London Olympic Games and Paralympic Games (Amendment) Bill

This is another example of things that looked fine on the night, but have subsequently gone seriously wrong, so we have to respond to them as far as the general public is concerned. We all saw awful things on our televisions a few weeks ago: riots in the street. It is not impossible that at the very time when you are looking to have police brought in from other police forces, something similar could be happening outside London, or in London itself. I am raising this point so that we can make sure that we can reassure the general public that everything that can be done is being done. None the less, we must be realistic and ask ourselves whether any chief constable is going to release members of his force if he has some form of riot on his own doorstep? It is pretty unlikely. We have to look at this realistically. This is something that the general public are beginning to think about because, of course, safety is the absolute priority of these Games. We cannot possibly allow ourselves to miss out on making sure that we have enough force. The Minister said that there will be enough, but with a 20 per cent cut in police numbers already, the police are not particularly happy at the circumstances they find themselves in outside the Olympics. Are we going to face a situation where we find hostility towards the request to bring more police into London in order to facilitate policing the Games? These are questions that the general public would like the Minister to answer.