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Below is the text of the speech made by David Blunkett, the then Home Secretary, on 30 October 2003.

I am pleased to be part of reinventing this lecture series after a break of several years – and pleased to be talking in my home county of Yorkshire about the opportunities and challenges of multi-faith Britain.

York itself may not be the most diverse community in the UK, but it has an interesting mix of thriving faith communities, especially here in the university – and of course the city has a long and famous religious history. But as well as the positives in that history there is also a reminder of the negative aspects which are part of the background to my contribution today – the anti-Jewish pogroms of the 12th Century.

The question I want to raise today is how much does faith matter in the 21st century – and I want to go beyond the obvious contribution to the identity and spirit of the individual. The further question is how, and to what extent, the interface between faith and politics, between faith and social interaction, is still important to us now.

Self-evidently faith is still important: locally, nationally and internationally. In Britain, 35 million in the 2001 census whilst not necessarily regular attenders declared themselves Christians; there are 1.5m Muslims, half a million Hindus, and hundreds of thousands of Sikhs, Jews, Buddhists, and people of other faiths.

Understanding the role faith plays in people’s lives is vital to community cohesion and race relations – and I know Charles Clarke is working with the faith communities on the future of religious education in schools. Faith plays a role at crucial points in people’s lives – times of great triumph but also sorrow – birth, marriage, death. It affects the foundation, the framework of our lives. This was true for me, as a Methodist – indeed, it still is. But all of us, even those who are not overtly religious, our basic values, our sense of right and wrong, our consciences, are shaped by our community and its religious heritage.

And of course from this foundation in the individual and the family springs the framework and structure of community – faith provides the building blocks, but also the glue, for many communities.

I have seen this in practice as Home Secretary. Take the visit I made to the Hindu ‘Mandir’ in Southall. Reaching out to the community, providing facilities like health screening, doing practical things which benefit everyone like cleaning up the local canal, as well as being the focal point of their own faith community. In nearby Edmonton, the Bible Study Network – a black-led Christian organisation – provides job-seeking assistance, which is especially important for young people finding their way in an area of high unemployment. Also in London, in Stamford Hill, the Jewish community is playing a big role in driving forward the local Sure Start programme – again open to the whole community. Up here in Yorkshire there are mosques in Bradford which offer creches and other facilities to the whole community, including Jewish residents. In Highfields in Leicester the Pakistani community runs a youth and community association, again open to, and used by, all local residents. And right across the country I know that Sikh Gurdwaras provide food to all who need it regardless of faith.

There is of course a rigorous debate between those who see the purpose of religion as saving souls and individual spirituality and those who see this as indivisible from the contribution we make through our lives and actions to the wellbeing of others. Ironically in the far south of the US the evangelical right, even though in their own lives they practice giving, in public life embrace the individualist route, rejecting the political process – unless that is to get their own man in the key post! Perversely they end up frustrating attempts to change the very circumstances that in their own giving they would want to change.

I think this is wrong: faith communities should not turn away from the political process. They have an important role not just in building strong communities, but in building active communities – communities which are actively engaged in solving their own problems. Any government which is interested in connecting with, mobilising, and empowering communities – and we are – is going to be interested in engaging with faith communities. That is why I have set up the Faith Communities Unit in the Home Office.

Faith communities provide people, commitment, drive, and sustainability – springing from inner conviction and strength. But they also have the very thing which makes activity and mutuality practical – namely, buildings in the community, leaders in the community, teachers and other support mechanisms. They have vicars, Ministers, Imams, Brahmins, Rabbis out there in the communities – the Catholic church, for example, had eyes and ears and an internet back in Medieval times, the kind of network which any political party today would give their eye for.

But here is the rub – we want people to gain strength and we want them to contribute, but is there not a danger in channeling this soley through their faith? When we want people both to participate through their faith community, but also to be part of and active beyond it – and sometimes despite it – this is the real challenge. The challenge for faith communities is to develop the skills and confidence of their members to play an active role in civil society – speaking and acting not just on behalf of their faith, but also on behalf of the local community as a whole. For example I have been hugely impressed by the contribution that the Harringey Peace Alliance are making with the police tackling gun crime and creating a safer community for people of all faiths and those of none.

Government has a role to play here, which is to facilitate interaction between the different faith communities, and between them and the wider community. We need to build on the spontaneous efforts faith groups are making themselves in this direction – for example the Institute for Social Cohesion, a Baha’i initiative bringing faith, community, business and government groups together to discuss how to improve community cohesion. We need to remember that in the UK we are lucky to be able to have this debate in a political context where faith and politics remain distinct spheres. In the international arena faith and politics are often directly mixed, and then they become not a liberator, channeling strength through faith into wider goals, but actually constrain political engagement and restrict freedom. The will of God or Allah becomes the will of the political state – and as such unchallenged and unchallengeable, and therefore non-pluralistic.

11 September placed the debate in the wrong context – but it focused all of us on disentangling religious commitment from the kind of religious ‘fundamentalism’ which can lead to extremism. Across the world people are addressing this issue. Where they don’t, they are forced to do so. We have to understand what is happening in a world where young men and women can be enjoined by their religious leaders to take their own lives and the lives of others as suicide bombers.

Let me accord absolute credit to those standing up to this within world religions. But it is important for all of us to join them in resisting and isolating the challenge of extremism, because it is not about to go away. There is a lot of talk these days about us living in a post-ideological world. The great twentieth century ideologies – communism and extreme nationalism – have been seen to fail. But the hunger for simple answers remains, and there is the danger that another form of extremism, religious extremism, will fill the gap.

Of course, it is crude to suggest that religion is essentially about simple answers. Signing up to Islam or Judaism or Christianity should mark the beginning of a lifelong journey of moral reflection and self-examination, rather than instant moral certainty. But there will always be those ready to distort religious teachings to satisfy the hunger for simple answers – encouraging their followers to define their faith and their identity in terms of their opposition to outsiders, rather than in positive terms, in terms of self-improvement and contribution to the community.

It is a worrying trend that young, second-generation British Muslims are more likely than their parents to feel they have to choose between feeling part of the UK and feeling part of their faith – when in fact as citizens of the United Kingdom and adherents of a major faith they should feel part of wider, overlapping communities. There may be a number of reasons for this including islamaphobia and religiously motivated attacks. It is religious extremism which forces them to choose, separating them from their citizenship and demanding the impossible. Again, the issue here is identity: whether people are able to identify with the actual world in which they live, or with another world they are taught about, which offers the absolute certainties which day-to-day interaction can never offer. We need to work together to resist this – by ‘we’ I mean government and faith leaders working together. Otherwise there is a real risk that instead of religion helping to build civic society and a sense of belonging among those who might otherwise become alienated, religion could actually increase that alienation. This risk is not confined to Islam: we see it also in some forms of Hindu nationalism, and as already mentioned it is writ large in some extremes of Christian evangelicalism.

The clash of cultures, within individual lives as well as within communities, the uncertainty of the second and third generation, these are all political issues – but they are also issues in which teaching and community attitudes can make or break the direction in which young people in particular choose to go. Teaching in religious communities whether evangelical, Christian, or Islam, is rarely spoken about, but it is vital.

This is not just a problem for Britain; our European partners are wrestling with the same questions. In France, which has 5 million Muslims, a real debate is under way. At the moment in France, 60% of Muslim preachers do not speak French. We should be working together with the Muslim community in Britain to ensure we are not going down the same road. It is crucial that those who have this key role in shaping the world view of our young people should be in a position to help them relate to the world in which they live, rather than turning them away from it. This is absolutely central for the development of the Muslim community itself and for the life chances of young Muslims, but also has a wider impact on social cohesion and race relations.

It is important that we work together and pool ideas – across countries and governments, across faith communities, and across the academic community as well. This weekend Fiona MacTaggart, the Home Office minister responsible for race and community cohesion, is participating in a European conference in Rome, with other government ministers and faith leaders, looking at precisely these questions – how governments should be engaging with moderate elements across faith communities to isolate extremism and promote social cohesion.

A large part of the answer has to be to teach and practise tolerance and respect. Britain can be proud of its tradition of tolerance and pluralism. Up until recently this has been about tolerating different versions of the Christian faith. We shouldn’t play down how difficult this was: the bitterest feuds are often between people who are close. But now we face a new challenge – living together with people of radically different faiths who often do not understand one another.

So we need to work harder at this. But we should never pretend that understanding will bring full agreement – that dialogue between faiths is a kind of search for ‘the lowest common denominator’. Tolerance is about accepting and respecting difference – the true test of tolerance and respect only comes when you disagree with someone. It is about agreeing to work out your disagreements within a legal and democratic framework.

At the same time, there are limits to where we can agree to disagree. We cannot tolerate the intolerable. Female genital mutilation is one example. Like September 11, this is not about East versus West, or Islam versus Christianity – it is about extremism versus modernity. It is an affront to modern values of equality, equal respect and respect for human life and suffering.

In fact, we think of these as modern values, but they lie at the heart of all the major religions. Secular thinkers mock believers for being more interested in saving the soul than the body. But religion has never just been about making promises for the afterlife. It is about making a difference now, to the actual reality of people’s lives. All the major religions teach us that in the end our lives will be judged on how much we have helped others.

Of course, in all the major religions there have also been, and will continue to be, times and places where these central values are obscured by upsurges in religious extremism. That is the challenge of a world where different peoples are at different stages of development. Oppression on the basis of religious difference – which in Europe was probably at its most vivid in the work of the Inquisition, but continues through to the Taleban in much more recent times – is a strand in human affairs which has to be faced up to. It places a duty on all of us not to turn away, but to redouble our efforts to connect with those who continue to fight for openness, tolerance, and respect. And it imposes on Government a duty to address the concerns of faith leaders. If we don’t do this – if we don’t show how moderate faith leaders are listened to, can really have an input into policy discussion – then we play into the hands of the extremists and rabble-rousers.

That’s why we committed ourselves in the manifesto for the last election to look at the government’s interface with the faith communities; that’s why we have followed through on that by establishing a steering group to look at ways of giving faith groups an input into policymaking and delivery. The steering group reports in December, and we hope its recommendations will enable us to make real progress in harnessing the energy and depth of commitment of faith communities. At the same time of course we will continue to support more immediate, practical projects on the ground, especially those projects which aim to build not just strong, tightly-knit communities but active outreach communities – communities in which deeply held faith is a springboard for individuals and groups to play an active role in civic society.

Let me finish by making it clear that while I believe faith communities are crucial to the working of civil society, I am not seeking to impose a duty on them to engage with the formal political arena. I simply want us all to recognise that in an increasingly complex, connected world we all share the challenge to finding solutions to our common problems. In that task we should do all we can to engage people of goodwill – both those of faith and those of no faith. Together we need to be clear that in the world we hold in common we need to work together to preserve and enhance what we value most – that is, our common humanity.

Below is the text of the speech made by David Blunkett, the then Home Secretary, on 4 November 2003.

Don’t worry, I have come to praise not to bury Caesar. So thank you, Ruth, for what you are doing.

Thank you to all of those who are giving enormous time and energy to what must sometimes feel like a thankless task. I do sometimes have the same feeling, but I get paid reasonably well for it! Many of you don’t, so you have my appreciation for what you are doing.

Today I want to be able to spell out not only where we are at, but the process that we are about as well. We are launching a consultation paper today, along with the new National Policing Plan, which I will come to in a moment.

We do so on the basis that there will be a consultation period. We will then produce another document with more firm proposals and we will consult on that as well. We won’t move towards any change or legislative alterations until this time next year.

So there will be 12 months for people to engage in a genuine dialogue, to listen and learn, and to firm up on those things that we can gain consensus on in terms of how we can bring about improvement.

There is only one agenda and it is the same as yours. That is to ensure that we serve the people that we do serve better, and to ensure that the forces we oversee in one way or another are actually able to do so and achieve that as well.

It is very good to be in Manchester. It is not widely known, given the publicity that has just occurred, that the force has been at the forefront over recent months of addressing its own problems, under the leadership of Mike Todd, taking on the real challenges.

One of the ironies of the two year undercover investigation by the BBC was that it was precisely because a previous Chief Constable had actually admitted that the force did have a problem, that the BBC thought they might go in and prove it. Now they certainly did with a vengeance and as a consequence of the enormity of what was found, the Crown Prosecution Service will not be taking action against the individual, Mark Daly, who actually undertook that work.

But I do want to make it clear that we can’t for the public have those who take on responsibility and who are absolutely crucial to trust, emerging as not being police officers at all but working for someone else. I do appeal to the media that although there will be times – and this was clearly one of them – when undercover operation will reveal things that ought to have been revealed through normal management practices, we do need a code of conduct in this if we are not to have a free for all.

After all, who might emerge some day as being the real Greg Dyke rather than the one we have actually got?! Probably with the same accent.

Now, Ruth mentioned that Oliver – who is a good friend of mine actually (as you know, we get on far too well – too well for him and perhaps too well for me) – is speaking on Guy Fawkes day tomorrow. He will explain the multiplicity of options available to a Conservative Home Secretary if one still exists when the next Conservative government is elected. Ranging from sheriffs through to fantasy islands for asylum seekers.

Now I just thought I would let you know that I did once have a phone call with Oliver when he was riding a horse. I just envisaged him as the gun-slinging, gum-chewing, Sheriff of Westminster. A frightening prospect for you if not for Chief Constables! He is here tomorrow to tell you a little bit about the kind of reforms that he is envisaging.

I am interested that we are now all on stream in terms of actually wanting to see some change. It makes your life, Ruth, a lot easier because you ride a tiger – a tiger with no political majority, with a consensus that by its very nature is crucial to the police authorities’ voice being heard and taken seriously.

And yet a consensus that can only be gained if we in government and our main opposition parties are sensitive to knowing that many of the things you are doing at the moment are misunderstood, are not known about, are not heard about, and therefore raising the temperature is about raising the profile.

It’s about actually getting across what needs to be done and what could be done.

I am comforted in my role to know that there is possibly life after death as being Home Secretary. After all, Michael Howard has re-emerged as the leader of the Conservative Party. I gather that I will have to give it a year or two and re-invent myself, which I am very happy to do! At the moment you have got me as I am.

I just want to say today that the easy life is to leave things alone. I think it was Margaret Thatcher who said that no change was not an option. And clearly if you want to improve your standing publicly, but more importantly your ability to influence and to bring about change at local level, you will want to join with us in looking at what might be done over the next year to re-examine that.

With the Chief Constables, with ACPO, and with yourselves, I am up for looking at what we really mean by operational responsibility. I said so on the Today programme this morning. Not in terms of breaking the tripartite approach – I think we need to reinforce it by being much clearer about the different elements (the role, the responsibility, the levels of accountability) that should exist in the three part approach – but actually be able to define it much more clearly.

Simply shouting ‘operational responsibility’ does nobody anybody good. Of course Chiefs and Commanders at divisional level have to have day to day hands on responsibility. Nobody in their right mind, let alone a Home Secretary in or out of their right mind, would attempt to direct policing from the centre. You wouldn’t, as police authority members, either want to, or have the capacity to, get engaged in doing that.

So there is no surreptitious agenda of taking away the right of those in the service to manage the service. After all, I don’t have the power of hire and fire in the civil service for historic reasons and to avoid politicisation. Because of the Nolan changes, we don’t now have the power in terms of the appointment of those representing outside organisations and the community.
We have moved from politicians determining who serves, who chairs, who is on all of these outside bodies, to civil servants, with at least one outside observer helping them do it.

You have a situation where you have to exercise influence through the relationship and goodwill that exists between you and those operating the service. We need to examine how that might work better and what those influences might be. But above all, we need to examine how we enable you to do the job better.

Hazel Blears will be talking tomorrow about the new slimmed down National Policing Plan – from 51 requirements to five key priorities. The five obviously relate, I think, to the commonsense things that all of us would agree on.

Incidentally, they don’t include targets on chasing motorists and speed cameras. I mention it because you mentioned it, Ruth. But I did read an article in the Daily Telegraph a week or two ago that actually presumed that the government had laid down targets for police forces on catching motorists with speed cameras.

Well you suffer, we suffer, from both misunderstanding and sometimes malign intent because it makes a good story and people can do a knocking job.

But actually what we are about in this debate is changing performance. It is all about lifting the game. It is about comparability between what is achieved – not just between one force or another, but within one force and another, and the reasons why.

I think that the job of the Home Secretary – apart from resourcing (and I will come to that at the end, so that I go out on a low note!) and the legislative power to enable the police to be able to do their job better (as well as their partners – environmental health, housing, the whole panoply of organisations that make up crime reduction partnerships) – has to be the role in terms of having the information and disseminating the information that makes it possible for people to actually be able to make those comparisons at local level.

For you to be able to determine what is happening with genuinely comparable police force areas, because you have to compare like with like. To be able to do so in terms of different elements of the command units in your own force areas. They vary from forces that only have two or three command units to areas like Greater Manchester with eleven, and of course the Metropolitan Police with borough-wide command unit areas. We need to be able to look at the data and work out why there is such inconsistency.

So my first point is that consistency is absolutely crucial. When people move house they expect the quality of policing to be the same across England and Wales. We live in the same community, we pay the same taxes, we expect some form of accountability. Accountability to you in terms of police authorities, remaining the same or revamped, or slightly reshaped, or to the community that is served in new ways.

So part of the reform agenda isn’t simply about the shape of police authorities, but how neighbourhood panels can work better, how this fits in with the reforms that the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister is engaged with – with what is called new localism. I am not entirely sure about the title. Some of us were involved with this a long time ago. I remember writing a pamphlet 21 years ago called ‘Building from the Bottom’. I still believe it and I think that we need to examine that area.

The third, of course, is the visibility and the accessibility, because part of influencing what takes place in the neighbourhood and at local level is very much about the connection that people have with their force. The citizen in uniform was, of course, the emergence of the police force of old, where people felt close to, and able to engage with and get a response from people they saw and understood.

All of this, of course, relates then to how you develop police forces in the 21st century – with forensics, with technology, and of course with the tremendous challenge of organised crime and global criminality. Force level, neighbourhood, command level operations, are interfered with on a daily basis now by the diversion of resources to meet entirely new challenges.

We need to address that and I welcome your views in terms of any restructuring. Not some big bang restructure, not structure changes for their own sake, but sometimes just modest thinking about lead force areas in terms of a particular region taking on particular tasks that expertise can be developed in. Or some form of regional structure dealing with particular areas of criminality that require that focus.

These are all part of the consultation and the reform agenda in which you have an absolutely crucial voice. Firstly, because you know it well. Secondly, because you have the capacity to put together alternatives to the ones that we just tentatively touch on in what is a very green edged Green Paper, but in order to ensure that we face those challenges together.

There is no point in saying to a Chief or a Divisional Commander that we want to ensure that there is continuity of employment of community beat officers if, of course by necessity, those officers have to be pulled off for major murder inquiries or something similar.

They had this experiment with research funded by Rowntree in North Yorkshire, which frankly tells us nothing. It was in a neighbourhood where there was a particular individual employed who was pulled off so often from the community, that in the end the community were less certain, less secure, than they were before the experiment began.

That just tells us the blindingly obvious – that if you are going to have good community policing you need continuity of the people being there. That is why Community Support Officers have very rapidly become so popular, because people can see them and on the whole they don’t get pulled off for other duties.

Also because people do need to know that the intelligence-led approach is not simply about macro intelligence and technology-led activity, but it is about people who know their community, who understand it, who can relate to it, who are respected by the community.

So these things go hand in hand and that is why accountability is of course about performance and the spreading of best practice, but it is also about re-engagement with the community at a level that people can understand.

So I don’t think there is anything to fear from this. I think all of this fits in with the five priorities that we have laid out for the National Policing Plan. The people, citizen-centred focus, for the service. Tackling the anti-social behaviour and disorder that completely bedevils the community and undermines trust and confidence. Reducing volume crime – even the best Chief Constables who are community orientated are still aggravated about having targets on burglary and vehicle crime.
I understand why, but if we are going to have a debate leading up to the general election – when not the British Crime Survey, but tit-for-tat who-reduced-recorded-crime-the-most is going to be the issue – you will forgive Home Secretaries if they actually want to reduce volume crime.

So do the public because when they hear that crime has gone up a certain percentage, certain numbers, in the end that undermines all the good work that is going on in tackling the underlying causes and the things that really get to people most. After all, it wasn’t the Home Office who introduced the new National Crime Recording Standard. We have got it now and we have got to live with it.

Transparency is a wonderful idea, except that, when we published the figures in July, one Deputy Chief Constable in the North East had the audacity to tell his local paper that it was nothing to do with him – that it was the Home Secretary who had introduced the new NCRS. Thank God the neighbouring authority had a Chief Constable who actually contradicted it. It’s a bit odd though isn’t it when a Deputy Chief doesn’t know who introduced the new National Recording Standard? So a bit of accountability there wouldn’t come amiss. I just thought I would get that off my chest!

I have mentioned tackling organised and serious crime and we are engaged at national level with looking at revamping the services – the organisations, that are actually engaged with organised crime and border controls. The Prime Minister has established a new Cabinet Committee, which I chair, and we will be engaging rapidly with how we can make the National Criminal Intelligence Service, the National Crime Squad, the Customs element, the intelligence element of the immigration service, and many more (including Special Branch and those who are engaged along our coastal borders), more accountable and work more effectively together.

And of course bringing more offenders to justice is a key and absolutely critical element. But if we are going to do that then we need to ensure that everyone gets credit for what they do. There is no point in having more transparent, and therefore more recorded crime, with more police to report crime to and therefore more confidence and more acknowledgement by the public that they have trust and faith (and reporting of crime goes up), if as the police actually catch more of those people, the press (as they did a few weeks ago) then denigrate the police for not having caught a higher percentage of a higher recorded level of reporting.

The level of understanding in this country about crime, criminality, and recording, is so poor that we all have a task together to try and bring a bit of light into the darkness, so that people do get credit where credit is due.

So in launching the pamphlet it is precisely to open up these issues. To engage with the neighbourhood, with the command and divisional level as most of us know it, with the shaping of those who have a role in terms of holding the police to account in a way that is positive for the future that we’re engaged in.

And you naturally and understandably commented heavily on the idea of direct election. I made it only one of six possible changes that we outline in the document. I am deeply mindful of the danger of rabble rousers or racists becoming elected. It would be very easy indeed – which is why we are sceptical about sheriffs – to find that one person, for instance, had greater power than ever before.

But in the end, you are right. Whether it is Merseyside or Baltimore, unless people actually have an understanding of who to hold to account and for what, and how the police authority could work to be engaged more and to have greater influence, then obviously we would be wasting our time. We would be deluding people into believing that you had power you didn’t have, and that you were to be held to account in a way that missed the point – the point being that those who claim to have the power, who wish to hold the power, should therefore be accountable for the power.

I need to clarify over the next year what the role of the Home Secretary would be in the future. Oliver and Mark can set out what they believe to be right. If they believe that we should denude the Home Secretary of any levers of power then let’s have that debate. I don’t mind standing up at the dispatch box and blaming everybody else but myself, that would be a very easy role – gun-slinging Home Secretary without any bullets in the gun.

We don’t have all that many bullets in the gun as you may have noticed, but what we do have we must use more judiciously. We need to address, for instance, issues of centrally imposed bureaucracy paperwork and statistical data collection in a way in which I hope the new head of the Standards Unit will assist us.

Paul Evans from Boston in the United States has a tremendous record. A light touch, low key individual who I hope will work with you and with forces across the country to achieve this.

But the other end of the corollary is that if forces believe that bureaucracy is imposing unnecessary burdens, they must say so. If police chiefs believe that there is something that can be done, let them do it. Don’t let us have Chief Superintendents
e-mailing the Radio 5 programme – as I had when I was at my Party Conference – with a whole litany of things for which he, as a very senior manager, should have had responsibility.

It is time for the police service to lead and manage, and not just oversee the operation of the force requirements. Management means manage, difficult as that is. Difficult in terms of the deployment of resources. Difficult in holding their own force members to account. Difficult in terms of demanding why it is that response times are so bad in some areas but not in others.

Why it is that the way in which people are treated when they report crimes are so bad, but not in others? Why it is that Superintendents tell me that they are so frustrated with the call centre which they and their chiefs should be overseeing and changing?

It’s not about passing the buck to someone else, it is time to really get a grip. So that when the public tell us through the opinion polling and the focus groups, which have been done carefully and quietly over the last 12 months, that almost 80% of the public want to know more about the police and believe that they get to know very little; when over two thirds want more say in how the police respond; when 34 out of the 43 force areas are still reliant on the old PCCG consultation mechanism set up in 1984, and every one of the 34 say that they know it is unsatisfactory; then there is room for change.

So alongside genuine fears that you have about what we might or might not do in terms of direct election, there is a much, much bigger agenda. It is about prompting change within the service itself as well as within the operation of the police authorities. Not just so that people know who to grumble to, so that they have somebody else to let off steam to, but actually to change the practice. Because letting off steam and frustration must be something that you feel day in, day out.

If the public feel it, you must feel it. I feel it because thousands of letters come in and when you go on radio programmes and you do phone-ins – I was doing the one on Radio 2 the other day with Jeremy Vine – an avalanche of calls about the very simplest things in police force areas.

Now I made the cardinal mistake of a Home Secretary in believing that I might have some influence. So I asked them to take their details down so that I could take them up with force areas. I do have one advantage over most police authority chairs. If I create a real fuss there is a chance that it might get covered. There is just a chance that I might be able to call in the Chief from the local area. They might recall my first few months as Home Secretary and take me seriously about it.

But there is a bigger chance – if we actually have a better relationship, if we have systems that work rather than relying on muscle – if we are able to deal with people where it matters.

That is why I have put forward the idea of community advocates who would be employed, I hope by you, and working to you, but actually able to engage with the police at local level. Filtering out all the things that cause frustration but are not the job of the new IPCC complaints function. Weeding out things that would otherwise actually pull the police away from doing the job into dealing with constant gripes. Able to be a voice working with you and alongside you. That seems to me to be a positive suggestion. Let’s shape it in another way if you don’t like it.

There are a couple of services – the Met and the West Midlands – looking at engaging people from the community as assessors in terms of appointments. Let’s look at how that is working and whether we could do better with it, including at neighbourhood and local level and how we could engage people so that they are genuinely involved and included. And let’s do so with the optimism that we are genuinely making a difference.

Under the British Crime Survey, which is the only reliable survey because its methodology hasn’t changed, except that it has been slightly broadened, we know that crime is falling. In other words the polling is now broader and therefore more reliable. We know that people are getting a better service. We know that the likelihood of becoming a victim is the lowest for 20 years.

We know from the British Crime Survey that even though the fear of violence is going up because more violence is now counted – violence that was never counted before in recorded crime is now counted as an automatic and regular feature – we know from the BCS that serious violence overall has actually fallen over the last year.

We need to be able to sing about the fact that we have 12,000 more uniformed officers than three years ago. We had some catching up to do, but I think 12,000 more is a pretty good record. I would like to go out of office with an even bigger record of increased police numbers, of the several thousand – it’s 2,000 at the moment – Community Support Officers.

A lot better than going out of office after four years with 1,000 fewer police officers than you came in with, which one of my predecessors (who will remain nameless but is a very prominent individual at the moment) will remember.

And joining together – let me step on dangerous territory – on ensuring that in the spending review next summer there is a very clear understanding that we are all intent on resourcing the police properly. That we know there is a very difficult balance between what you have to raise locally – the £2 billion that you raise locally – and the near £9 billion that we are allocating from the centre. A difficult balance for the very reason, Ruth, that you spelt out. That the gearing effect that the public understandably don’t understand – where for every 1% increase in local spending you have to raise 4% over and above what we are giving you – in those circumstances we need to get it right and we need to know what the demands are.

Over the last three years there has been a 19% increase in real terms over and above inflation. This coming year will be very tight. No authority will get less than inflation, but it will be much tighter for the Police Grant, plus of course the additional resources that come in from the centre which are allocated to the locality, including the 50 current Command Unit divisions who get direct funding of £50 million from the centre. And the drug-related Criminal Justice Intervention Programme which we will be announcing an expansion of in the next few days.

All of these things coming together to make it happen.

If there are precept increases of the magnitude (and I said this to the Chief and to the Chair of the Police Authority in North Yorkshire last week) of 76%, you are going to give me a hell of a job in arguing the case with the Deputy Prime Minister and the Chancellor. But reasonable, sensible precept increases that have to take account of gearing, that do recognise that this is an incredibly tight year. But also that local people want more police visible and accessible on the beat, that you need to resource – yes even helicopters seeing as though they are sponsoring your conference – even helicopters surveying the neighbourhood. That they want a police force that can use the best technology and forensics available. And that we want to continue pressing down on crime, raising numbers, and giving confidence to the public.

If all of us can join together on that agenda – difficult as it is to be a popular Home Secretary – it just might be that police authorities of the future and well-known, highly visible Chief Constables and Commanders, will have both the respect of, and the gratitude of, the public for a better police service in this country than we have ever known before.

Below is the text of the speech made by David Blunkett, the then Home Secretary, on 22 January 2004.

Thank you very much indeed for the invitation, and David can I just reassure you that Sheffield didn’t plumb the depths while I was there! It certainly is reviving very strongly. It’s reviving with a combination of self-help and government help.

Firstly, I think this is very timely. I think this conference is appropriate in dealing with some very broad and difficult issues. It reminds me that in reflecting on the cross party commitment to localism, which sometimes comes and goes – and which at the moment seems to have come to all political parties – that it has been a long and difficult road from; if I can be mischievous for a moment – from Joseph Chamberlain to Sandy Bruce Lockheart. We have had the commitment of powerful Conservative leaders to de-centralised, regenerated localism, and from Labour Party members like Ken Livingstone and myself we have had a recent history of commitment to innovation and enterprise in local government.

But it is much, much broader. And I don’t want to simply address the issue of local government today – my colleagues the Deputy Prime Minister and Nick Raynsford are responsible for that, but the wider context of how central and local government can facilitate the sense of identity, the sense of commitment, enterprise, and innovation, which comes from localities, from neighbourhoods, from towns and cities and counties.

It seems a long time ago since the days of Joseph Chamberlain, but it was actually at a time when central government was concerned with issues around international order, the British Empire, the issues around the place of Britain in the world. And it is one of those paradoxes that today we are dealing with the issues of security and stability in a new globalised world and a global economy – the challenges of terrorism and cross-boundary issues, the way in which all of us are subject to what is happening across the world in a way that I don’t think was conceived of even 20 years ago.

And how, just as with the days of Empire, it is at the very local level that people identify – that they have a sense of belonging, that the security and stability and order in their own lives can be reinforced. This is how the tremendous change and rapidity of change that is taking place around us – the challenge and sometimes the fears and insecurity that grow from globalisation – can actually be counteracted and counterweighted by providing support – particularly at local level.

I think that this is the challenge for all of us in government, at whatever level, and in terms of governance. It fits with the history which was one of initiative and enterprise and innovation, building from the bottom (which was the title of my own pamphlet with the Fabian Society just over 20 years ago). It is about building from the bottom in the sense that it is in people’s own lives that they experience the day to day challenges, and they turn to governance and government at each level for support, and backing, and enabling in terms of being able to resolve those problems.
It was from the neighbourhood, it was from the early days of communities – with the goose and burial clubs, that from their name were all about savings for Christmas and for dignity in internment – it was the working men’s societies, it was the local education trusts that came together and then demanded that they were supported and helped in broadening what they could do across local, and eventually across national government.

I think that we need to turn to that localism again and to remind ourselves of it in being able to develop new approaches – not simply in terms of shaping how we relate to local communities and local people and neighbourhoods from the centre, but also how we revitalise democracy.

I don’t think there is a single person in this room who wouldn’t accept that we have a major challenge in getting people to feel that they want to engage, that they can engage, and above all that they have confidence in the political process – which, after all, in our country is the essence of democratic change – in a way that doesn’t allow them to turn away, to be alienated from that democratic process; that doesn’t allow them to turn to extremes in terms of those who would delude them into believing that there are simple answers to very complicated questions.

Nor do I think there would be anyone in this room who would seriously believe that government itself could disengage from those issues.

There was a time, when I was heavily involved as Shadow Local Government Minister, and before that as Leader of Sheffield Council, when the late Nicolas Ridley was the Secretary of State for the Environment. I can remember him making a speech that his ideal situation would be for local government to have an annual meeting (he did actually say with a lunch, but I don’t think you would be able to afford it these days) where contracts would be agreed for the year with private providers, and then Councillors could go home and get about their business.

I don’t think any of us are into that. We are into supporting the change which reinforces the good that’s already taking place, the best practice that is already happening, the enabling and facilitating that is already part of the revitalisation of localism. And to build the confidence that drained away – and David Walker is entirely right about this – in the late 1980s and early 1990s, so that I think there was doubt in the minds of those who took on the tremendously difficult mantle of trying to revitalise their communities. Doubt about the role, about the uncertainties, about the relationship of locality to centre.

I think that is why this debate around civil renewal and about regeneration from the neighbourhood is critical.

We have seen put in place over the last few years new forms of relationship between the centre and the locality. It has varied between regeneration programmes driven by the Single Regeneration Budgets, which have seen panels and forums put in place, through the New Deal for Communities. It has seen the reinforcement and revitalisation of a belief in central government – the 2000 Act and the 2003 Act passed by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister in relation to providing new opportunities for charging policies, for wellbeing.

The powers that were put in the 2000 Act for the development of local government’s role in terms of local wellbeing are often forgotten and little talked about. The way in which the new business improvement districts, which we will be consulting on from July this year, will enable people through local ballot to decide for themselves whether they want to raise and spend. And how they wish to spend money, including on the areas that I have responsibility for in terms of security, order and stability, and an environment and quality of life which enables enterprise to flourish, tourism to be encouraged, people to go about their business in terms of shopping and leisure without fear.

And therefore this afternoon it is my hope that we could just engage for a moment with those issues around stability and security and order.

It seems to me that over the years the role of the locality has changed. We have seen developed the Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnerships – often described as Community Safety Partnerships. We have seen the gradual amalgamation of the Drug Action Teams into those partnerships. We have seen the engagement by local government itself, but also the local strategic partnerships, and community forums and panels.

It varies across the country but the intent is the same – to engage people in making decisions, and to reinforce the message that they are part of the solution; that mobilising local communities against drug abuse and misuse is a crucial part of that process. That actually engaging people with local policing, with the development of Street Wardens and now with Community Support Officers, is part of ensuring that people at local level are engaged as the solution. That we can actually cross agencies, departments of central and local government, and see it as part of our challenge and our problem.

I therefore hope that from the debate that is now taking place, we can see community safety as much a part of that local governance as leisure and libraries, emptying dustbins and the environment, because they all go together. The ‘broken windows’ theory about the way in which neighbourhoods disintegrate and the way in which once that is allowed to take shape, other forms of criminality and disintegration are reinforced, is just simple commonsense. We all know it is true. The moment that things start to slip, the moment that self-belief in the community disappears, is the moment that those who can afford to do so get out of those neighbourhoods. And when they do, they leave behind less capacity. They reduce the community and social asset base. They actually undermine, therefore, the capability of the community to be part of the solution.

It is a downward spiral that was mapped pretty clearly in North America and which I think we have seen some reversal of in terms of Britain. There was a fear at one time that the disintegration of inner city, that the movement out of urban areas, that the despair and disillusionment in those areas facing the greatest disadvantage, would be reinforced and that there would be a spiral downwards. I think that has started to reverse. I think that in our own communities we experience it. We can see community organisations revitalised. We can see people regaining a self-confidence and self-belief that allows them to engage. We can see the organs of government, including local government, warming to and engaging with those activities.

I remember when I was a very new Councillor in the early 1970s being severely told off by some of my older colleagues in my own Party for daring to advocate that we should support local Citizens Advice Bureaux and advice groups, on the grounds that it took away the essential role of Councillors being completely run ragged by every problem going in the community. Those days have long gone.
I remember being taken to task, and in fact given a good telling off, for being in favour of a local community newspaper run in one of our most deprived areas, on the grounds that it challenged the local hierarchy and was a dangerous pre-requisite to community development, which was obviously seen by both major Parties at the time as a dangerous trait.

In fact I remember Margaret Thatcher, when she first came to power, pulling the plug on advice and community development programmes which were seen as an aberration and something that would challenge the bastions of democratic politics.

Well I’ve not changed my mind. I actually think that engaging people in radical politics in their own neighbourhood, ensuring that they know that those who are elected are on their side, but that they inevitably will have to take much more difficult cross-cutting decisions and show leadership, that revitalising democracy by bringing it alive and making it real at local level makes sense.

So as part of my own remit and as part of the ‘big conversation’ that the Labour Party has engaged in, we want to hear how we can make available to the many what is currently only available to the few.

Take the example of gated and secure communities. Not just in London but primarily in London, there are communities of the wealthy – sometimes through the leasing arrangement, sometimes through a levy – where people contribute towards the security and order within the enclave in which they live. Not just security in the crime sense, but also in the quality of the environment.

When I lived just outside Wimbledon I was part of the Wimbledon Common association where, compulsorily, all those within three miles had to contribute – and still do – to the wellbeing of the wider area and the environmental improvement, as well as the patrols on the common. Everybody took that for granted.

Now the legislation that I have referred to – business improvement districts, the charging policies based on best value, the wellbeing provisions of the 2000 Act – give the possibility of being able to develop this concept in a way that would provide greater equity. Of course it means that both central and local government would have to equalise what was readily available. It is easy for those of us who are on reasonable incomes to agree to pay a small extra amount purely into our local area for a very localised product, without fearing that it will somehow be part of the wider debate in relation to Council Tax and precepts, which I will come to in a moment.

It is possible to do that and it is already happening – where Street Wardens have been funded, where (in some cases) local government has topped up Community Support Officers in order to link with the police to provide for a particular local need. For instance, in the experiments that have taken place through English Partnership and in London through the London Development Agency, we have seen night wardens – in Coventry, actually used to provide safety and security in the city centre, which I think is a very good and positive move.

What I am advocating is a debate about how we can build on those experiments and ensure that people know that they will get backing in doing so.

The impact is obviously one of giving people confidence to be able to go about their business, but it is also one of giving confidence in being able to regenerate the area, attract investment, get parents to want to stay and send their children to the local school that is part of the local community, that is part of the regeneration and rebuilding of the area.

Doing it in partnership, which is the absolutely crucial element, so that we are sharing the resourcing and we are sharing the task. Changing the relationship between government and governed, so that people genuinely feel not only that they are being enabled to take decisions, but that government at every level is there to help them do it. Thirdly, to revitalise democracy and strengthen citizenship and civil society, so that people are part of the process of reform and modernisation.

At the beginning of November we published from the Home Office a consultation paper on reform of policing, both in terms of the relationship and accountability of the police to local communities, and the structures to back it up. We have had very substantial and very welcome feedback, and we are still getting that over the next few weeks. We will then publish a more definitive consultation paper which again will be out for people to comment on and to be creative in coming back to us in the way forward.

What is absolutely certain is that this is a two-way process. The police can’t do their job in creating an environment of safety and security if they don’t have the backing and the engagement of local people. But local people aren’t going to warm to, have confidence in the criminal justice system as a whole, if they aren’t listened to, if there isn’t accountability and responsiveness at local level, and therefore the establishment of panels, the decentralisation to Command Unit (or Divisions as some of us call them) in terms of decision making within the police. The way in which this links to regeneration programmes and capacity building, and the development of assets in the community, all makes a difference to whether we are likely to succeed.

So we are in this together: greater accountability; a greater clarification of where responsibility lies is important because there is confusion about this. Confusion and muddle are the great buzz words of the moment. It usually means that someone doesn’t understand what you’re talking about and we all carry responsibility for making sure that we speak plainly and that we are understood. I take that as a key principle for national politicians as well as for those reporting what national politicians are saying and doing.

Take the crime statistics that are out today – the quarterly figures. We have two sets of figures. We have recorded crime which, under the new transparency, is seeing a vast number of crimes that previously weren’t recorded now being recorded by the police – with more police to report them to and so even more recording going on. It is very encouraging that, even with that proviso, vehicle crime, burglary, and robbery have gone down, and I welcome it, albeit that they’re relatively small additional drops on what has already been achieved. But we also have the British Crime Survey – which is a world leader in terms of what it actually samples and what it does – which again shows drops. But one shows a stabilisation in violent crime and the first, the recorded crime, shows an increase.

I don’t think anyone would dispute that people actually perceive that violent crime, particularly low level violent crime, has gone up. Not surprisingly, because of binge drinking and the recording of low level violence on a Friday and Saturday night. Not surprisingly, because we have already spelt it out that there is a real challenge on domestic violence, which is why, with all-Party support, we are legislating to get a grip on it. Not surprisingly, because anti-social behaviour, as we were spelling out earlier this week, is bedevilling our communities. This is why, through housing, environmental health, through the police, through the criminal justice system (including the magistracy and district judges), we need a different step change in terms of what we are doing in tackling anti-social behaviour.

But anybody who thinks that this is the sole responsibility of any single partner would be deluding themselves. So the issue of where accountability and responsibility lie is sometimes very difficult because it lies in a whole range of areas. Actually, usually at Home Office questions, it lies with me, whether it is a partner approach or not. So those who are in favour of operational responsibility and accountability at local level suddenly have an aberration when it comes to making sure that the Home Secretary is responsible for crime across the nation.

It’s a cross I am happy to bear. All I would ask is that the reality – whether I carry final responsibility or not – the reality for making change, lies with us all.

And that is really just the message that I wanted to get across this afternoon. That if we are going to debate revival in the neighbourhood and community, and if we are going to actually address what the causes are, and if we are equally going to take responsibility for being part of it, then we will need to do that together.

It is self-evident that central government has to give leadership – responsible not only for resourcing, but obviously for wider macro-economic issues. Which is why the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister, the Chancellor and myself, with Nick Raynsford, the Local Government Minister, are asking for restraint in terms of Council Tax levels. This is why I am going to be engaging heavily with police authorities in terms of their precept levels because they have an impact on the Council Tax. We must be balancing the need to invest in local services and the complexity of local government finance, with genuine responsibility nationally and locally for the impact it has on the wellbeing of others.

And I think that is a sensible debate. I think those who are, as the Deputy Prime Minister and his colleagues are, looking at how to find improvements in the way we raise resources, will need the help of those who, at the moment, understand the difficulty, but aren’t always so ready with answers that would find solutions to difficult problems. I know about this because, when I was Shadow Local Government Minister many moons ago, I was dealing at the time with the demise of the Poll Tax and the creation of the Council Tax. We were debating exactly these issues about the difficulty where you don’t have buoyancy in the system because you have to raise the tax just to equal inflation before you bring about any further investment. The issues of gearing where, if only a quarter of the overall taxes are raised at local level, then for every 1% (you’re familiar with this) of increased spending you are raising 4% in terms of the tax. These are difficult, complex issues.

We are in it together because whether it is a precept or whether it is the direct Council Tax, it all impinges on people’s lives. That dialogue with local people about what they really want and what they can pay for is so vital to the future.

We are asking – and we are working with the Local Government Association on this – that local authorities should come forward as what we are describing as ‘civic pioneers’ in terms of spreading best practice. We will try and ensure that, through the grants that are given to Community Safety Partnerships and the Drug Action Teams, and of course the Criminal Justice Intervention Programme, we reflect support from ourselves at the Home Office in terms of making it possible for people to engage in innovative ideas as to how to engage with greater security and order in their lives. As the foundation for regeneration, for quality of life, for wellbeing and, I have to say, for getting people to hear messages about progressive politics and about wider issues. Because people who are frightened and fearful in their own lives are most likely to disengage.

But there is a wider issue here as well. That is this. If we can engage a sense of identity, a sense of belonging; if we can use the best of local initiatives, like the Balsall Heath Forum, like what is taking place in East London with Bromley-by-Bow, the work on the Royds Estate in Bradford, and work in Newcastle, and many other parts of the country, where people have seen the initiative and enterprise of local people being critical to success and to change; if we can do that, we can have a wider impact on social cohesion, on community and race relations, on people’s confidence in welcoming change, coping with change, and being prepared to welcome and understand and live with difference and diversity.

So there are big gains to be made here right across the piece in terms of the capacity of people to cope with difficulty and change in their own lives, but to be welcoming and embracing of wider changes in the community.

It can’t be a top-down approach – it is going to have to be two-handed. But in the end the challenge at local level is for local government to embrace what is happening in the neighbourhood, to reinforce and welcome it rather than to see it as a threat. For central government to see innovation and change and ideas from the neighbourhood and from local government as a plus not a minus. And for central government to be much clearer about where it stands in terms of its areas of responsibility and where it should be held to account, and where this lies elsewhere.

If we can get it right it’s a plus for all of us, from whatever political stance we take, because at last local people will engage. They are more likely to vote. They are more likely to understand what is happening in their own lives across the piece – whether it is health or education, whether it is the environment they live in, whether it is housing issues, or whether it is anti-social behaviour. And if they do so, we will have a more vigorous, alive, and vibrant democratic system.

I challenge not just you – because you’re here because you believe in it – but everybody across the country to say that they don’t want that to happen. If they think this isn’t the way, or they think as I do that it’s only a part of the solution, then I think they need to be courageous and honest enough to come forward with ideas of their own.

All of us know what we don’t like, all of us know what we are against. Actually what we are in favour of and how we are going to bring it about is a much more challenging and difficult issue to deal with.

I am glad that this conference is taking place and I wish the Network well, and its relationship and work with the Local Government Association and the IDeA will be absolutely crucial.

I hope that we can go from strength to strength in being able to square the circles, deal with the contradictions, and have a damned good row when we genuinely disagree.

Below is the text of the speech made by David Blunkett, the then Home Secretary, at Harvard Law School in the USA on 8 March 2004.

I am very pleased to be here in this great city and University which are both such powerful symbols of the strength of our shared history and connections. A history which has not – of course – always been harmonious but which has perhaps rarely been closer than it is today. I am reminded of a story about our first Ambassador to the United States – then based here in Boston. A year passed during which time no communication was heard from him. Silence which gave rise to some concern back in Whitehall. So much so that the Prime Minister and the then Foreign Secretary communicated and agreed that should a further year pass without any word from across the Atlantic they would have to write a letter to him. What a contrast to today when our Governments correspond and speak perhaps on a daily basis.

The Governments of the United Kingdom and the United States are often depicted in their responses to the international terrorist threat as destroying traditional human rights and freedoms. I want this evening to explore and indeed challenge that theme, partly through the prism of history and the development of ideas and partly by reflecting on the reality of the challenges that face us today and indeed with which I engage on a daily basis through my work as Home Secretary.

I take as my starting point the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which recognises that the most fundamental human rights are those of life, liberty and security of person. This implies for me that people who are killed or maimed, bereaved or put in fear by terrorists are stripped, cruelly and arbitrarily, of their rights and that security and safety is the underpinning raison d’etre of government.

So the dichotomy which some people seek to establish between the rights of people to be protected against terrorists and their right to enjoy traditional liberties is I believe a false one. It is not a question, therefore, of choosing between rights, but achieving a balance which maintains those rights. Our Lord Chief Justice, who doesn’t always take my side, said in a speech to the British Academy in October 2002:

“There are pressures created by the need to protect this country from merciless acts of international terrorism. These pressures will test the Human Rights Act. But the Human Rights Act is not a suicide pact! It does not require this country to tie its hands behind its back in the face of aggression, terrorism or violent crime. It does, however, reduce the risk of our committing an ‘own goal’. In defending democracy, we must not forget the need to observe the values which make democracy worth defending.”

I wonder if Abraham Lincoln in his letter to the Albany Democrats was not making a similar point when he said: “Thoroughly imbued with a reverence the guaranteed rights of individuals” and explained that he had been “slow to adopt strong measures”. He predicted however that “the time was not unlikely to come when I shall be blamed for having made too few arrests rather than too many”.

Any politician with these responsibilities can immediately empathise with the tension that Lincoln is identifying. Someone with a progressive outlook who was faced with extraordinary challenges of the time.

As we confront today the awful prospect of the suicide bomber, we need to continue that crucial and necessary debate – a debate I led in the House of Commons two weeks ago – about how to maintain that vital balance, and the options we have in maintaining our democratic values, whilst protecting our democracy.

The development of our traditional rights

Fortunately we do not come to the task unguided by our history. The insights which help guide us in striking the balance between the security and liberty of the many and the rights of the individuals have been the work of centuries.

Some may argue that some of those blows for liberty were struck in this very city against some of my predecessors in office.

It is often argued that the traditional rights enjoyed by citizens of Britain and the United States can be traced back to Magna Carta – albeit at that stage rights for a rather limited strata of society! I have recently been reading about this very period, the context of the time of King John and so the development of Magna Carta – or its immediate re-write to be more precise. It has certainly been a reference point for the development of these ideas.

With your own founding fathers other rights were added – freedom of religion and speech – building on the protestant tradition of John Locke – freedom of assembly and of the press, rights relating to privacy, which of course brings its own contradictions, and the separation of powers – building on the ideas of the French philosopher Montesquieu.

At the same time, in Europe, Enlightenment thinkers like Jean-Jacques Rousseau were attempting to square the circle in a different way, focusing on democracy and active participation, rather than a fixed constitution, as their preferred way of reconciling individual freedom with society’s need to pursue shared aims and values.

John Stuart Mill too, in his own way, tried to reconcile his belief in individual freedom, passionately set forth in ‘On Liberty’, with his commitment to social progress and rational social choice, which showed through in his writings on government and the utilitarian philosophy.

All these thinkers appreciated the value of the individual, and individual freedom, but also appreciated that extending that freedom more widely – beyond the leisured intellectual class – would not happen automatically, but required some positive action on the part of the state. They disagreed on what form that action should take, of course – but when didn’t philosophers disagree!

It often seems as if modern politics does not leave us with time today to be philosophers but just as our ideas are shaped by the thinking and questions of the past, so I believe that it is important for us more directly to allow the insights of the past to speak to us afresh.

That does not of course mean that we cannot move from the ideas of the past. In our own day we have taken forward this agenda of the development of human rights and made our own distinctive contribution. I would point especially to the legislation we have introduced in both our countries against discrimination and exploitation. For example, the common law provided no general protection against unfair discrimination on racial grounds. That is now enshrined in legislation. In Britain this protection was first introduced by one of my predecessors as a Labour Home Secretary Roy Jenkins in the 1965 Race Relations Act and others have built on that, most substantially in 1976 and recently further changes by my immediate predecessor Jack Straw.

But perhaps the more dramatic challenge for our own day is to protect our freedoms in the far more complex global environment in which we now operate. An environment which means economically, through trade, communication and politics that we have to address these big issues afresh with a world – rather than national – stage in view. A stage in which the additional challenge of balancing collaboration and intervention with pressures for isolation and disengagement brings its own strain.This also has implications for international military action. Our Prime Minister outlined precisely this approach following the Kosovo war and repeated it in a speech last week. He called for a “doctrine of international community, where in certain clear circumstances, we do intervene, even though we are not directly threatened. because in an increasingly interdependent world, our self-interest was allied to the interests of others; and seldom did conflict in one region of the world not contaminate another”.

Isolationism and protectionism may be possible and may bring benefits in the short term but neither will sit with finding a way through the challenges for world stability and justice. And ultimately, we cannot keep the challenges and problems perhaps stemming from other parts of the world entirely from our own shores.

And so there is an added dimension to that evolving process of balancing rights in our own day. And that is balancing the needs and rights not just of our own citizens but of people throughout the world. And in the same as domestically we are now talking much more about rights alongside responsibilities, so we must do the same in the international context. We must not make the mistake of thinking too much about purely individual rights and too little of duty and responsibility.

Of course at national level we have institutions to help us achieve this balance between individuals communities and the State. And in your own country that also means between the different elements of the State. And I am encouraged that what clearly emerges on both sides of the Atlantic is a subtle dynamic, yet highly robust, sharing of power. In both our systems, power does not rest in one place or with one person or organisation, it moves between them, and as it does so it changes to meet the needs of the time. I believe that these are constructive tensions. I have in mind the image of the mechanisms of a clock – the elements are fixed, the cogs provide movement and the weights ensure balance.

But the developing challenge for today is to seek to extend this same idea into the international forum. We will inevitably have differences of view at different stages about how these fora will develop but we all I think recognise the need for this process of international engagement.

The role of the judiciary and our international obligations

I want to turn now to reflect on the role of the judiciary and the whole judicial process in this task of balance our human rights both collective and individual. In your case the Constitution and the Supreme Court provides the anchor. In our case – and interestingly this takes the form of an international treaty – we have the European Convention on Human Rights. Paradoxically, whilst the ECHR offers safeguards and remedies for individuals it does not allow the Government on behalf of the people a right of appeal to the Strasbourg Court.

Some people attack the ECHR for being insufficiently flexible, too much a creature of its time, to meet the challenges of a new age. But I reflect that within its own terms it did allow us after 11 September to derogate from parts of the convention. Article 15 gives us the right to do so if we face “a public emergency threatening the life of the nation” in order to protect other more fundamental rights namely the right to life for those who might otherwise be threatened with terrorism. Surely a practical example of precisely the flexibility that our Lord Chief Justice had in mind in the quotation to which referred a moment ago.

It was of course precisely to block the re-emergence of the pre-war totalitarianism that the Strasbourg Court and the Treaty which it interprets was established.

And the ECHR and for many countries the European Union itself, have been seen as a symbol and practical means of advancing unity, freedom and progress into democracy.

Take Spain. When I first entered politics, Spain was still under a form of fascist rule. And that was true of other European countries too. And the judicial institutions of Strasbourg together with the economic institutions of the European Union have transformed life for all of those countries. We are about to embark another major expansion of the European Union this coming May with the admission of ten new countries to our number.

And so irksome as aspects of it may sometimes seem. We cannot overstate the positive benefits of this form of international economic and legal engagement.

The changing nature of the threat

But just as the world in which our judicial systems must operate has changed so inevitably have the threats to those systems. If the ECHR and the European Union grew up in a world in which the main threat came from a totalitarian state, or a cold war style military power we face today something totally different and far more elusive. I find it helpful to characterise the threat we face as one from ‘franchised’ terror. Groups which have a certain common ideology and set of values, a certain loose chain of command or at least identity, common training perhaps, but often operating independently. Inspired but not controlled by their leaders.

It is an ideology of hate with a target which is the values, the freedom, and the democracy which is seen by our enemies as encapsulating modernity. It is hatred of the very freedoms and communities that are most basic to us. And yet the paradox is that since 11 September more men and women of the Muslim faith have been killed by these people than those of any other, and you see the indiscriminate merciless disregard for human life, rejoicing in the consequences of terror which means that this is declaration of war against humanity rather than against any religion, country, or community.

So let me describe for a moment my reflections as a very new Home Secretary at the time of the attack on the World Trade Centre and the immediate dilemmas I faced. First of course we thought of those most directly caught up in these terrible events. But then and quite properly we thought of when and where was the next attack to come? And in the days that followed working in collaboration with the United States and with our European partners, we quickly saw action which needed to be taken in a number of areas. Both of our two countries introduced new legislation.

But in reflecting now on where we go from here, we have to keep addressing the issue of how best to provide that balanced approach, and as with the quote from Lincoln, what would happen politically if we got the judgement wrong. The debate then would be very different. And in Britain this is a real challenge for the centre left of politics and we will always have in mind the example of Germany where the very weakness of the Weimar Republic was the strengthening of the Nazi cause.

But let me describe for a moment one part of our anti-terrorism, crime and security act perhaps the most controversial part. We were faced with a specific challenge. A challenge from people who had come here often seeking asylum – ironically perhaps from the consequences of their illegal actions in their home countries. Their asylum claims had failed, they were involved in international terrorism. And yet it has not been possible to convict them of criminal offences. Our own adherence to our international obligations meant that we could not remove them to the countries from which they came because of the threat that they would face if returned. I could not justify to the British people a situation in which we simply left these individuals to walk our streets. And so we introduced a new immigration power in the Act which allowed us to detain foreign nationals whom I certified as international terrorists. Because this is an immigration power these individuals are free to leave the UK whenever they chose – as two of the 17 I have certified have chosen to do. The legality of the power and the derogation it required have themselves been tested and upheld in our courts. The individual certifications are all being scrutinised by the Special Immigration Appeals Commission – equivalent to our High Court. Of the 13 cases so far heard, my decision has been upheld in 12. Cases will be reviewed by SIAC every three months thereafter.

But of course we now know more about both the nature of the threat and the potential means of prevention and intervention. In the case of the ACTS Act, the crucial powers of detention I have described are due to lapse in November 2006. That is why I am calling in Britain for a well-informed debate because I want us to find long term solutions which maintain the balance, protect individual rights, and reflect our mutual risk as citizens reliant on democracy for dual protection against terrorism and arbitrary power. I want this to be a public debate too – not just a debate for lawyers. Taking the public with us, whilst listening to the legal experts, makes sense.

Our approach to terrorism

But let me finish by looking at the wider way in which we are seeking to tackle terrorism in the United Kingdom. Our approach has four main pillars to it – prevention, pursuit, protection, and preparedness! Let me take each of these in turn.

Prevention. Perhaps the most important but long term agenda. Domestically it means that we have to engage with the communities most directly being abused by the terrorist cells and their agents. So that they can become our eyes and ears. People themselves being alert, but not alarmed, and helping us.

The same principle applies in reflecting on what feeds the terrorist armoury, but allows them to demonise modernity, namely us. For the hatred which motivates them is often hidden by a cloak which pretends to be concerned about injustice and unjust treatment . So what can we do? We cannot eliminate their threat by removing what they claim to be the causes of their hatred. But tackling injustice would assist us in appealing to the decent, to the thinking, to those looking to take on the terrorist with us but finding themselves in real difficulty. I have recently visited Pakistan and I heard at first hand from people – people basically very well disposed to us – of the extent of the distrust and anger in that country at the way in which Muslim communities, and Muslim suffering throughout the world but especially the Middle-East are perceived to be treated. However much one might disagree with the overall analysis, however much one might explain – as I did – the steps our countries are taking to bring peace to that part of the world, the important thing is to note for these purposes is how powerfully this view held by Muslim communities is believed and felt. In other words it fuels a sense of grievance and injustice which is used by others as a cloak to hide their own more fundamental hatred. We must therefore continue to address these issues and injustices both in our own countries and in the wider world.

Secondly pursuit – again both domestically against known terrorists and their associates but also internationally against the sources of that domestic threat.

I don’t intend to go into the much rehearsed arguments about Iraq beyond the fact that the key issue now for us is the importance of continuing to work together internationally to address the kind of problems I have been describing. It is all the more important that we should do so together and there is a danger that as a result of that conflict countries will feel less inclined to co-operate and work together. This underlines my point that we are in this together, this is all our business, both because we are all the target and so we must have a global response.

Successfully thwarting a terrorist operation requires a co-ordinated international approach. Sharing information, fully engaging with those countries who unwillingly harbour terrorists and themselves are at risk from the network. And I pleased to note that co-operation of this kind is very strong.

This opens for me another key aspect of the debate I have launched back in Britain – namely the balance between the disruption of terrorist activity and its successful prosecution. There is a fundamental challenge here both for Governments and for our police and security services. A challenge made more complex by the fact that often these operations have an international dimension.

The longer you can allow an operation to develop, the longer the surveillance, the more chance you have got of securing conviction, but there is an obvious risk attached to this and those countries like the US which have been subject to an attack will obviously feel that even more keenly than we do. This is a matter of making really fine judgements.

And pursuing terrorists, as we all know, means pursuing money launderers, organised criminals, people traffickers and other smugglers, those exploiting the international banking system, drugs barons and racketeers.

But co-operation, worldwide linkages, and intelligence can work and be effective. This underlines my point about the need for our international systems to develop alongside the way in which our world is becoming more global both in its opportunities for positives such as trade but also negatives such as terrorism.

Thirdly public protection. working together on what you call homeland security. We have, for example, undertaken a major mapping exercise of vulnerable sites in the UK to protect and provide proper advice for those responsible. Again we have had to move on from the cold war mindset and think about other things – food distribution, industrial plants etc. I could talk all night about our work on this but will spare you the details for another occasion.

And finally preparedness. Preparing for the consequences of terrorism. Or course, you could spend half the national income on this and we could still be prepared for the wrong emergency. But public reassurance for political survival and for good operational preparedness is vital. We need to do what makes sense.

This challenge is to corporate responsibility and not just government at every level.

From informed and vigilant individuals through to responsible business this is the challenge to us all.

We are updating our own emergency powers legislation at the moment to provide for a better and more flexible response at regional and local level to any emergencies.

It is a comprehensive but necessary programme of work. It involves us in trying both to master the detail but also to keep sight of the big picture and the challenges which face us. All of which means that the job of Home Secretary has probably changed out of all recognition because we are not simply living with the threat, taking overall responsibility for our response to it, but also weighing up where to place the emphasis, the resources and the expertise in response. Holding your nerve without being complacent. Informing the public without creating fear. Alert but not alarmed. Living with the issues and the danger, but not allowing them to destroy the sense of perspective.

All of us across the world who are close to this face the same difficulties. I reflected with Tom Ridge about this on Boxing Day last year and of course the extent to which we succeed will a matter for the judgement of history. Balancing human rights and the institutions which sustain them with the basic right for life and freedom from fear. Retaining proportionality whilst trying to explain the very real danger and scale of the threat. Doing so when you can only explain part of the case, part of the evidence, and doing so by using the strength of our democracy not undermining it. This is much, much more difficult to achieve in the most open democracies in the world. But we are better for it, with a greater and more worthwhile challenge. That is the nature of the task for us in Britain and the US in the 21st century.

We must and we are taking on that challenge together.

Below is the text of the speech made by David Blunkett, the then Home Secretary, in Boston, USA, on 9 March 2004.

I am very pleased to be invited to this celebration for the Ash Institute for Democratic Governance and Innovation.

The Institute has become an increasingly influential source of ideas and new approaches in this country and both directly and indirectly in other parts of the world too and has certainly been an important stimulus to my thinking. Over the past 15 years, I have been able to visit some of the programmes growing out of the work of the Institute and its predecessors – including the Compstat system in New York, the Centre for Court Innovation, La Bodega de la Familia and Operation Ceasefire in Boston. I’ve even succeeded intempting one of your distinguished alumni Paul Evans across the Atlantic! And I have had long-standing links with the Kennedy School as a whole through Professor Robert Putnam.

But that is not my theme for today. Instead the issue I want to address (and it’s one which never goes away) is a more fundamental one. Does Government matter, what kind of Government and for what purpose? On our side of the Atlantic we have exactly the same debates and challenges: people call for action on every front one day and demand that we devolve responsibility and downscale resources the next.

I’ll come later to the contradictions of a liberal left who want more Government at home and less abroad and the right preaching no Government at home and big Government abroad.

I start from the premise that Government matters, Government is the alternative to anarchy, to disintegration and to conflict. Government is about resolving differences, determining priorities, allocating resources peacefully and without conflict not to mention its more ancient and fundamental role of providing the basic framework of protection from harm necessary for both communities and individuals. One of the first books I read at University was by Professor Sir Bernard Crick, “In Defence of Politics”. I believe that Bernard’s analysis holds good for today.

But the question is not whether we need politics or Government or even good Government, but what kind of Government, what role Government can play in the 21st century and how democracy can be revitalised and renewed in an era of global capital, the world wide web, mobile phones and multi channel media. And of course this leads us into wider questions. What is the glue that holds society together? How do we build on the family, what should we do to reinforce self-reliance and mutuality?

If we are to answer these questions, we must be very clear about the nature of the challenges that now confront us. Above all it seems clear to me that the challenge is one of the most enormous change both in terms of scale but also rapidity. Change economically, socially and globally. Change which can bring enormous benefits to individuals, communities and countries but which can also be threatening for all of these. In particular change which can undermine the cohesion, the social capital, the networks and support structures which are crucial part of every area of human activity – economic, educational and personal and family life. Old certainties have disappeared – but there is no room for nostalgia, we have to develop a new sense of identity and belonging – and government has to look to build new forms of social capital, new networks and new cohesion which will help us all to thrive in the new world in which we find ourselves.

I want therefore to explore for a moment what it is that determines the level of social capital in a society?

It seems to be affected in a negative way by a number of contemporary trends. Firstly, the breakdown of family in the traditional sense which can undermine our sense of where we belong. Secondly, mobility – if you don’t expect to stay long in one place you are unlikely to invest in the social networks that bind communities together. And thirdly, the decay in people’s sense of community can lead to the disintegration of actual communities – with people leaving, crime rising, drug use, and despair which can become a vicious cycle

But of course Government should not be a purely passive player in this. And the steps we are taking – for example to give people and local communities the powers and the confidence to tackle anti-social behaviour – are I believe helping to turn this round. Perhaps more important still for long term change is our approach to education – which brings not just personal strength, hope, and the capacity to cope with change, but also gives people a stake in society. And finally, ownership, financial and material assets, which of course also gives people a stake in society. Research I commissioned while at the Department of Education, using data from the National Child Development Study, suggests that asset ownership brings wider social and psychological benefits. Having savings appears to be correlated with enjoying better health, and having more interest in politics. This applies to community assets as well as individual assets. When physical capital in a community goes up, so too does social capital.

This suggests for me a new and different role for Government. The challenge for government is, by taking a more enabling, facilitating role, to help individuals and communities see a way forward – not by doing things for them but by doing things with them, as a means to lasting change. Leadership is crucial – not just government, but also schools and colleges, churches, community organisations. But without participation, the difference leadership makes will be temporary not permanent. Let me give you some practical examples of precisely this kind of change in the UK.

In London, the Families in Focus initiative at Ampthill Square, Camden, has clearly shown the benefits of involving residents in working with ‘at risk’ children and young people. Anti-social behaviour has fallen sharply. Caretakers estimate that problems of vandalism, graffiti and litter have been cut by 70%. According to the local Council’s lead on anti-social behaviour, “the area went from being well-known for youth anti-social behaviour to being well-known for the lack of it.”

In Birmingham, Balsall Heath, once a blighted red-light area, has been revived by community activists who engaged local residents through 22 self-help associations. House prices have risen and local people are more satisfied with improvements made to their area than other parts of the City.

I know that Britain does not have a monopoly on these kinds of initiatives. In Dudley, one of the poorest neighbourhoods in Boston, and a deteriorating and crime-ridden wasteland in the early 1980s, the area was saved by a civic association that knocked on every door, overcame ethnic differences, and now plays an ongoing role in the neighborhood. At countless community meetings, at multicultural festivals, and through side-by-side labor, organizers helped people in the neighborhood connect and reconnect. A major achievement has been gaining control of unused land, convincing Boston’s city government to give the neighbourhood power of ‘eminent domain’ over various parcels of land. This gave local people greater control of the neighbourhood, and a ‘place at the table’ during discussions surrounding development of their community. More than 300 of the 1,300 abandoned plots of land have been transformed into high quality affordable housing, gardens and public spaces.

This is the kind of control which neighbourhoods should be getting – not the gated, fenced, walled off communities which are a symbol of the importance of security, but also a warning. Once this way of striving for security takes over, society is fractured as those who try to withdraw from perceived danger also withdraw their talents and resources from any attempt to reverse the cycle to which I referred earlier. The flight from the most difficult urban areas denudes the neighbourhood of the capacity to recover and the downward spiral can only be reversed by drastic remedial steps. We end up with a kind of community isolationism.

There are parallels here with the international sphere – where we in the UK, or you here, cannot truly gate-off our countries from terrorism, organised crime and other threats to world stability. Migration, globalisation mean that we need to work together to look for solutions to our common problems. And when the terrorist threat increasingly knows no borders, we have to respond to the threat by reaching out for international solutions rather than retrenching into isolation.

But I want to focus here on the domestic context. Professor Putnam’s work has helped to draw attention to the links between how individuals interact and the wider effects on society. It is essential we continue to refine our understanding of these links and examine more precisely not just the apparent correlations, but the underlying causes. ‘Social capital’ has come to be used to describe a wide range of activities and relationships, from informal volunteering, engagement with civic institutions, to any form of group activities, socialising beyond family members, to community activism. How these are affected by, and in turn affect, other social, economic and political factors require careful but also imaginative thinking. And that’s where we politicians look to the social and political scientists like you for help.

In Britain in the last few weeks, there has been a good deal of controversy about the related issue of whether the left should really believe in diversity, if it makes other progressive values, like redistribution and the welfare state, more difficult to pursue. Here in the US, I know that Professor Putnam – while not questioning the value of diversity – does believe that some on the left underestimate the challenges it presents, in terms of its effects on social capital.

There are those on the left in Britain have reacted in a way which suggests that it is dangerous even to raise these questions. My own view is that we need to be rigorously honest so that the debate is one worth having. The idea that there is a potential tension between supporting diversity and other progressive aims, is not a new one – it goes back at least to Friedrich Engels. And the evidence that diversity is correlated with a decline in social capital is sufficiently powerful – both in the US and in the UK, through work carried out by MORI – that we need to address it. For my part, as I have said, I am convinced that instability through high mobility and therefore turnover of population is a central factor in contributing to the decline in social capital. I have an open mind as to whether diversity of itself has a similar impact but the important thing is that I am convinced that we can combine diversity with integration and therefore with stability, leading to a greater capacity to manage difference. The sense of belonging and identification clearly matters.

In Britain we’ve just introduced a proper ceremony for naturalisation purposes, whereas you have had them for 100 years. The ceremonies will be firmly anchored in the local communities. These symbols are important – but of course they can only support, not replace, hard-edged action at local level. The example I gave earlier, of Balsall Heath, shows how communities with real problems – and also diversity, whether or not that is related – can turn themselves around, with help from government help, and rebuild their social networks, and with that tolerance and ultimately, mutuality. As well as Balsall Heath, parts of London display the same kind of virtuous circle – with minority groups for example often involved in the most active and open church organisations – whilst in other communities elsewhere, for example in the North of England, diversity has taken a different route, with segregation leading ultimately to fracture. We need to understand why. We need to think about how the experiences which have worked can be shared and replicated across other local areas – without losing the vital sense of connection with particular local energy and concerns.

I promised earlier to deal with the contradictions of a liberal left who want more Government at home and less abroad and the right preaching no Government at home and big Government abroad. There is also the paradox that those in favour of no government are usually quick to recognise the potential of government in terms of awarding contracts, when it comes to an election.

But I realise this is a caricature. There are genuine disagreements over the value and scope of government. Instead of choosing between a picture of a government which does everything for us or a government which prides itself on trying not to do anything, we need to move towards a new compact between government and governed. This means responsibilities and duties resting with the individual and community as well as with the Government, the politics of something-for-something, with rights and responsibilities going hand in hand. This is an extension of the family, where mutual help has to be balanced by willingness to self-help. But self-help is impossible in many circumstances without mutual help – and without a more equal distribution of resources and opportunities. We are struggling to address this, not just in re-shaping the relationship between Government and governed but in defining where accountability should lie.

This is about hard-edged policy in capacity-building for civil renewal and for youth engagement – and for making the link between the political and civil aspects of democracy. All the evidence shows that those with assets engage, those who engage also vote, those who vote influence, those who are very wealthy have the most influence. But crucially those who do not engage and do not vote have little or no influence. Their lack of both alienates them from broader engagement with society as well as from the formal decision-making process. And those, including those in the media, who foster cynicism and preach doctrines which alienate are never the ones who disengage themselves, they know better! But when people disengage, especially those who most need help, the public domain is drained of legitimacy.

Which brings me back to my original theme or question – why do we need Government? Well, we invented government because we had to, not just for defending ourselves and guaranteeing our protection and security, but also because we amount to more, we achieve more, if we work in common rather than as isolated individuals. This is why government is still needed today – because left purely to individual choice we will not invest enough in social capital, and not in a co-ordinated enough way, to respond to the challenges of a rapidly changing world.

So Government is about making things possible, by sharing resources, including where gross inequality prevents any sense of community, and by fostering a public space which is inhabitable by us all – and here I mean not just the physical space, but also the space of opportunities and life chances, together with the ability to grasp those life chances, the ability to be independent, self-reliant and self-determining.

I believe that this way of understanding what government is about transcends traditional political divides. The choice is not between being “on your own”, or “under the dead hand of Government” – it is whether government, which must exist and will always affect people’s lives, can do so in a way that enables them both as individuals and as communities.

There are areas in our lives where we offer to share sovereignty and invest together because individually we could never realise our goals and values. Not just obvious areas like defence, but also public education, social capital and the settling of differences. In other words, the different ways in which we socialise our civic and democratic sphere. Without that ability to inhabit a shared public space, we have dysfunctional communities and dysfunctional states. With it we have the chance of a civilised democracy which is as much about participation as it is about primaries and Presidential elections.

Below is the text of the speech made by David Blunkett, the then Home Secretary, at Methodist Hall in London on 28 April 2004.

I’m very grateful to all of you for coming. I’d like to welcome those who are participating during the course of the day, and those of you who have come here as victims of crime, and who are prepared to be brave enough to talk about it. I’d also like to welcome all the partners joining together with the criminal justice system. As Patricia has said, this is the first conference of its kind to be held in recent times and I’m very pleased we’re here today. The critical element will be to ensure that at the end of the day we can take on board the ideas and the critique that people bring to this area. We must do this not just nationally, but through the local criminal justice boards and the new partnership arrangements with the community safety partnerships at local level as well. So thank you very much for joining us.

As you know, I’m committed to trying to ensure not only that the victim of crime has a voice, but also that we who have a voice on the public platform, that those of us who have the opportunity to speak out and to be heard actually reflect the feelings of those whose voices are seldom heard. An old sparring partner of mine who is in the House of Lords, recently on a television programme, said that the problem with David Blunkett as Home Secretary is that he brings too much of his background to the job. Well, I’m very proud to do that. I’m proud to reflect the community I came from. I’m proud to be the voice of that community. I’m proud that we have a system where Cabinet Ministers still hold advice surgeries and where, in my case on a Saturday morning, I can hear the cry for help from people who do not get onto Radio 4, who have no access to columns in newspapers, who never have their voice heard or reflected in that way. In my view, those of us who have the temerity to speak on behalf of others also have a duty to speak out on behalf of those who are literally the victims of crime and of a disintegrating society where respect for each other, and common decency has been undermined over the last forty years. Not that it was a halcyon era, because the 1950s wasn’t. I was a youngster at the time, I confess. There was a great deal of prejudice, there was a great deal of inequality, there was a great deal of hypocrisy. But because people at least understood that in their community and in their family they had a key role to play in the type of society that developed around them. The reinforcement of individualism, and the emphasis on purely individual rights – often for perpetrators – has in my view unbalanced not only the criminal justice system, but also the perspective of community and society.

So bringing together the criminal justice system, the partners working with it, and those who have experienced crime and often the bravery of having to be witnesses (because victims and witnesses are so often synonymous), is crucial in what we are describing today as “victim justice” alongside “criminal justice”. Justice to ensure that people are properly and fairly dealt with, that those who are accused have fair trials and those who are innocent are not found guilty. But justice also for those victims who so often walk away from the system disillusioned, feeling that they’ve been let down and that the process rather than the truth has been paramount in peoples’ minds.

So today I want to touch on the way in which our system and our perspective is changing. The fact that types of crime change, the incidence of crime changes, has to be taken on board. We need to reflect those changes on the way that we develop policy and practice at local level. We haven’t solved volume crime, I wish we had. But there’s been the most dramatic drop in more traditional forms of burglary, of vehicle crime and of robbery. On the latter, we’ve been successful over the last 2½ years with the police, with partners at local level, including local authorities, in being able to work together to have a dramatic impact. With target hardening from community safety partnerships, police have made a big difference to the incidence of burglary and opportunistic crime. With the industry and with those working in relation to car parks and others, we’ve reduced vehicle crime. We’re not there yet but there’s been a tremendous drop. And that has meant that the focus of people’s attention understandably has shifted to other forms of crime, such as personal crime, anti-social behaviour and low level thuggery violence and domestic violence, too often associated with alcohol and drugs.

It is the personalised, what some call low level violence and thuggery, it is the intimidation, it is the fear of what is going to happen to you walking down the street, in your neighbourhood, in the shopping centre, or in entertainment venues that now affects people. And therefore the victim is not simply a victim of loss of income or loss of goods or loss of service, but is actually a victim in terms of their own personal physical and emotional wellbeing.

And the reason I mentioned community is my second point. That because of the shift in the nature of crime, it is whole communities, small neighbourhoods that start to feel as though they are the victim. This is not surprising, because so many of the victims live in focus-targeted areas. We know that those who are subject to the incidence of repeat crime, repeat victimisation, by repeat offenders, make up a very high proportion of those who experience crime. To overcome it, we are rapidly building on existing proposals for prolific offenders and priority offenders. But it also means that communities themselves feel as though they are beleaguered, as though nobody will help, and as though the whole life of the people around them is disintegrating. I feel it because I represent a community that has more than its fair share of crime. When people from newspapers or broadcast media ask whether I understand how people feel, I say that I was brought up there, I’m there every weekend, I hold advice surgeries there, I listen to people, and I attend. This last weekend I held a Big Conversation meeting in my own city about crime and the disintegration of normal parlance of community civilised behaviour. And what people say to me is, “Is it hopeless? You’re on our side”. Thank God they say that, if they didn’t I wouldn’t get re-elected! They say, “Is it hopeless, Mr Blunkett? You’re the Home Secretary, can’t you help us? Is it not possible to turn it round? What can we do when at every end and turn, when legislation is passed, when police numbers are increased, when technology is improved, when the community is desperate for help, why is it that we can’t so often see an end result, that we can’t feel that the system as a whole is on our side?” In the Stubbin estate in my own community, where the people themselves are working together and trying to be part of the solution, individuals are in despair. The police are sympathetic. They turn up. But we need to actually get to the causes and send out the signals to those who are perpetrating the violence, the intimidation, the thuggery, the anti-social behaviour. We need to get the messages across to the families who condone it, to the networks of thugs who support it, and to the opinion formers within the community who may doubt the criminal justice system and what we are trying to do. Because unless we can break that, we cannot help the victims of crime. And that is why, whatever it takes, we should join together in sending the message that at last we are going to put victims at the forefront of our service. We are going to put victims where they belong, at the very pinnacle of what we try to do. We must make sure that the criminal justice system provides a balanced, independent and effective way of securing people’s individual rights, and to secure through victim justice the rights of those who have had their independence and civil rights undermined by those who have perpetrated the crime.

We need to get that message across to each element, each strand in the system, from myself and Patricia Scotland, all the way through to the community support officer and street warden, to the environmental health or housing officer. If we can get it through in terms of the way people are treated when they are a victim of crime then we will get a change of culture within our community. It’s nothing short of a change of culture we need.

Now there are those who say this is just a matter of will. I think they’ve been reading too much Harry Potter, they think that if you throw powder on the fire all can disappear in a flash! If only we willed it everything would change. We know better than that. You know better than that. We know that even when things improve, unless people feel the difference they won’t believe the statistics. We have to address the paradox that change has taken place, but the perception of this is not so. Crime has fallen. The statistics bear it out. Statistics which are comparing like with like, taking exactly the same sample, taking the same methodology, show that crime has fallen. And yet if you talk to many people in the community they don’t feel it and they don’t believe it. Until they feel it and believe it, and until their distress and trauma has been overcome, it is absolutely clear that they won’t believe that people are safer. It is true that the chance of being a victim of crime is at the lowest for 20 years. It’s still not good enough. It’s one in four rather than one in three of ten years ago. But it’s still an appalling statistic and it’s one we need to address. And that is why we’re in it together. You see, the other thing, (apart from if we only had will, we would be able to do it), is the view that on the one hand government national and local should be hands off, should be light touch, should be less intrusive and interventionist; and you don’t just get that from the newspapers, you get it from all the vested interests that we have to deal with: “Please leave us alone”. There is nothing new about this, I used to get it when I was Education Secretary. Teachers said give us the money and leave us alone, don’t bother with literacy and numeracy programmes, they interfere with our professionalism. I get it now in terms of “For goodness sake, your job is not to intervene”. The paradox is that the very people who preach loudest, non intervention, government leaving everyone else alone, avoiding the Big Brother, Big Sister state, are the very people who demand most from government. They demand that we take responsibility and they demand that we account for just about everything, and they insist that whatever goes wrong has to be our fault.

I’ll accept our part of this bargain in terms of getting it right for victims and communities. What I want is that every element, strand, part of the programme, system and society actually are prepared to join with us. The first thing is the building block of society which is the family. We want family to take responsibility for building decency and respect into how they teach, prepare and bring up their children. Also, we want the community to be big enough to stand up for the victims and have a voice heard. We’ve therefore got to make sure that people feel confident that as victims and witnesses the system as a whole will protect them. And thirdly, we need the system in all its guises – from policing, housing, courts, the judiciary, probation, through to the Youth Justice Board, the voluntary sector, and the many who are here today to be able to join together in having a clear voice, being able to act decisively in favour of those at the receiving end. And I don’t think it’s too much to ask that each of us play our part, that each of us do our bit.

Last week we launched the anti-social behaviour prosecutors. This is a way of providing a people’s prosecutor who would get alongside people in the community. Who would be there to ensure that when evidence is gathered and people are prepared to be witnesses that it doesn’t fail at the last hurdle on a technicality or a failure to put the case together properly. When the whole Home Office team were in the West Midlands, we found that people warmed to this, just as they’re warming to the Community Justice Centre idea that we are going to experiment with in Merseyside and hopefully that we will be able to expand across the country. It’s worked. I saw it working a year ago in New York where the community was not only part of the process in obtaining victim justice, but also the part of the solution in terms of avoiding people being victims in the first place. This works by everyone being expected to join together and all those engaged in the services being prepared to go down, from the heights of whatever professional status they’d reached and do what Home Secretaries have to do and sit in advice surgeries and sit in community meetings and listen to people, and engage with them in how to provide solutions.

So if anyone from justice’s clerks through to high court judges or politicians tells you that it isn’t possible for the professionals in the service to undermine their independence by attending community forums and engaging with the neighbourhood and with victims, they are talking garbage. It is perfectly possible to do that and in the best parts of our system in this country, people are doing it. From prosecution and probation through to district judges and magistrates. Some of them were there at my meeting this weekend. And I know that to listen, to learn, to feel makes a difference, not just to the attitude of victims and their confidence, but also to those who attend the meetings from professional organisations. It’s time all of us felt. Some may say that working class lads from northern council estates feel too strongly, and that our language sometimes reflects our strength of feeling. I make no apology for that. I think that it’s time we told things as they are. We need to do so with measured words, we need to do so with maturity, and we need to understand the constraints.

But there are other benefits from working together with the Community Justice Centres and the experimental work that is already taking place. It’s not just confidence from the community. It’s not just a new understanding from professionals. It’s the ability of people to feel that someone is on their side. It’s for victims to have confidence in the fact that someone will be there to listen and to help and to avoid repeat victimisation. It’s also for victims to know that someone will be there helping them through the system and supporting them when they need it. Which is why I’m pleased that Rosie Winterton from the Department of Health is going to be here today. I’m pleased that this is not seen as a Home Office matter, but one where, if you’re a victim the system as a whole engages to help you.

You can rely on fast track treatment in the future, particularly in terms of not having to pay people compensation for being off work, but actually enabling them to get back to work. Not paying them for disfiguration but putting the disfiguration right. Not leaving them for months so that emotional trauma worsens, but intervening quickly to provide help to the individual and families. And that is why alongside the tough new powers that we’ve provided in the Criminal Justice and Sentencing Act past last year, the Anti-Social Behaviour Act passed last year, the Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Bill which is before Parliament at the moment, we’re honouring the commitment to legislate for victims’ rights. The package of measures in those three bills puts together the promises we made to speak out, plan and act on behalf of victims. I know that Susan Herman from the US will be opening up these areas later today and I’m very pleased that she’s been able to join us. All of this is building on recent changes and it’s giving, I hope, new aspirations for a different sort of world for the future.

So the ‘No Witness, No Justice’ witness care project that we’ve been undertaking, which has worked so tremendously well is going to now be expanded with £36 million over the next three years, and of course increases in funding for all the services that go alongside it to actually ensure that it happens. Victim Support has over the years had its voice clearly heard and its resourcing increased. Not enough, I know, but more than ever before. We’ve increased the funding available from £11.7 million to £30 million over the last seven years. There was funding made available to Victim Support for the street crime initiative, and as we’ve tackled robbery and street crime I’ve made the decision to switch the money into other Victim Support services in order to maintain the spend. It seems to me that we’ve got to take intelligent logical decisions. Congratulations to Victim Support as an organisation on their 30th anniversary.

I hope that the next 30 will actually be ones that are fruitful, that can join with other partners in the support of victims, and those who are now having their voices heard across the country to make it work even better. And of course we need to increase the development funding through the Victims’ Fund. We also need to look at the very substantial sums that go through the Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme. And we will do so in a way that enhances the rights and the support to victims rather than undermining it.

Patricia Scotland and I have to take difficult decisions in this area to make sure that the funding doesn’t go in administration and in low level gestures rather than in helping to prevent crime and to support victims in a meaningful way. We’re here to listen to people who have got thoughts and views today. Restorative justice and anti-social behaviour are two of the workshops that people will be looking at today. I’d like us to engage in how we can address prevention as well as cure and enforcement. Owning the problem, reshaping for the challenge, engaging as part of the solution, is the wider challenge that all of us face. It’s also the philosophy that we believe in. We are in this together as partners and that at every level we can make it work. Reform requires investment, and investment requires people to examine locally through the local criminal justice board and the community safety partnership where the money is going. It’s inevitable that if you lock people away in jail you spend a lot of money on the perpetrators. That’s just the truth. We need to make sure that the additional resources that are going to support victims across the board – in every area, from every agency and department – are understood and are better put together. We estimate that at least £650 million on services of some kind is going to victims. Again, it’s not enough. But the real question I want to raise this morning is, are people actually feeling it? Where is the £650 million? Do people perceive that support of that sort is available to victims? Can we examine, in what is taking shape and what is available at local level? These issues include separation of the perpetrator and the victim in court, then include the support services when people are arriving in court, or returning home, and then include avoiding cracked trials and the trauma of having to return time after time to the point where disillusionment sets in, the perpetrator gets away with it.

So let’s use new measures. Let’s use the Proceeds of Crime Act. Four hundred and forty five clauses, which actually allow us now to seize the proceeds of crime. We are now able to do so in circumstances where the organiser, the leader, the facilitator hasn’t actually been nailed, but where they live on the proceeds of crime and cannot explain where their lifestyle comes from. That ought to be quite a shock to one or two people across the country. The police can confiscate the flash cars of the drug dealers, and legislation is in place to gradually claw back what has been clawed from us. So putting £4 million into helping victims of sex offenders over the next 18 months may seem very little from the proceeds of crime fund but it’s a beginning. It’s a consistent look at how we can divert what has been stolen from individuals and communities back into supporting those individuals and communities. Increasing counselling services such as those provided by the eight really successful one-stop locations is a key task to us and that is what we will do. So often speedy, supportive help is absolutely critical to ensuring that people feel not only that we’re on their side but that they can be safe for the future, and that they can restore their lives. This is true of domestic violence, where sharing of information, and working together is vital to improve those systems. We have taken this forward with all the measures in the Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Bill, which include fulfilling the promise to turn the Victims Charter into a statutory Victims Code of Practice. We established the Victims Advisory Panel last year, and we are making this a statutory part of the new system under the new Act. This will ensure that there is a clear voice for a whole range of those of you who are working with, and for victims. And thanks to David Goldblatt, who will be speaking in a moment, for his work on that panel and for his perspective this morning as to how it is working and how we can improve it. There isn’t in our system a year zero, where if you haven’t got everything right you’ve failed. There’s a year when people do an audit, take a snapshot of what has been achieved and accord themselves some pleasure. We have to to keep cheerful about what progress has been made and keep honest with each other about what new steps need to be put in place to improve the system.

So from small beginnings oak trees grow. The criminal justice system is changing. The latest evidence we have is that confidence is beginning to be restored. We believe that victims feel that at last people are alongside them from probation through to voluntary sector organisations. We believe that the 22,000 extra victims of violence and sexual offences that were helped by the probation service last year alone is a major step in the right direction. But for the future, we need to ensure that at every stage and at every level the quality of information, the quality of service, the putting together of the new Action Plan will affect the way people are treated and feel. It is not just an Action Plan from national level but an Action Plan in each of the Local Criminal Justice Board areas. To provide protection, to deal with prolific and target priority offenders, to turn the Victims Charter into a new Victims’ Code and to ensure that the voice of victims is heard on those bodies and in those advisory groups in a way that actually does change the practice of professionals.

We’re in it together, it’s a partnership for working together. We can pass the laws, we can put in additional resources, we can encourage and cajole, but in the end, we can’t get there unless people have fire in their belly, unless they really want to change things, unless people are prepared to work together to make it happen and feel it in their everyday lives, and above all, unless society as a whole is prepared to stand up and be counted and to say “we won’t simply pass the buck to someone else, we won’t have a blame culture where it’s always someone else’s fault, and if only they’d done it the world would be a better place”. We must appeal to all those who have the ability to influence the actions, attitudes and culture of our communities around us, to take that opportunity to ensure that victims’ justice alongside criminal justice is the slogan of the years to come. Thank you very much indeed.