not just the Met’s own baby, it is a baby in rude health, a job widely recognised as being well done. The reason the Met gives is that it tells the Home Office to go to hell.

The Met is Britain’s last unreformed public service. Its powers, privileges, dignities and restrictive practices are defended against home secretary and mayor of London alike by cohorts of lobbyists, management consultants and PR firms, as revealed to the Leveson inquiry. It has mutilated every attempt to create a British FBI. Its rambling office block in Victoria Street, background to nightly newscasts, stands defiant against the concrete Home Office fortress next door. The home secretary can have as many phoney crime-busters as she likes, but they come nowhere near the sacred turf of Scotland Yard.

On Wednesday morning the Met staged what might have been a warm-up for Thursday’s demonstration with a bravura display of firepower across central Westminster. It was an astonishing sight. Beyond the reach of any political or operational control, the Met’s commanders can decide for themselves how many bodies to deploy anywhere, anytime and at any cost to the taxpayer.

Hundreds of police lined the streets in honour of the Queen’s speech. They tumbled out of paddy wagons and minibuses. Machine guns were brandished at road junctions. There were horses, dogs, helicopters and metal and concrete barriers everywhere. It was like a day out in Putin’s Russia. The police may have to take some cuts. But London’s Met is getting ever more power, and has nothing to fear from any FBI-UK.

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Trade in sensitive personal data uncovered by secret investigation

C4′s Dispatches records private investigator selling bank details and criminal and medical records to reporters

The ease with which private investigators can access highly personal and sensitive information stored in secure government databases has been exposed by a report that will intensify calls to regulate the industry.

An investigation by Channel 4′s Dispatches programme reveals how a London firm of private detectives sold personal data on individuals, including details of bank accounts, benefit claims and even a national insurance number.

Undercover reporters also recorded Stephen Anderson, director of private investigators Crown Intelligence, disclosing medical details including the name of one of the volunteers’ doctors, recent appointments with a GP and, in one instance, confirmation of a medical condition. On several occasions, the investigator provided information for payment that appears to be covered by the Data Protection Act, which makes it an offence to “obtain or disclose data without permission or procure the disclosure to another person”.

The investigation, conducted against the backdrop of the Leveson inquiry, which has intensified scrutiny on private investigators, highlights the apparent simplicity with which data that is not possible to obtain legally can be found. Anderson insists that all the data he unearthed was obtained legally.

On Monday the home affairs select committee, which is conducting an inquiry into the activities of private investigators, will hear evidence from the Channel 4 investigation as MPs examine whether tighter safeguards on the industry are required. The committee will also hear about developments in surveillance equipment and the views of former information commissioner Richard Thomas on data protection. and the experiences of two people exposed to the techniques of some private investigaters.

Volunteers used in the Dispatches investigation describe how they were left feeling “exposed and vulnerable” after their personal details were discovered by Crown Intelligence.

The programme, to be shown tomorrow, also shows Anderson making extraordinary allegations that Scotland Yard secretly and frequently uses private detectives to assist with investigations.

Hidden cameras film him claiming that the Met had approached him to uncover information that the police could not.

At one point, Anderson asked a Dispatches undercover reporter whether they were working for the Met. When questioned why he would ask that, Anderson replied: “We’ve had over the years, surprisingly or not surprisingly, quite a lot of requests from the police to do investigations.”

He said that the police were governed by rigid processes that meant they sometimes needed to rely upon private investigators, and was recorded claiming: “The police have to follow a strict routine in order to investigate. You can’t investigate someone without enough proof about their innocence or guilt. It’s Catch-22. You can’t get in there to look at people, but you can’t find information out about them without getting in there and they have to hold back because there’s no evidence. So someone gets approached [and is told]: ‘Look, erm, we’d like some information on this person’.”

When asked again if he had undertaken requests from Scotland Yard in the past, Anderson said: “Unofficially, and I wouldn’t admit that, but yes.”

The Met denied it ever used private investigators. A statement read “the Metropolitan Police Service does not use and has no need for such practices,” adding that the force had never used Anderson or Crown Intelligence.

A statement by Anderson said that he acted “within the acceptable parameters of the profession” and “within the framework of the Data Protection Act”. He added that the programme’s requests for data – on activists who the programme said were intent on targeting a client – were acted upon in good faith and with a view to prevent and detect a crime being committed.

Anderson said all relevant information was obtained legally and denies any allegation of wrongdoing. He added that he was given the impression that all the information would be passed on to the clients “who were in discussion with the police with a view to preventing or detecting the commission of crime”. He added that because Dispatches had received the consent of their volunteers to gather personal information, no offence had been committed under the Data Protection Act.

Sir Hugh Orde says there is ‘real possibility’ of more crime, and says police right to strike is back on agenda

Crime rates could rise as a result of 20% budget cuts within the police force, one of the UK’s most senior police officers has warned.

If 16,000 posts were lost by 2015 as expected, an increase in crime was a real possibility, said Sir Hugh Orde, president of the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo).

“Is it foreseeable that crime will increase if the cuts continue to bite? Answer, yes, it probably is,” Orde said in an interview with the Huffington Post UK. “Or will crime start to increase? Yes, that is a real possibility.”

On Thursday more than 30,000 police officers from England and Wales marched in London demanding that the government halt its cuts and what they say is the privatisation of the service.

Police are not allowed to go on strike, and Orde said many officers felt this was increasingly unfair given the prospect of forced redundancies.

Referring to Thursday’s protest, he said: “These officers you saw exercising their right to protest – they can’t strike, and they could all have been ordered to work today by their chief and they would have had to have worked. Part of the balancing act was because they held an office, they’re not employed, and they have a job for 30 or now 35 years, provided they don’t misbehave or are not performing.”

Asked if the protests put the right to strike back on the agenda, Orde said: “I think it does. But I still firmly believe the last thing they want to do is strike. It just goes against everything they joined for. You cannot stand up and say I want to protect people but I’m not going to come into work.”

Orde said there was still “a greater noise around the right to strike, if not to exercise it”.

Cuts were not the only challenge facing the police force, Orde said. He described the election of police and crime commissioners (PCCs) due in November as “the biggest change in policing since 1829, without question”.

Elected PCCs will oversee 41 forces in England and Wales, replacing police authorities. Orde questioned the calibre of candidates throwing their hats into the ring, telling the Huffington Post he did not recognise a lot of the names on the current list.

He said: “My sense was the government were looking for some pretty high-profile, qualified individuals who would deliver a completely different style of governance. I’m not sure how happy they will be with some of the lists.

“For one thing, there are a number of police officers on it. I have a big problem with police officers being police and crime commissioners.”

Police need training to section vulnerable people | Mark Brown

Restraining people with mental health problems is a delicate task – tactics used against criminals are not appropriate

The case of Peter Russell, a 58-year-old man with Alzheimer’s, being repeatedly tasered by police officers as he resisted being taken into hospital under section, was horrifying. It’s hard to imagine how it would feel looking on as a loved one was acted against in that way, but beyond the shock, it is always worth asking: what could be done instead? Why, in 2012, is our treatment of people with severe mental health or cognitive difficulties still so entwined with the apparatus of policing? The answer, from the point of view of mental health services at least, seems simply to be “it’s a dirty job and someone else is going to do it”. But this doesn’t go far enough.

Sectioning, or taking away someone’s right to freedom so he or she can be taken for treatment or assessment, is one of the most challenging areas in mental health. To be physically restrained at a time of great personal disorder, desperation or distress is never going to be a good experience, and as such it requires a sensitive and thoughtful approach. .

In Russell’s case, because of his dementia, it is difficult for him to give a detailed account of the ordeal. But “sectioning” is used across the spectrum of mental illness and cognitive impairment. So what do those who have been on the receiving end think? I spoke to a 36-year-old woman with dissociative identity disorder about her experience of the police taking her to a place of safety so that she could be assessed under the Mental Health Act:

“I had gone ‘missing’ so there had been a six-hour manhunt by the local force. There were around five officers present the entire time and I was fortunate that my community psychiatric nurse (CPN) was also there. I was confused, scared and surrounded by what I perceived to be threatening people. It was never explained to me what was happening, why the police were there and what their role was.
“I was taken out to a police van by five officers and locked in. I was taken to the local acute ward by two officers who then had to wait with me until the ward took over my ‘care’ again. This took hours. The police made it clear they were unhappy at having to babysit me. I don’t think it’s too much to ask that should police involvement be necessary to prevent us endangering ourselves or others, that some sort of mental health professional be present [as well].”

As ever, some of this comes down to resources. Police are not the only people who can legally carry out restraint in cases where someone is being sectioned involuntarily, but are often the professionals on the scene. Section 136 of the Mental Health Act allows a police officer to hold someone for up to 72 hours until they are assessed by a relevant professional, meaning mental health care experts do not need to be present while an individual is detained by the police. Speaking to blogger Mental Health Cop, a police inspector himself, about the general role of police in cases like this, he told me:

“The officers were under a legal duty to get [the person] safely admitted. It’s a common problem across the UK that community-based nurses and staff don’t appear to have the training or they aren’t deployable. I have a strong view, and I know many cops share it, that if the NHS and mental health professionals want to be in the coercion business, and especially if they object to police safety and restraint tactics – let’s remember, they were designed for burglars, rapists and drunks – then they should train and deploy their staff to do therapeutically appropriate restraint.”

Being sectioned is often a highly unpleasant and distressing experience. If cases like Russell’s make us feel uncomfortable, but we accept that to get people treatment we sometimes have to move them there against their will, we have to think about how we can do it differently, and, in the current climate, how we find the money.

We need to look beyond individual cases and ask whether, as a society, we are comfortable with the interaction between law enforcement officers and vulnerable people. Police involvement is not anyone’s solution of choice in cases like this, but if police officers do remain the people most regularly involved in such cases, then they must have appropriate training and support that helps them to differentiate people who are unwell from people with criminal intentions.