Crime and punishment in the Labour manifesto

The Labour manifesto contains some important commitments in the area of criminal justice. Recognising that there is no more money to spend on the police, the focus is on protecting neighbourhood policing while creating new pressures for service improvement. So (as with health and education) there are to be entitlements to a basic standard of service and mechanisms of redress if those are not met.

In policing, redress is to come via Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary, which will have powers to intervene and replace the management team of either a police force or a Basic Command Unit if performance is poor over a prolonged period. This is to be welcomed: at the moment the Home Secretary has the power to sack a Chief Constable on grounds of poor performance, but these powers are never used. This is because ministers fear they will be accused of political interference in policing if they get too involved in firing police chiefs. This new proposal has the advantage of setting out clear criteria to assess performance, with an automatic ladder of intervention if matters do not improve.

There is now clear blue (or clear red) water between the Conservatives and Labour on policing: Labour favours takeovers by other forces or the dismissal of the management team adjudicated by the independent inspectorate, while the Conservatives favour elected police commissioners with powers to hire and fire. The reason the Conservative plan is so unpopular in the police service is because of the risk of politicising policing decisions through direct election. ippr has produced its own alternative elsewhere, involving a new role for local councils in holding the police to account.

A second interesting innovation in Labour’s criminal justice plans is in the area of punishment. Over the last decade Labour has talked a good talk on community sentencing, but community justice has remained under-funded and hence under-used by the courts as an alternative to custody. Hence there are many people in prison for relatively short periods who would be more effectively punished and rehabilitated by the use of community-based penalties. The manifesto contains welcome new pledges to strengthen forms of community payback and to ‘reduce the number of women, young and mentally ill people in prison’.

Rick Muir

Settle down

Anyone watching Newsnight this Wednesday would be forgiven for thinking that the entire debate about immigration comes down to numbers. Whatever people’s concerns about migration – be it the impact on the economy, public services or community cohesion – the answer from politicians is always the same: adjust the number of immigrants coming to the UK. Schools can’t cope with all the Polish kids? Stop letting so many Poles in. Pakistani immigrants aren’t integrating? Let fewer in to the country. The economy needs more skilled workers? Adjust the points system to let them in.

There is a danger with this approach that it assumes the only thing immigration policy can do is alter the number of migrants entering the country. But a lot happens once a migrant has crossed the border, too. Greater state support for settlement can improve integration and help tackle many of the problems people are concerned about. Schools can’t cope with all the Polish kids? Provide the schools with teaching assistants to help them cope. Pakistani immigrants aren’t integrating? Fund and support outreach workers to help them learn English and establish roots in the community.

I’m slightly bemused that while politicians are keen to point to Canada’s immigration system as a model way to control the number of immigrants arriving, they neglect to mention the fact that Canada also invests a great deal in supporting immigrants to settle in, and that their government endorses an official model of multiculturalism. Dedicated translation services, English language tuition, education programmes, information diffusion, citizenship instruction, employment programmes and social welfare policies are all part of the tool kit used. The evidence is that if you invest early in helping migrants to settle in to their new country, then you stave off many of the problems and tensions faced further down the line. It might just be more important to solving these problems than limiting the numbers you let cross the border in the first place.

Jonathan Clifton

Here’s to Healey!

The Government’s announcement today that it is to reform beer ties is the biggest shake up of the pub trade since Mrs Thatcher’s Beer Orders in 1989.

The Government has faced down the large pubcos and backed the recommendations of the Business Innovation and Skills Committee and a recent ippr/CAMRA report to reform tied pub leases.

Most pubs in this country are owned by large pub companies and thousands of them have tied leases, which means that licensees have to buy all their beer from their pub company rather than on the open market. There has been mounting evidence that tied tenants have been suffering because they have to pay more for their beer than free of tie houses.

The Government responded by appointing John Healey as Pubs Minister – and he has announced a 12 point action plan to support the struggling pub trade. The Government is giving the trade a year to reform itself – by offering tenants the choice of a tied or free of tie lease, and by allowing tied tenants to buy in guest ales from outside their tie. It has said it will legislate if action is not taken.

This is strong stuff – we now need clarity from all parties that they will support this approach, whoever wins the election. The signs are positive: Peter Luff the Conservative chairman of the BIS committee has been a leading campaigner for change, as has the Liberal Democrat MP Greg Mulholland. There is a growing political consensus that the relationship between the pubcos and their tenants needs to change.

Healey has also announced funding to allow communities to buy their local pubs to help keep them open – and changes to planning rules that will make it more difficult for developers to close pubs and change them to other uses. This is important: ippr research shows that the pub is the most important place where local communities mix and get together, outside people’s own homes. These measures are a much-needed shot in the arm for the great British pub. I’ll drink to that.

Rick Muir, senior research fellow, ippr