Conservative Party Conference: David Davis (Shadow Home Secretary) speech

Conservative Party Conference: David Davis (Shadow Home Secretary) speech; David Davis speech continued SOTA Conservative government will back the police and back the people who uphold the law. We won't back those who break the law. What difference would we make? When I'm home secretary, the police will reclaim the streets. They will break up the gangs. They will enforce zero-tolerance of all crime. ApplauseAnd they will be held accountable to local people for their performance, street by street, block by block and house by house. It's a policy that's tried. It's tested. It works. The street crime plaguing New York in the 1980s was thought by many commentators to be inevitable. But the New York Police Department adopted a zero-tolerance approach to crime and cut it by 75%. Some people will tell you it can't be done here. I say nonsense. If it's good enough for New York it's good enough for London, Liverpool, Bridlington, Blackpool and every other town in this country. It's time to bring zero-tolerance policing to the streets of Britain. ApplauseAnd under a Conservative government when criminals are caught, they won't get a slap on the wrist. They won't get a glorified parking ticket. They'll get the punishment that fits the crime. Overcrowded prisons and early release of criminals are not inevitable. The prisons crisis didn't come out of the blue. Five years ago we foresaw it, the Home Office forecast it, but Gordon Brown froze the money to deal with it. It will take a Conservative government to reverse Gordon Brown's perverse order of priorities. That puts murderers and violent criminals on the streets. And puts the public at risk. We'll scrap ID cards, that expensive white elephant. Applause