Category: Press Releases

Below is a press release issued by the Conservative Party on 19/11/2019.

A Boris Johnson majority government would take a tough new approach to tackling knife crime and serious violence, the Prime Minister has announced today.

Under the new plans:

Anyone caught unlawfully with a knife will be immediately arrested, charged within 24 hours and in court within a week – three times faster than the current average.

Police will be empowered to target known knife carriers with a new court order, making it easier for officers to stop and search those known in the past to have carried weapons.

Violence reduction units – multi-agency teams made up of the police, social services and other agencies – will be boosted by £35 million next year to champion preventative work and stop violence from happening in the first place.

The plans build on the success of increased use of stop and search in the past year, which has led to a 22 per cent increase in arrests for possession of weapons.

Commenting on the new announcements, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said:

“A majority Conservative government would come down hard on the scourge of knife crime.

“We have committed to putting an extra 20,000 police officers on our streets, but they need to have the powers to act decisively and effectively to prevent crime and see that offenders face justice.

“That’s why today we are announcing greater freedoms for the police to use stop and search on individuals who are known to have carried knives in the past. We are also speeding up prosecutions to make sure the threat of being caught is always an effective deterrent.

“Just as with our plans to improve schools and hospitals, we can only do any of this if we end the gridlock in parliament with a Conservative majority government.

“We had to call this election to end that deadlock and now the choice is simple. Either we can have more confusion and delay with Jeremy Corbyn, who wants to call two more chaotic referendums next year, or we have a Conservative government who will get Brexit done and focus on the people’s priorities like tackling violent crime, improving our NHS and investing in schools across the country.”

What you need to know:

Knife crime is blighting some of our communities – having a devastating impact on young people.

Hospital admissions for assault by a sharp object were up by 15 per cent in 2017-18 – the latest date for which records are available – in comparison to the previous year. The year 2017-18 was the year with the lowest number of stop and searches. Fortunately, in 2018-19 the police carried out 55 per cent more stop and searches to look for weapons. This has had a positive effect with a 22 per cent increase in arrests for possession of weapons.

Adult offenders caught with a knife following stop and search will be arrested on the spot, cautioned or charged within 24 hours, and have their first court appearance in less than a week.

Most of them will be sentenced there and then. All those who receive a community order, suspended sentence, or immediate custodial sentence will also receive a Serious Violence Reduction Order. So, from the moment they walk out of court (or out of the prison gates on licence) they would face more of a chance of being caught. They will know that if caught with a knife again, they will be very likely to receive an immediate custodial sentence.

90% of those dealt with by the police for possession of knives are charged, the other 10% are given cautions.
Therefore we not are proposing to take away the police discretion to give cautions (rather than charging) in appropriate cases.

We will introduce a new Serious Violence Reduction Order to enable the police to stop and search habitual knife carriers without suspicion – helping to get more weapons off our streets.

As proposed by the think-tank the Centre for Social Justice, and backed by Lord Hogan-Howe, these orders will allow police to target known knife carriers, so stop and search tactics can be a more effective deterrent.

This power would be in addition to the two main types of existing stop and search powers – Section 1 and Section 60.

A Serious Violence Reduction Order would act like a personalised Section 60 search power for individuals who have, in a criminal court of law been proven to have been in possession of an offensive weapon. This would include pointed or bladed weapons, firearms, and corrosive substances.

The Order would apply to both custodial and non-custodial sentences, thus ensuring that every offender – from the moment they are sentenced at court or from when they leave prison on licence – would face an increased risk of detection. This would help to focus our response on what is a relatively small proportion of dangerous offenders.
Polling by the Centre for Social Justice found that 70 per cent of non-white people would support Serious Violence Reduction Orders.

We will invest £35 million in eighteen Violence Reduction Units next year to enable them to implement a long term, multi-agency, preventative approach – helping to stop violence from happening in the first place.

In parts of the country with violent crime hotspots such as London, Manchester, Hampshire and the Midlands, the police, councils, and other agencies will have the resources they need to better coordinate their response to knife crime – sharing data on violence and investing in preventive measures to intervene early in the right places. This extra funding will give the units the certainty they need to plan for the future – hiring more staff and helping more young people.

Below is a press release issued by the Conservative Party on 31 January 2002.

Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, John Bercow MP, today launched a ‘wastewatch’ campaign, calling on the public to help in highlighting the continued waste of public money across all departments of the Government.

Pointing to several staggering examples of frivolous expenditure, fraud and even theft within Government departments, Mr Bercow told conservatives.com, “far from every penny of public money being spent wisely to make peoples lives better, millions of pounds are being frittered away at our expense, examples of which range from the comic to the ridiculous.”

He continued, “a recent report said that the Metropolitan Police paid £185 for a kettle and £325 for a light bulb. Those authorising this profligacy have clearly lost all sense of responsibility to the taxpayer.”

Below is a press release issued by the Conservative Party on 16 January 2002.

Shadow Defence Secretary, Bernard Jenkin, says that Tony Blair’s ‘global ambitions’ are taking an unsustainable toll on Britain’s armed forces. Mr Jenkin said that while the number of trained servicemen and women had fallen by nearly 10,000 since Labour came to power, the Army was now taking part in more, not less, deployments.

Mr Jenkin used the example of 2 Paras, based in his own Essex North constituency: “They spent Christmas 2000 in Northern Ireland before being sent to Macedonia. They spent this Christmas in Afghanistan.” He told the BBC: “If Britain is going to use British troops for a nation-building programme, then you have to up the ante. It is either the Prime Minister’s global ambitions or the Treasury, but you can’t go on indefinitely overstretching the armed forces in this way.”

Mr Jenkin said that it was too early for the Conservatives to say how defence would be operating under a Conservative Government. He told conservatives.com that the real question was whether you carried on with this much wider peace-keeping deployments, or focus on specific threats.

Below is a press release issued by the Conservative Party on 17/01/2002.

The Conservative Leader, Iain Duncan Smith, has said that the Party was firmly fixed on public services. He said that while the problems facing the country were changing, the values that underpinned the Party’s solutions were as relevant as ever.

In a speech to business leaders in Birmingham, he said that the Conservatives would renew policies using timeless principles to meet the challenges of our time, contrasting that with the Labour Party who stood for power without purpose, politics without principles and governing without direction.

He accused the Government of having a top-down approach to the public services, thinking that problems can be solved from the top of Government. “My instincts are always to build from the bottom up: to derive policy from the instincts and values of the people we represent, guided by our own values,” he said.

Mr Duncan Smith went on to say that policy renewal was inseparable from effective Opposition. “The way we develop policy will be characterised by leadership and direction, and based firmly on Conservative values,” he said. The Conservatives had always been successful, he argued, when they articulated a clear view of the problems that Britain faces, and found ways to solve them, by empowering people, rather than pushing them around.

While in Birmingham, Mr Duncan Smith paid a visit to a local comprehensive school, to meet with staff and pupils.