Crime and Policing

The hon. Gentleman should not try to second-guess what may or may not be in the sentencing review that will come from the Ministry of Justice. There is a commitment to reviewing sentencing and I suggest that he should wait until that comes out, when he will be able to make his comments. One area that I want to speak briefly about, which has not been touched on much today, is the unmitigated disaster of Labour's Licensing Act 2003. One in three people who turn up in accident and emergency have alcohol-related injuries, and alcohol-related crime and disorder costs the taxpayer up to £13 billion every year. When that legislation was introduced, we were promised a café-style culture, but five years on the police are still fighting an ongoing battle against booze-fuelled crime and disorder. So we will overhaul Labour's Licensing Act to ensure that local people have greater control over pubs, clubs and other licensed premises. We will allow local authorities to charge more for late-night licences, which they will then be able to plough back into late-night policing in their areas. We will double the fine for under-age sales and we will allow authorities permanently to shut down any shop or bar that persistently sells alcohol to children. We will also ban the below-cost sale of alcohol to ensure that retailers can no longer sell it at irresponsible prices. As I have said, I welcome the support for that which we will have from the Opposition. In today's motion and in the shadow Home Secretary's speech, he and the Opposition have fallen into the trap of thinking that they need to oppose everything the Government do just for the sake of it. They are denying the legacy of debt that they have left to this Government and they oppose the Budget cuts that they had planned to make. In denying their record, they oppose the police reforms that they once proposed, so let me try to shake the shadow Home Secretary out of his state of denial. Police officers are available on the streets for just 11% of their time and there are 900,000 violent crimes a year and 26,000 victims of crime every single day. That is the legacy of the Labour party and it will be up to the coalition Government to put things right.