Alix Mortimer

Conference: Chris Huhne MP

By | Tue 16th September 2008 - 6:42 pm

A barnstormer of a speech from Chris Huhne this morning as he dealt with his own portfolio and then segued into a full-out attack on the Tories. He was so impressive I have even forgiven him for backing into me in full Chris-gesture mode causing me to spill coffee all down myself.

Worth a good long quote:

…take David Cameron. He knows that you can get four years in jail for just carrying a knife, but he thinks that judges tiptoe around knife crime. So he wants to send every knife carrier to prison automatically.

Just a small problem. If he did, the prison population would nearly quadruple. The basic rate of income tax would go up by a penny in the pound.

Oh, and another problem. The evidence shows it wouldn’t work.

What works is visible policing to reassure people they do not need to carry a knife. Intelligence led stop and search of hot spots to catch knife carriers. Working with the local community to gather leads and encourage witnesses. Telling it how it is in schools and colleges. Taking back control of the streets.

But Labour and the Tories are addicted to punishment posturing, and that means legislative diarrhoea as a substitute for enforcing the law that we have. In their first decade in government, Labour’s new legislation takes the same amount of shelf space as 200 copies of War and Peace.

“A shadow minister who runs to time, absolutely amazing,” said the Chair approvingly, when Chris’ minute-plus of applause finally dried up.

The full speech can be viewed on the Beeb here.

Read more by or more about .
This entry was posted in Conference.
Advert

2 Comments

Post a Comment

Lib Dem Voice welcomes comments from everyone but we ask you to be polite, to be on topic and to be who you say you are. You can read our comments policy in full here. Please respect it and all readers of the site.

To have your photo next to your comment please signup your email address with Gravatar.

Your email is never published. Required fields are marked *

*
*
Please complete the name of this site, Liberal Democrat ...?

Advert

Recent Comments

  • Ian
    The way the party runs itself is hardly an exemplar for putting our values into practice, is it? Nor evidence that senior people in the party have much interes...
  • David Allen
    British politics since the 2008 crash has been a contest between establishment Governments and insurgent opponents. The Tory and Labour establishment parties h...
  • Kevin Hawkins
    I have frequently commented on Lib Dem Voice that we should not take one week’s by-election results (or even several week’s results) seriously. We have goo...
  • Dan Falchikov
    Well said: "David Howarth’s Being Liberal explores the Liberal disposition: open-minded, suspicious of abuses of power, uncomfortable with hierarchy, treatin...
  • Pawel Urbanski
    This is the clearest statement of the case I have read in a while, and "competence is not a destination" is the line worth repeating. One worked example from ...