Theresa Mays police reform speech - Summary
12.36pm BST
Sir Menzies Campbell, the Lib Dem former leader, says if ransom is paid to hostage takers, that money is used to promote terrorism.
Cameron says Campbell is absolutely right. Some tens of millions of dollars have been raised for Isis this way. He got the G8 to agree action on this. America and Britain dont pay hostage takers. He wants other countries to follow, he says.
12.34pm BST
Labours Sarah Champion asks about the abuse in Rotherham. When will the government appoint the chair to the national abuse inquiry?
Cameron says Theresa May is leading a committee of ministers. The announcement of the chair of the abuse inquiry will be made in the coming days.
12.32pm BST
James Gray, a Conservative, says there should be a full, two-day debate on foreign affairs.
Cameron says Gray is right about the challenges facing the world. There will be a full days debate next Wednesday, he says.
12.31pm BST
Labours Diana Johnson asks about a constituent stuck in northern Iraq and unable to travel home.
Cameron says he will look at this. He commends the work Foreign Office officials do. He says he takes a personal interest in hostage cases.
12.30pm BST
Chris Kelly, the Conserative MP from the 2010 intake who is standing down, says he supports attempts to remove passports from British jihadists.
Cameron pays tribute to Kelly and the work hes done. People in Dudley (Kellys seat) and elsewhere think people who go abroad to fight should lose their nationality.
12.29pm BST
Labours Peter Hain says Isis wont be beaten without air strikes in Isis. Ultimately Isis poses a big threat to countries in the region than to us.
Cameron says Assads brutality has helped to generate the Isis regime. What Britain wants are democratic governments in the region, he says. We should support moves towards a democratic transition in Syria.
12.27pm BST
Karl Turner, a Labour MP, asks, with the Clacton byelection coming on Camerons birthday, if Cameron is expecting any other birthday surprises.
Cameron says he expects many surprises on his birthday. He does not want people to tell him what they are.
12.26pm BST
John Hemming, a Lib Dem, says families like Ashya Kings are increasingly going abroad because they think they will get a fairer deal from the family courts abroad.
Cameron says Hemming could raise this in a Commons debate.
12.25pm BST
Jim Shannon, the DUP MP, asks if it is time for additional measures against Isis.
Cameron says Britain is working with the Kurds and others to allow Isis to be beaten back.
12.25pm BST
Sir Edward Leigh, a Conservative, says losing Scotland would be a national catastrophe. Not enough has been done. He appeals to the three party leaders to drop everything over the next two weeks and to campaign.
Cameron says the three leaders all agree on this; not just that the UK is better off with Scotland, but that Scotland is better off in the UK.
12.23pm BST
Lindsay Roy, a Labour MP, says Alex Salmond has said that an independent Scotland would default on its share of the national debt.
Camerons says this has been one of the most chilling things said in the campaign. Scotland would have to pay a punitive interest rates. That would have an impact on peoples mortgages.
12.22pm BST
Jacob Rees-Mogg, a Conservative, says if Hampshire police can misuse a European arrest warrant, isnt there a risk other countries will also misuse them.
Cameron says we have to think what might happen if a terrorist is on the run, and Britain wants to catch him. This is not an imaginary situation; it happened after 2005. He wants to be able to look the British people in the eye and say he kept them safe.
12.21pm BST
Alasdair McDonnell, an SDLP MP, asks if the modern slavery bill will be amended to include child guardians.
Cameron says the government will look at this.
12.20pm BST
Matthew Offord, a Conservative, asks Cameron to condemn boycotts of Israeli goods, saying they promote anti-semitism.
Cameron says the government does not support boycotts, or anything that delegitimises Israel. You can criticise Israel without being anti-semitic, he says.
12.18pm BST
Angus Robertson, the SNP MP, asks if Cameron will honour his promise to take part in a TV debate with undecided voters.
Cameron says he offered them a date, but the broadcaster did not accept.
12.17pm BST
Richard Drax, a Conservative, says net migration at the current level would fill a city the size of Leeds every three years. We should have a visa-only system for arrivals, including for those from the EU.
Cameron says he has done a huge amount to restrict migration. Some 700 bogus colleges have been closed. We need to do more. Freedom of movement is important. But it is not an unqualifed right, he says. When new states join the EU, transitional controls should not be time limited.
12.16pm BST
Labours Diane Abbott says directors of social services pay no penalty for ignoring child abuse. Often they go on to better jobs. Do contracts need looking at?
Cameron says he agrees entirely. What weve seen in Rotherham is shocking, he says. He has asked Theresa May to chair a team of ministers looking at lessons that can be learnt. Councils should ensure that contracts allow people to be removed.
12.14pm BST
Martin Horwood, a Lib Dem, says some people in the Middle East share Britains desire for democratic change. Wont they find Britains position inconsistent?
Cameron says he does not agree. He is not a naive interventionist. But he engages with states to promote regional stability.
12.12pm BST
Snap PMQs Verdict: A predictably statesmanlike performance from both leaders, which revealed nothing new about whether Cameron or Miliband might back air strikes, but which did enable Miliband to subtly drive a wedge between Cameron and Clegg on two key anti-terror proposals.
12.11pm BST
Miliband asks if it is legally permissible to stop terror suspects returning to the UK.
Cameron says he thinks it is permissible. The law already allows dual nationals and naturalised Britons be be excluded. On Monday he discussed someone from High Wycombe who says he wants to return to do harm. He believes it will be legal to prevent people like this returning.
12.08pm BST
Miliband asks what plans Cameron has to use Britains chairmanship of the UN security council to address this.
Cameron says there is an opportunity to marshall international support for the idea that Isis must be squeezed out of existence.
12.06pm BST
Ed Miliband says he joins in the universal sense of revulsion at the murder of Steven Sotloff. Events like this must strengthen, not weaken, our resolve to stand against them. Cameron has Labours full support.
Cameron says these people must understand we will not waver in our opposition to terrorism.
12.03pm BST
Stephen Metcalfe, a Conservative, asks about the long-term economic plan.
Cameron mentions todays GDP revised figures from the ONS. The long-term economic plan is working, he says.
12.03pm BST
Labours Jim Cunningham says Cameron used to say he wanted the Tories to stop banging on about Europe. What has changed?
Cameron says a lot has changed in Europe. He wants to give people a say.
12.02pm BST
David Cameron starts by condemning the sickening and brutal murder of another American hostage and expressing his shock and anger that it appears to have been committed by a Briton.
But this country will never give in to terrorism, he says.
12.00pm BST
Expectant tone in the Commons as MPs gather for a sombre #PMQs. Phil Hammond whispering urgently to David Cameron on the front bench.
11.59am BST
How will Ed Miliband attack at PMQs in a few minutes' time? Here are some thoughts http://t.co/lBXZWnN1m6
11.50am BST
David Cameron will be taking PMQs in about 10 minutes.
He will use this opportunity to give his response to Isiss latest beheading of an American hostage, and its threat to kill a British hostage.
11.41am BST
As Alan Travis reported in his preview story, Theresa May, the home secretary, used her speech to the Reform thinktank today to suggest that police, fire and ambulances services will have to integrate in the future. In the event, she devoted one sentence of the speech to this, but it may turn out to be the most important revelation. She also announced plans for a mobile phone theft index. But there was plenty more in the speech too.
Heres a summary. Im afraid the full text is not available on the Home Office website yet.
Whats striking is that we have been able to make many of these changes not despite spending cuts but because of them. This is important, because the need to go on reforming will not end with this parliament. With a still-large deficit and a record stock of debt, there will need to be further spending cuts, as even Labour acknowledge. So in policing in the future, I believe we will need to work towards the integration of the three emergency services.
Police forces tell us that recent rises in theft from the person, for example, were in part driven by the theft of smart phones by organised criminal gangs. These gangs targeted specific venues, like concerts and festivals, to steal smart phones on a massive scale. The phones were then often sent overseas where they are reactivated and sold. There is of course an operational response to this kind of criminal activity, which should be left to the police, but the Home Office has also been working with industry to find new ways to stop the reactivation of phones overseas, thereby killing the criminals export market.
And we can go further. A decade ago, the Car Theft Index contributed to a fall in vehicle theft by allowing consumers to make informed choices about which models of car to buy based on their likelihood of being stolen. Today I want to announce my intention to do the same with mobile phone theft.
We should go further with direct entry. We should use technology like body-worn video, smart phone apps and other mobile devices to save time and improve outcomes, and it remains our aim to make all forces fully digital by 2016.
That is why I have set up a team called the Crime and Policing Knowledge Hub inside the Home Office. Understanding that overall crime levels are only the net result of millions of individual decisions in millions of different contexts, officials have been working to identify and understand the six main drivers of crime in this country. We believe they are alcohol, drugs, opportunity, the effectiveness of the criminal justice system, character and profit. If we can understand each of these drivers better, if we can understand how they relate to one another, we should be able to devise better policy to prevent crime occurring in the first place.
For example, working with the Metropolitan Police we have discovered that more than a third of vehicles stolen in London do not involve taking the owners keys. Instead, car thieves might break into a car and programme a new electronic key. They might use sophisticated devices to grab the security coding when the owner uses their key so they can use it themselves. And there have been reports that they could even use malware to commandeer vehicle systems via satellites and issue remote demands to unlock doors, disable alarms and start car engines. Because we have this understanding, we can now work with industry to improve electronic resilience, include this kind of resilience in the vehicles overall security ratings, and work out the extent to which the same threat applies to other physical assets such as building security systems.
It is well known that children who are brought up in violent households are more likely to become violent themselves later in life, so domestic violence as well as being a serious crime in its own right is also a significant driver of crime. But unfortunately, we know from the HMIC inspection I commissioned last year that the police response to domestic violence is not good enough. So I have written to every chief constable making it clear they must have a domestic violence action plan in place by September, and I am chairing a national oversight group to make sure HMICs recommendations are implemented quickly.
In March 2002, he created five policing priority areas. These places were as small and specific as Camberwell Green in Southwark, the Grange estate in Stoke, Little Horton and Canterbury in Bradford, the West Ward in Rhyl and Stapleton Road in Bristol. The police in these places, Labour decided, couldnt cope with high levels of crime and anti-social behaviour. So the solution was obvious. If the police couldnt do the job, the Home Office would. If you lived on Stapleton Road in Bristol, you could stop worrying because help was at hand. A civil servant sitting in Queen Annes Gate in London was ready to take charge.
The policing priority areas were not an aberration. The 2002 Police Reform Act required the Home Secretary, at the beginning of each financial year, to prepare a National Policing Plan. The Act said the National Policing Plan must set out the strategic policing priorities generally for the police areas in England and Wales for the period of three years beginning with that year. Yes, you heard me correctly. The Home Secretary and officials werent just expected to know how to fight crime on Stapleton Road in Bristol, they were expected to know precisely what local needs would be for every other community in the country, and more than that they needed to know what those needs would be three years into the future.
Home Secretary Theresa May delivers speech on police reform #reformpolice pic.twitter.com/b4eDVOhoA7
11.21am BST
Sorry the blog has been quiet for a while. Ive been at a briefing, and I forgot to post a line saying I would be away for a bit.
In a moment Ill post details of Theresa Mays speech. Its interesting.
10.03am BST
The Office for National Statistics has published a paper revising its growth figures for 1997 to 2012 (pdf).
The paper itself is not for the faint-hearted. Heres an extract.
The estimate of quarterly real GDP growth has been revised up on average over the period 1997 to 2012 by +0.02 percentage points, ranging from -0.7 percentage points in quarter 2, 2007 to +0.7 percentage points in quarter 2, 2008 and quarter 1, 2009.
The revised path of GDP confirms that the peak to trough of the 2008/09 economic downturn remains the deepest since ONS records began in 1948.
The ONS have significantly revised up the UKs growth profile since the 2008/9 recession. Growth since 2010 is now 1 per cent higher than previously thought. If current growth rates from 2013 onwards are applied (which are yet to be revised) then todays revisions suggest that GDP has grown by 8.1 per cent since the first quarter of 2010, compared to the 7.0 per cent previously thought. This would be the third highest growth of the G7 (ahead of France and Germany but behind the US and Canada).
By the end of 2012 the economy was -1.7 per cent below its pre-recession peak compared to the -4.0 per cent previously thought. If current growth rates from 2013 are applied the UK economy would have passed its pre-recession peak in the third quarter of 2013 and would now stand 2.7 per cent above the pre-recession peak (compared to the 0.2 per cent previously thought).
9.30am BST
This morning Downing Street has announced the signing of a £3.5bn contract to buy 589 armoured vehicles. It claims this will safeguard 1,300 jobs.
Heres an extract from the news release.
As the prime minister sets off to Wales to host the NATO summit, the Government will today sign a deal for the next generation of world class armoured vehicles for the British Army.
Securing 1300 jobs across the UK, the £3.5bn contract for 589 new armoured fighting vehicles is the biggest single order placed by the Ministry of Defence for armoured vehicles for over 30 years and is an important part of the investment we are making to keep Britain safe and to ensure our Armed Forces have the equipment they need to operate in an unpredictable world.
9.04am BST
For the record, here are todays YouGov GB polling figures.
Labour: 35% (down 1 point from YouGov in the Sunday Times)
8.55am BST
Weve got the first PMQs since the summer recess today and it will be dominated by what David Cameron has to say about the governments response to Isiss latest beheading of an American hostage, and its threat to target a British hostage next. Heres the Guardians main story with all the latest developments and heres how it starts.
David Cameron will set out the British governments response to the threat to the life of a British man by Islamic State (Isis) at prime ministers questions after an emergency meeting of Cobra on Wednesday morning.
Government sources said Cameron had known of the threat to the mans life for many months so it will not change his short-term calculations, but the revelation of the threat to the public in the gruesome Isis video is likely to put more pressure on the UK to join the air strikes that the Americans have been conducting for weeks against Isis in northern Iraq.
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