Our guest writer is Jill Rutter, who works for an organisation supporting refugees and migrants and is an associate fellow of the Institute for Public Policy Research (ippr); she writes here in a personal capacity

Over the last two weeks we have seen a large number of reports and articles critical of the asylum system. The Independent Inspector of the UK Border Agency highlighted the growing backlog of unprocessed asylum claims in a report published at the end of February.

His report was followed by Nuala O’Loan’s investigation into allegations of the abuse of asylum-seekers held in detention or in the process of removal from the UK. Yesterday the media reported that the costs of supporting asylum-seekers – who are not permitted to work – had risen by 1,700 per cent over the last five years.

All these reports point to an asylum system vulnerable to misadministration and crisis. There have been some improvements in the processing of asylum claims over the last ten years – the time it takes for an initial decision on an asylum case has fallen from 22 months in 1997 to seven months in 2009. An inspectorate for the UK Border Agency and greater commitment to the integration of those allowed to remain in the UK are other changes for the better.

Nevertheless, the asylum system remains flawed and prone to backlogs. It is high time progressives took an honest look at asylum in the UK. Yet a tabloid media hostile to asylum-seekers, coupled with a powerful refugee lobby have prevented a root and branch examination of the treatment of refugees.

The latest media articles, drawn from Home Office statistics, point to a reduction in the numbers of ‘failed’ asylum-seekers who are removed from the UK and a huge increase in the cost of supporting them. In 2009, some 26,832 removal notices were issued to failed asylum-seekers, yet only 7,850 persons from this group were removed from the UK.

Many of those who are not removed from the UK receive food vouchers and basic accommodation from the UK Border Agency, a type of sustenance known as Section Four support. Ministers are very concerned by the rising costs of Section Four support.

However, an in-depth analysis of Home Office asylum statistics shows why such small proportions of failed asylum-seekers end up being removed from the UK and why the costs of Section Four support have rocketed. In 2009, some 17,805 asylum-seekers – about 73 per cent of all applicants – received an initial negative decision in the UK. Of those refusals 4,150 were from Zimbabwe and 1,080 were from Sri Lanka. Yet government has suspended removals to these countries because it acknowledges that Zimbabwe and Sri Lanka are too unstable for the return of asylum-seekers.

Some 1,070 Iraqis and 585 Somalis were refused asylum in 2009. While the UK will return them, organising flights and onward transport in these countries is logistically challenging and expensive. Failed asylum-seekers from countries such as Zimbabwe and Somalia are kept in limbo: their applications have been refused, yet we cannot send them back. It is an inhumane and costly trap. A progressive asylum policy would allow those who we cannot remove from the UK to remain here, work and contribute to their new communities.

Our government does remove those who have overstayed their permission to remain in the UK, a group that includes failed asylum-seekers. At present there are weekly charter flights to countries such as Nigeria and Afghanistan.

Frontex, the EU external borders agency, will soon be taking responsibility for chartering and coordinating removal flights. Yet progressives have given very little consideration to removals policy. Honest debate about this issue is often heavily suppressed by the open borders movement, groups and individuals who often have links with the left.

We need to get to grips with removals policy. We need to acknowledge that there are some people whose removal is practically impossible – they should be allowed to stay in the UK. We also need to confront other questions. How do we deal with those who physically resist removal? How can the activities of Frontex be made transparent and accountable? Should we have independent human rights monitors on charter flights, as some EU countries do? How do we monitor the safety of those returned to their home countries?

Above all, we need safeguards at our external borders, as many would be asylum-seekers do not make to European territory and are turned back at our external borders.

Our guest writer works in the voluntary sector and has asked to remain anonymous

There was a time, almost three years ago, when the Tories came close to doing some radical thinking on the role of the third sector – even if they were, and are, far happier passing the time talking about what the sector should be called (social sector? non-profit? civil society?) as opposed to liberating it to deliver more effectively. Of course any charity worth giving money to is far too concerned with delivering change to even know that such debate even exists. There’s nothing more yawn-inducing to serious activists than David Cameron’s oft-repeated line, “I hate the term third sector because in my book you are often the first sector”; it’s focus-group flattery at its worst.

But every now and then they have hit upon a good idea. Take this one from their green paper on the third sector: charities delivering public services by contract should be allowed, even encouraged, to make a surplus. Surplus is charity-speak for profit. This would indeed be an innovation, as charities by law must reinvest any surplus in either delivering services or developing innovations that will help them achieve their charitable endeavor. It’s a win/win for the taxpayer, who can rest assured that profit as a reward for success won’t be whisked off to appease distant shareholders but instead be invested in social innovation.

As a prelude to more recent and larger announcements, this one quickly began to be picked apart though. Not in the principle, but in the Tories’ willingness to deliver it. I was in an audience when someone pointed out to Nick Hurd, the shadow charities minister, that they did not have to wait until taking power to deliver this pledge as the majority of money into the sector comes via local authorities, and the Tories controlled more than 60 per cent of them. They could deliver this policy the next day! But to my knowledge not a single local authority has encouraged third sector providers to price a surplus into their bids to run services.

Indeed, the only evidence emerging from Tories in power is that they are using the third sector as the first whipping boy in a relentless and neanderthal approach to making savings. Take Westminster city council, which in the last few days lopped £500,000 off the funding to the voluntary sector and followed this with a right-hook in the form of expelling charity representatives from their seat at the top table – the consolation prize of a powerless advisory role within the council without voting rights is nothing more than an insult to the very people closest to vulnerable people and communities in times of great hardship and crisis.

Similar practices emanating from the London Mayor’s office are well documented.

To be clear, no one sensible is saying that the third sector should be ring-fenced carte blanche from any spending cuts. Indeed, if engaged properly they are capable of delivering more services at a lower cost using radical and highly innovative practices, often employing partnership models and volunteerism in ways that statutory services can only dream of. This makes the short-termism of the Tories in power all the more galling, as it simply will not benefit anyone – service user or taxpayer alike – beyond the end of this financial year.

Just as worrying, the Tories are increasingly divorcing the different factions of their Party according to policy approaches. Take Iain Duncan Smith, who thinks that small charities are the answer to everything, coupled with a bigotry towards those who are either large (what he calls the Tesco-isation of the sector) or take contracts (which can often be similar in terms to grants but have the potential, if well negotiated, to offer long-term financial security and protect against raids and cuts by a hungry funder). Then on the other extreme you have Francis Maude and Stephen Dorrell who believe that large charities can solve nationwide problems and standardise quality of provision across geographic and regional boundaries.

This close to an election, a credible party would have bridged this divide, banged heads together, brought the policy thinkers together to plot a unified narrative. But instead the Tories have allowed the different wings to diverge, and I believe they will institutionalise this divide should they win the election.

Word is that IDS will get his much coveted department for social justice, whose job will be to moralise on the benefits of marriage on the one hand and extoll the virtues of communities solving their own problems through voluntary action (and in his book that means free of regulation and financial support from government) on the other. And then Francis Maude at the Cabinet office grappling with the challenges of public service reform and doing his best to harness the power of charities large and small whilst providing demonstrable evidence of outcomes to deliver to the public when tough questions are asked. Perhaps this fracture will see social enterprise dispatched back to the department for business, innovation and skills. This would in my mind institutionalise the conflicts within Tory thinking rather than bring them together to offer the third sector clarity and certainty.

Some of that is speculation – how can we know what the Tories will do in power when even they haven’t figured it out – but based upon the salami-slicing of Westminster, it seems that the days when charities can expect to profit from solving society’s (and government’s) most intractable problems would be delayed, not expedited, by a Tory victory in May.

Our guest writer is Rick Muir, senior research fellow at the ippr

The debate about crime in the run up to the election is heating up. First we had a row about disputed violent crime statistics; now the Conservatives have claimed that the Government is secretly planning to cut police officer numbers, despite pledges to protect frontline policing.

The Tory claim is based on a report by the National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA), which says that financial savings could be made – and performance improved – by replacing some police officers with civilian staff to carry out various functions that do not require the skills or authority of a warranted constable.

So, who is right? First, some context: spending on the police service increased by 19 per cent in real terms between 1997/98 and 2008/09. Most of this money was spent on increasing the number of police officers: police numbers increased by 11 per cent or by 16,326 officers between 1997 and 2009, meaning that there are more police now than at any time in our history. So, in historic terms, the police are exceptionally well resourced– and at a time when crime has fallen to its lowest level since 1981.

We now face a fiscal squeeze, and all parties have said that the police service will need to find savings. The prime minister has pledged to protect “frontline policing”, but has carefully not committed the Government to protect total officer numbers overall. There is a crucial difference between those two things.

The Government’s position is entirely sensible and was one I proposed in a recent ippr report. We can protect frontline officer numbers – those out on the beat, working in neighbourhood policing teams or in frontline response teams – while also employing fewer police officers overall. This is because there are many functions that officers currently carry out at comparatively high cost that could easily be done more efficiently by civilian staff.

Evidence from recent modernisation pilots shows that greater use of civilians can raise performance: a CID team in Surrey achieved an 8 per cent lower running cost following a reconfiguration making greater use of civilian staff. Use of civilians to help with investigations led to an increase in the detection rate of one Surrey basic command unit of a third.

There is no need for the fiscal squeeze to hit frontline officer numbers – we can both protect neighbourhood policing and make significant savings – but to do that we need to engage in significant reform of the way the police service works, including the constable/civilian mix, cutting out layers of middle management and reforming costly and archaic force structures. The sooner we get away from being fixated with the overall number of officers the better.

Our guest writer is Mark Day of the Prison Reform Trust

Labour’s attack on Conservative crime policies yesterday with the launch of its video “A Long Hard Look” was merely the latest instalment in a long and ugly tradition of political posturing over criminal justice policy by the main political parties – especially during election time.

A report published today by the National Audit Office (NAO) underlines the true economic and social costs of this unfortunate political legacy, which since 1995 has contributed to an unprecedented 66 per cent rise in the prison population in England and Wales, despite the massive cost of custody and its poor record in reducing rates of reoffending.

The report, which examined the costs to the taxpayer of the use of short-term sentences, found that 60 per cent of short-sentenced prisoners commit another crime within a year of getting out, costing the country between £7 billion and £10 billion a year.

Around 60,000 prisoners are jailed for less than twelve months each year costing taxpayers £300 million. Mostly convicted of theft and minor violent crimes, they make up nearly one in ten prisoners in England and Wales.

According to the NAO, more could be done to rehabilitate prisoners serving short sentences and reduce their risk of reoffending. The report found the National Offender Management Service (NOMS) – responsible for managing such prisoners – has little information on the quality, cost or effectiveness of its rehabilitation activities.

The findings of the report might lead you to conclude that there are far better ways of cutting crime and reducing reoffending than prison. Among the main findings of the report are:

• Prisoners on short-term sentences are being left idle in their cells for much of the day;

• Overcrowding means that despite having an average of 16 convictions each, little is done to tackle their reoffending;

• Activities for prisoners are “inadequate” and prison bosses know little about how well the schemes they do run work;

• Many inmates arrive, and leave prison homeless, unemployed and addicted to drugs or alcohol; and

• Most spend as few as 45 days inside, and are released automatically at the halfway point of their sentence. In that time they are not given “appropriate assistance” to help them turn around their lives.

The evidence is clear that community penalties involving treatment for addicts, mental healthcare and sorting out housing and employment all work better than a short prison sentence. Many prisoners on short sentences will have committed an offence that is in some way drug or alcohol related, with shoplifting, burglary, vehicle crime and theft all crimes that are commonly linked to problems of addiction. Around 55 per cent of those received into custody are problematic drug users – and the majority of these have never had contact with drug treatment services.

Many of these would be much better dealt with in the community where the roots of their offending behaviour can be tackled through tailored programmes of treatment and support. Studies show that offenders who receive residential drug treatment are 45 per  cent less likely to reoffend after release than comparable offenders receiving prison sentences.

The benefits of noncustodial, community-based approaches is underlined by the recent report on Justice Reinvestment by the justice select committee. Borrowing from an approach successfully piloted by a number of states in the US it makes the case for diverting money away from the traditional institutions of criminal justice into programmes and agencies based in the community aimed at tackling the roots of offending behaviour.

As we head into the election all parties’ time would be much better spent paying attention to the overwhelming evidence for what works in criminal justice policy, instead of whipping up public fear with expensive and ill-judged videos.

Our guest writer is Will Horwitz

There is now a fairly substantial body of evidence showing the ill effects of income inequality on society, but not yet much consensus on what to do about it, particularly given the public’s seemingly contradictory attitude towards the issue; that was the message coming out from last night’s Smith Institute and One Society event, held in the same room as many of the meetings of John Smith’s Commission on Social Justice 18 years ago.

The evidence is certainly strong. Two of the main players in this field – Kate Pickett, academic and author of the Spirit Level, and John Hills, author of the recent government-commissioned “Anatomy of Income Inequality” report – were there.

Pickett described the main point of The Spirit Level: that in rich countries, income inequality is the root cause of a whole host of health and social problems, from obesity to crime, and the UK is one of the worst. In more equal countries, the benefits of equality aren’t just felt by those lower down, they accrue right across society. (For all the evidence in painstaking detail, see the Equality Trust website).

John Hills pointed out some of the starker facts, that a tenth of social housing tenants on their retirement have assets (including everything they own) worth less than £3,000, compared with the £900,000 a professional is likely to end up with, for example.

So what does one do about it?

Hills gave some reassurance to those who hope the answer lies in government, claiming that the fall in inequality between 1999 and 2004 can be attributed to a large extent to government policy - particularly tax credits, improving public services, and the minimum wage.

Sadly he felt the conditions which made that possible – economic growth and increased spending on public services (fuelled by reduced spending on defence and debt interest payments) – no longer hold true. With an ageing population, a struggling economy, and considerable environmental limits to growth, redistribution “by stealth” isn’t looking too promising.

A particular cause for concern is the way that benefit and tax credits are linked to price, rather than earnings, meaning that if (or when) the economy returns to growth, those at the bottom are very likely to be left further behind.

Frances O’Grady, TUC deputy general secretary and the third speaker, had several suggestions for specific policies: a high pay commission, employee voices on remuneration committees, a permanent tax on bonuses, a 50 per cent tax on incomes over £100,000, and the recent Robin Hood tax on financial transactions.

O’Grady pointed out the importance of decent wages and decent work – in the 1970s wages accounted for 65 per cent of GDP; now that figure is only 53 per cent. She also talked about the need for a new industrial policy, making rewarding and fulfilling work the goal of public policy, and ensuring that companies able to pay a living wage do so.

While Hills argued for the role of the state in redistribution, and O’Grady focussed on how the state relates to employers, Pickett looked briefly at public attitudes – a crucial factor in determining how we tackle inequality as a society.

On the one hand, four fifths of the public support a reduction of pay at the very top; on the other, support for redistribution is declining. The general public displays a nuanced, some would say contradictory, approach to inequality. This week’s Vanity Fair headline, for example, reads:

“It’s still all about Greed and Money”

Crucial to people’s beliefs about inequality are their beliefs about where they stand relative to everyone else, so one suggestion was to start putting people right on that front.

If you earn more than £200,000 a year you are certainly not an average earner, as one participant in Polly Toynbee’s Unjust Rewards book claimed. Most people claim to be somewhere near the middle of the income scale irrespective of their actual income; in reality median income is about £24,000 a year.

Pickett claimed we need a social movement to demand change, so that in ten years time it is as socially unacceptable to be greedy as it is to be racist or homophobic. But it’s less clear how we get there. Hills pointed out that as the rungs on the ladder of social mobility get further apart and harder to climb, those at the top are even more desperate that they and their children don’t fall down – a cycle that can be hard to break.

Demanding that employers make public their entire payscale – from the highest to the lowest – was one suggestion for starting to throw a light on these inequalities.

So in the end we were left with the conclusion that, yet again, the evidence all points to the ill inequality causes society but the key question now is how it can be tackled – through influencing public attitudes, through government policy on redistribution, through business policy on renumeration, a combination of them all, or something else entirely?

Our guest writer is Lawrence Kay, Economics Unit Research Fellow at Policy Exchange

Nobody I have ever met likes the idea of someone living in absolute poverty. The trauma of not having enough to eat or a place to sleep is sufficient for all of us to agree that everyone in Britain should have these things. In other words, the abolition of want is a near-universal principle held among Britons. Regardless of its form, the welfare state is going to be around for a lot longer.

But are there any consequences to us wanting to keep people out of poverty? It would be remarkable if this were not to have even some bad effects, would it not? The answer, of course, is the ‘poverty trap’. Whenever a government decides that it wants to give a person money while they are unemployed or not earning enough, it gives them a reason to think twice about trying to earn that money themselves. This is a problem that all governments face, but how bad is this problem in Britain’s benefit system?

Pretty bad, actually. In a Policy Exchange’s latest report out today we show how, when even the most straightforward costs of work are taken into account, the financial boost that benefit claimants get for working is tiny. For example, if you compare the income of a normal Jobseeker’s Allowance claimant over 25 (£122.42, a figure which includes other benefits, like help with council tax and housing) to what they would get after 40 hours work on the minimum wage, the overall gain is only £51. That works out at a paltry £1.28 per hour.

This occurs because as someone tries to leave benefits they start to lose the money they are getting from the government. The Jobseeker’s Allowance claimant loses £1 of the benefit for every £1 earned. This means that the abolition of poverty, plus the need to make sure the state does not end-up paying money to everyone and anyone, leads to a perverse outcome: the poorest people in Britain face the highest tax rates. Think about it: as they earn more, they lose benefits and start to pay tax, so their effective tax rate must be high. For the Jobseeker’s Allowance claimant the tax on deciding to work, say, 20 hours per week is 111%.

The answer to this, as our report argues, is to let people on all benefits keep more of their earnings as they work. By tightening the tax credits regime and other benefit spending we can save £6.5 billion on the overall welfare bill.  We can then put some of this money back into the system to allow anyone on welfare to take home £92.80 before their benefits start being squeezed.

Unemployment is only likely to get worse over the next year or so. It is vital that we make sure everyone on benefits can see a good financial reason to keep looking for the jobs available.

Our guest writers are Mark Day and Rebecca Nadin of the Prison Reform Trust

While Gordon Brown yesterday accused the opposition of “ramping up” public fear of crime, a new report launched by the new economics foundation (nef) demonstrates the true costs of the political arms race over criminal justice policy engaged in by both main political parties over the past two decades.

The report, “Punishing Costs“, found that locking up children and young people for non-violent offences is costing the taxpayer millions, while doing little to reduce the amount of crime.

England and Wales imprisons more children than almost any other country in western Europe, with roughly 2,500 children in prison at any one time.

The case against child imprisonment in all but the most serious cases is lengthy and well-evidenced. Imprisonment is the least effective of all the sentencing options available to the court, with three-quarters of children reconvicted within a year of release – for the youngest children, this is closer to 80 per cent.

As the nef report highlights, child imprisonment is also expensive – very expensive – costing on average six times more than a place at Eton, and considerably more than community alternatives.

In addition, the experience of imprisonment can be corrosive for children. Self-harm rates are significantly higher inside than out. Retaining contact with friends and family is also difficult, as many children are held far from their homes with a fifth receiving no visits at all.

Imprisonment is extremely disruptive to schooling, with many school-age children leaving prison finding it extremely difficult to access mainstream education, despite all the evidence suggesting that being in full time education is one of the best ways to help children to stop offending.

Finally, we routinely imprison our most vulnerable children, children who have learning disabilities and difficulties, mental health problems, children who have experienced abuse and neglect, many of whom would be better dealt with in the community.

Out of Trouble is a five-year Prison Reform Trust campaign, supported by The Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund, working to reduce child and youth imprisonment in the UK.

Whilst much of our work focuses on unnecessary imprisonment, we also champion alternatives to custody which have the potential to offer young people, and the communities they come from, a better deal. This is where restorative justice, a way of resolving conflict and repairing harm by bringing the offender and the victim together through closely managed ‘conferences’ or meetings, comes in.

The case for restorative justice, or restorative approaches as it is also known, has been building on the ground for some time now, with many schools and residential children’s homes around the country using restorative practices to great effect as an alternative to traditional forms of punishment and conflict resolution.

As yet, however, this momentum has not been matched within the formal youth justice system. Despite this, policymakers in England and Wales need not look far for evidence that restorative justice can work, as, since 2003, Northern Ireland’s youth justice system has placed restorative ‘youth conferencing’ at its heart.

Introduced as part of an overhaul of the youth justice system, the youth conference order is available both pre-court, as a diversionary order where the young person admits the offence at charge, and post-conviction, as a court-ordered conference. Conferences are organised and facilitated by trained specialists, and involve offenders giving an account of the offence, before victims and others involved, including community representatives, are offered the opportunity to ask questions and explain the impact on them.

Victim participation rates, a key measure of truly restorative encounters, are high at two-thirds of all conferences, and almost 90 per cent of victims express satisfaction with the outcome. The number of children being sentenced to custody has declined, with the youth conference order accounting for almost a quarter of all sentences.

And crucially, reoffending rates are lower than for other community sentences, and significantly lower than custody, with just under 38 per cent of young people reoffending within one year, compared to 71 per cent of those released from prison. Contrary to some of its critics, restorative justice isn’t a soft option, requiring offenders to come face to face with their victims, and hear, often for the first time, exactly how their actions have caused harm.

In addition, it has real potential to act as a robust alternative to custody, with violence against the person offences accounting for a quarter of all conference referrals in Northern Ireland. Perhaps most importantly, it gives both offenders and victims the opportunity to input into an action plan for making amends which the offender must stick to. Plans can include written apologies, specified activities, unpaid work, a curfew or compensation.

How could the lessons of Northern Ireland be replicated more widely? One way advocated in the nef report would be to devolve budgets for prison places to local authorities. At the moment, prison places are paid for by central government.

Transferring the costs to local governments – together with more power over how they can arrange youth justice services locally – would remove the perverse incentive to give up on young people in trouble and allow them to end up in custody. The councils would be allowed to keep some of the savings created from reducing custody, which could be reinvested in the reduction of crime.

The report finds that local authorities could reduce the use of imprisonment by 13 per cent without need for controversial legislative change or a large increase in public spending. The policies considered include better co-operation between local agencies and courts, and using interventions of restorative justice that allow offenders to repair the damage they have caused in the community.

These changes could result in more than £60 million of savings in England, and more than £2 million for some local authority areas. With the impending general election, and the attendant, inevitable focus on youth crime, it must only be a matter of time before policymakers wake up to restorative justice’s potential to radically reduce the escalating social and economic costs of child imprisonment.

Less than a week after Left Foot Forward reported on the attack by dissident republicans outside a court house on Newry, there is more evidence that dissidents are stepping up their attempts to ruin the Hillsborough Agreement, which sets out a timetable for the devolution of policing and justice powers.

In the latest round of violence, blamed by the Police Service of Northern Ireland on dissident Republicans:

• On Saturday a hoax device was used to lure police officers into an area of Craigavon in County Armagh where they faced sustained attacks from flagstones and other missiles, in what police said was an attempt to injure or kill a police officer. Three police vehicles were damaged, and officers fired three baton rounds in self defence;
• A mortar bomb was fired at a police barracks in the Brownlow area of Craigavon, although it missed its intended target; and
• Police faced sustained attacks from petrol bombs in Dunmurry on the outskirts of Belfast.

The events come on top of the Real IRA admitting responsibility for the murder of suspected MI5 informer Ciaran Doherty near Derry.

Responding to the attacks, Sinn Fein MLA for Upper Bann John O’Dowd said:

“This attack was wrong and should not have been carried out.

“I would challenge those who claim to speak politically for these factions to tell the republican and nationalist community exactly how these sorts of activities, or indeed the recent murder in Derry advance the cause of a united Ireland one iota.”

DUP MP for Upper Bann, David Simpson said:

“It is certainly very reckless coming on the back of what’s happened in Keady (in south Armagh) and Newry.”

For the SDLP, one of its local MLAs, Dolores Kelly, commented:

“Republican dissidents seem to be upping their game and becoming more emboldened by recent events.”

The attacks on the police come after Alliance party leader, David Ford, agreed to put his name forward for the post of justice minister, and ahead of a vote in the assembly due on March 9th on transferring policing and justice powers.

Whilst the attacks serve as a reminder of the threat to the peace process posed by dissidents who refuse to disarm, such attacks could prove to strengthen the resolve of Northern Ireland’s political leaders. As the Irish Times’ Northern news editor Dan Keenan concludes:

“Relations between the DUP and Sinn Féin in the Stormont Executive have been openly difficult since devolution was restored in 2007. But the threat both parties face from the dissidents at this most politically sensitive time has emerged as a powerful incentive for them to make common cause.”

This is the question that a selection of experts debated yesterday evening at Amnesty International’s UK offices in London.

The panel was chaired by veteran BBC technology journalist Rory Cellan-Jones and featured Susan Pointer, Google’s director of public policy & government relations; Andrew Keen (via mobile phone), author of “Cult of the Amateur: How the Internet is killing our culture”; Kevin Anderson, blogs editor of the Guardian; and Annabelle Sreberny, professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS).

In addition to the panel, there were questions from the audience and from outsiders participating in the debate via Twitter. The discussion started with a brief history of the web in terms of its libertarian ethos, but now finds itself in an arms race with government who seek to suppress it or control it to further their own ends.

Keen, who has been a critic of social media in the past, took a surprisingly conciliatory tone in his viewpoint, arguing that technology isn’t bad for freedom. He, like other panelists, pointed out how adept governments have been at adapting and co-opting technology.

Interestingly, despite the use of mobile technology during political protests around the world, Keen asserted that the internet had not brought change. Real change could only be brought about through culture within a society, which in turn could drive changes in political structures.

Anderson talked about the way that social media now plugs a gap that would otherwise go unfilled in journalism. Mobile pictures and video from Iran’s aborted green revolution were some of the first images that the west saw of the conflict. However, the constant debate and ease to which communities can be created means that online movements could be less effective as they fragment.

He also made the point that much of the online activity is of little-to-no use; something that he called slackitivism. The active role that governments were taking in the online space was underscored by Anderson quoting Major General Huang Yongyin, who said:

“The internet is a battlefield without gunpowder.”

Where political movements break out online, Anderson said that this depended on a set of circumstances that facilitated “viral serendipity”.

Sreberny discussed the topic with particular reference to Iran. Technology depends on the context and the culture where it is being used. In her view, the role of technology in political action has been a progression rather than a revolution.

Discussing three revolutions in Iranian history in 1905, 1979 and 2009 respectively, Sreberny talked about how the technology of politics had evolved. In 1905, the opposition had used printing presses to create pamphlets that were distributed at night.

The Islamic revolution of 1979 relied on cassette recordings of Ruhollah Khomeini together with photocopied political flyers. The conditions for the 2009 revolution were set within the eco-system of politically-minded blogs in Iran, together with mobile phones which were used to document the revolution through pictures and video.

The Iranian government had struck back by throttling the speed of internet connections and restricting access to many sites.

Sarah Pointer discussed the topic from the point of view of Google. Specifically on Google’s entry into China, Pointer said that the company had made a conscious decision to enter the market in order to ensure that Chinese audiences had access to information.

Whilst the company had complied with Chinese regulations on censorship, it had clearly indicated to its audience where results had been censored. She refused to be drawn further on whether the company would be withdrawing from the Chinese market following the accusations of hacking, nor the direction that company’s talks with the Chinese government would take.

A number of members of the audience expressed concern that Google held so much information on consumers and were concerned about the company’s power. Pointer responded to these concerns by pointing out that the audience Google attracts is their lifeblood. If they betray the consumer’s trust, the audience will go elsewhere and the company will suffer financially.

There was a wider discussion amongst the audience about whether internet connectivity itself in time will become a human right as it has become so central to modern life, especially since some countries in Scandinavia had set a minimum legal standard of connectivity that its citizens should be provided.

Overall, there was no definitive answer to the question of whether technology is really good for human rights.

Our guest writer is Conor McGinn, who manages a charity that works with prisoners and their families. He is a Labour local election candidate in the London Borough of Islington

Following Friday’s remarks about youth offending, and despite earlier signs that the Conservative Party were keen to engage in a serious debate about criminal justice, recent pronouncements on prison policy are a setback to those of us who advocate prison reform.

On the back of their proposals to reintroduce prison ships and reduce levels of community sentencing, they announced plans last week to put post-prison services in the hands of the private and – to a lesser extent – voluntary sectors.

This is a dangerous, ill-judged and unwelcome move.

Post-prison resettlement and rehabilitation services are currently provided by the National Probation Service (NPS). The NPS has gone through several changes since 2004, the most recent of which effectively gives control of probation to HM Prison Service through the National Offender Management Service (NOMS) which manages both.

The coupling of probation with imprisonment was on the basis that an ‘offender manager’ could work with an offender throughout their sentence and post-release. In theory, it’s a great idea and similar to the benefits of having the same doctor, consultant or teacher over a specific period.

In practice, however, it hasn’t worked. Very few of the prisoners I am in contact with know who their offender manager is, let alone what they are supposed to do.

The shadow justice secretary, Dominic Grieve, wants to change the probation service’s remit to “public protection” – this mirrors my experience of how the perception of the NPS’s role has changed.

Rather than the rehabilitative, one-to-one, social work type probation officer of the past, many of those under the supervision of the NPS see the organisation’s role as a punitive one, part of the system that locked them up rather than something to engage with so that they can stay out of prison.

There are many fantastic non-public sector organisations who work closely with probation services in several parts of the country. Basic Caring Communities (BaCC) is a resettlement project being pioneered by my colleagues in pact, and is aimed at helping ex-prisoners settle back into the local community and has been very successfully piloted in London.

Similarly the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) have encouraged their members to employ ex-offenders and have produced guidelines and advice on how to do this. The involvement of the voluntary and private sectors in this regard is to be encouraged. There is no substitute, however, for a properly-funded, accountable and person-centred National Probation Service.

The amalgamation of the prison service and NPS in the NOMS hasn’t worked. They should be decoupled and a fully-supported, efficient and effective, regionally-organised probation service should be allowed to focus on working with offenders to prevent re-offending; leave imprisonment to the prison service, and “public protection” to the police.

The Tories today released figures claiming young criminals given community sentences were guilty of “100,000 extra crimes a year”. They say that, since 2002:

“Over 650,000 crimes have been committed by juvenile offenders who had received a community sentence, referral order, or reparation order, in the previous twelve months, research by Conservatives has found.”

The clear implication being that locking more young offenders up would reduce the offending rate. Indeed, shadow justice secretary Dominic Grieve goes on to say:

“Ministers need to get a grip of the youth justice system and reduce reoffending rates, which remain stubbornly high.”

A sure sign that an election’s looming and the Tories are reverting to type, and a million miles from his sentiments of a few years ago, when he said:

“Prisons are places to which we want to avoid sending people whenever possible.”

In the same 2003 debate, he added:

“We share the Government’s desire to ensure that, as far as possible, sentences can be served in the community, rather than in prison.

“There are many good reasons for that and the Minister has touched on some of them, including the fact that the successful management of a convicted person within the community makes it less likely that he will reoffend.”

So what’s changed between then and now? Why were prisons “places to avoid sending people” seven years ago and not now, and why would a young offender on a community sentence be “less likely” to reoffend then than now?

If it was a round of applause in the right-wing press he was looking for, it seems the dogwhistle u-turn has done the trick, today’s Mail describing community sentences as “bird-brained justice” and the Telegraph calling them “soft penalties”.

Our guest writer is Jill Rutter who works for a charity supporting refugees and migrants and is an associate fellow of the Institute for Public Policy Research. She is writing in a personal capacity.

Yesterday Sir Al Aynsley-Green, Children’s Commissioner for England, published a follow up report on conditions faced by children held at the Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Centre in Bedfordshire. The report is the latest in a series critical of the current process.

Every year about 2,000 children are held in detention centres such as Yarl’s Wood, most of whom are held for periods of less than seven days. Aynsley-Green’s report acknowledges improvements to the physical environment at Yarl’s Wood, but argues that the detention of children subject to immigration control is wrong. His report is the latest in a long line of publications that are critical of the detention of children subject to immigration control, most recently a policy statement from the Royal Colleges of Paediatrics and Child Health, General Practitioners and Psychiatrists. Another recent report from Save the Children suggests frequent police station reporting and graduated systems of community supervision as alternatives to detaining asylum-seeking families.

Aynsley-Green’s report provokes many questions. Why are children being detained? Is an end to the detention of children a realistic call? Are there alternatives to detention for families who face removal from the UK? How can we safely return children who have exhausted their rights to stay in the UK? Crucially, are those who criticise the use of administrative detention for children focussing on the right issues?

Home Office statistics show that 315 children were held in immigration detention in the third quarter of 2009, of whom 63 per cent were asylum-seekers, with the remainder households who had overstayed their visas. The Government argues that it only detains children as a last resort, prior to that family’s removal from the UK. The statistics show otherwise – just 48 per cent of children held in detention ended up being removed from the UK in the third quarter of 2009. The remainder were released within the UK, often because a new solicitor had made successful representations for these families, or submitted new evidence to back up an asylum claim.

This startling statistics throw light on one of the major reasons that children are being held in detention. Poor quality legal advice, in some cases no legal advice, result in badly prepared asylum applications being sent to the UK Border Agency. These asylum applications may not disclose the full facts behind flight to the UK. Additionally, the quality of asylum decisions made by the UK Border Agency often leaves much to be desired: research reports and whistleblowers talking about a culture of disbelief held by immigration officers and the evidence submitted by asylum-seekers and expert witnesses dismissed. All this means that a good solicitor can often challenge an asylum decision and that family can be released from detention.

Ensuring early access to quality legal advice would certainly reduce the numbers of asylum-seeking families held in detention. Campaigners for refugees argue that asylum-seekers should be referred to competent legal advisers at the point when they request asylum. An asylum application should include witness statements and corroborative evidence, rather than be based solely on an oral interview. Solicitors should be reimbursed to provide this initial support in a manner that covers their expenditure. While all this would cost money, it would also reduce costs to the public purse, through a reduction in expensive asylum appeals and the need for detention places.

But introducing early access to legal advice is only part of the story. We also need to improve the quality of asylum decisions in the UK. This too, would reduce the numbers of families held in detention then released again. Our present asylum system is adversarial – the asylum-seeker is pitted against the UK Border Agency. It is also prone to politicisation – with governments exerting pressure to reduce asylum numbers and reject asylum applicants. Many commentators, including Iain Duncan’s Smith Centre for Social Justice, now argue that we need an asylum application system that is inquisitorial and independent of government, perhaps mirroring Canada’s asylum determination system. Here asylum-seekers lodge written evidence with the independent Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB), explaining the reason for seeking refugee in Canada. The asylum-seeker then attends an oral hearing that further explores the reasons for seeking asylum in an non-adversarial manner. The IRB also has access to a high quality information base that can be used to check the credibility of an asylum case. Better quality initial decisions reduce appeals and the need for last-minute interventions by solicitors when a family is in detention. In Canada less then 1 per cent of initial decisions were over-turned on appeal in 2007. In the UK, 89 per cent of negative decisions were appealed in the same year and 23 per cent of appeals resulted in initial decisions being over-turned.

While improvements to the asylum determination system would reduce asylum-seeking families held in immigration detention, we must not forget that children who are not asylum-seeker are also detained. They are mostly from families that have overstayed their visas, who are effectively irregular migrants. Unless we support a policy of open borders, return to their home is the only policy position we can advocate and detention prior to return is probably a necessary evil. But among those who support migrants’ rights there has been very little consideration about what might constitute a just return policy that does not cause undue stress to children.

We need to think if there are any alternatives to detention for irregular migrant families – a group who may be more likely than asylum-seekers to abscond. We need to consider whether we should limit the detention of families to a maximum period. We need to put more resources into voluntary return and re-integration. Policy makers must also understand the pressures that cause some families to live as irregular migrants and the factors that stop them considering return. And we need to ensure that our foreign policy interventions tackle the root causes of irregular migration – lack of economic opportunities, instability and a lack of a welfare safety net.

Rather than focus solely on conditions facing children held in detention centres, we need to look at broader and more difficult issues. We need to examine the asylum-determination system, what constitutes a just return policy and how we respond to irregular migration. Unless we confront these issues, we are going to see many more reports about the detention of children in Yarl’s Wood.

As political parties prepare their election manifestos – and the Conservatives attempt a form of cross-dressing by claiming they are now concerned by inequality – Professor Michael Marmot’s evidence-based review into tackling health inequality is timely.

The World Health Organisation expert begins his government-commissioned review with a quotation from Chilean Nobel Prize for Literature winner and politician, Pablo Neruda:

“Rise up with me against the organisation of misery”

The review’s premise is that reducing health inequalities is a matter of fairness and social justice:

“There is a social gradient in health – the lower a person’s social position, the worse his or her health. Action should focus on reducing the gradient in health.”

It highlights six themes relevant to all government departments, including prioritising high quality early child development through public funding, and the need for adequate incomes to secure better health

The review finds that people living in the poorest neighbourhoods in England will, on average, die seven years earlier than people in the richest neighbourhoods, with the average difference in disability-free life expectancy between the richest and poorest areas at 17 years. Marmot has described as “absolutely dramatic” that life expectancy in England has improved 2.9 years in the past decade in the quarter of the population with the worst health.

Campaigners have welcomed the report but highlighted its challenges. Malcolm Clark of One Society said:

“your position relative to others matters as well as your absolute position. It is not good enough to simply focus attention on those at the bottom; improvements can only happen once there are fewer gaps between all sections of society.”

Yet the case for addressing inequality is not only about health. With the rate of growth necessary to reduce the national deficit while minimising cuts, an OECD study this week highlights that limited social mobility undermines both equal opportunities and economic growth. The UK is in a group lagging behind the Nordic countries, Australia and Canada, says the study.

We have had major reports – by Black and Acheson – on health inequalities before. The new development, however, is the Equality Bill, current going through Parliament. This will create a unified public sector requirement to promote equality in public policy, and a new public sector duty related to socio-economic inequalities.

Perhaps not quite what Pablo had in mind, but one to watch.

Speaking in the House of Commons, Prime Minister Gordon Brown has confirmed that two republican Paramilitary groups, the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) and the Official IRA and the loyalist South East Antrim Ulster Defence Association have decommissioned their weapons.

The news came as the Independent Body on Arms Decommissioning, established to over see and independently verify the decommissioning of paramilitary weapons, under the Chairmanship of former Canadian General, John de Chastelain was official disbanded under legislation passed by Westminster.

In a statement to MPs, the Prime Minister said:

“I think the house would want to record our thanks to the international commission which has now overseen decommissioning by the UDA, UVF, PIRA and now INLA and the Official IRA.”

Of the three groups whose decommissioning was announced, perhaps the most significant was that of the Irish National Liberation Army. A splinter group of the IRA, the group was responsible for over 120 deaths during Northern Ireland’s troubles, including that of Airey Neave, a close ally of Margaret Thatcher, who as Shadow Northern Ireland Secretary was assassinated by the INLA in the car Park of the House of Commons in 1979.

In a statement made by a former member of the INLA, Martin McMonagle, who was released from prison under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement, the group said:

“We make no apology for our part in the conflict.

“We believe conditions have now changed in such a way that other options are open to revolutionaries to pursue and ultimately achieve our objectives.

“We can also confirm that the INLA has disarmed through a joint facilitation group consisting of local, a national and an international organisation. This was done in accordance with international standards. We hope that this will further enhance the primacy of politics and that it will in time unite and advance the working-class struggle in Ireland.”

Sinn Fein Junior Minister, Gerry Kelly welcomed the move, concluding:

“The peace process has ensured that a peaceful and democratic path to a united Ireland exists. There is no support for or appetite for armed actions within the republican community.

“The INLA has recognised this by engaging with the IICD in this action.”

However, the events were tinged with sadness as many reflected on some of the barbaric acts perpetrated by the group. For the DUP, East Londonderry MP, Gregory Campbell said:

“All too often when moves like this occur, there is a tendency to forget what was carried out by these groups.

“All of them should decommission their weapons, none of them should have been armed and able to murder in the first instance and the regret is that there are still people mourning their previous actions and the heartache they left behind.”

And speaking to the Newsletter, the mother of one former RUC Police Officer, murdered by the INLA in 1997 stated simply, “It is 13 years too late for my son.”

The decision by the three groups announced today, to decommission their arms does not however end Northern Ireland’s “troubles”.

In 2008, Northern Ireland Secretary, Shaun Woodward announced that paramilitary organisations in Northern Ireland would have until mid February to decommission all their weapons. With that deadline fast approaching, the Real IRA, responsible for last year’s attack on the Massereene army barracks; the Continuity IRA which is alleged to have been responsible for shooting dead a police officer last year in Craigavon; and the Continuity Irish Republican splinter group have so far failed to begin any process of disarming.

In an sign of the continued dangers posed by these groups, in an article for Ireland’s “Tribune News”, its Northern Editor Suzanne Breen has quoted a Real IRA sources as concluding that anyone who thought they would decommission their arms was living “on another planet”.

The moves by the INLA will undoubtedly put pressure on the remaining republican paramilitary groups to follow suit. However, what happens if they do not do so by the deadline set by the Secretary of State remains unclear.

Given their capacity, as proven last year with brutal murders of a police officer and serving soldiers, to threaten the stability of Northern Ireland’s fragile peace process, all eyes will be on Westminster, Stormont and Dublin as to what to do with those groups that refuse to disarm.

For some the news of further decommission will be a line under much of Northern Ireland’s troubled passed. For many other however, such as Pauline Bradshaw, it will serve only to reignite painful memories of loved ones lost at the hands to terrorist groups.

It again highlights the extent to which whilst Northern Ireland might be on the road to peaceful nation, for many, the memories are such that they cannot and will not be able to feel at peace within themselves.

A wide range of organisations representing or working with young people have joined together with campaign group One Society to call for a more equal society. Social welfare charities, NUS and the youth wings of a range of trade unions and parties have issued a joint statement calling for policies that would close the gap between rich and poor.

Income inequality matters. Young people, already hit hard by the recession and now bearing the costs of the recovery, are doubly disadvantaged as they have come of age in a more unequal society than previous generations. Reducing income inequality would improve social mobility and the quality of life for all young people, across the social spectrum.

The good news is that inequality is not inevitable, and can be reversed. Government policy makes a big difference. It already has in staunching the rate of inequality growth. But now the challenge is to go further – to actually tackle the entrenched inequalities that have emerged over the past thirty years.

Today, Demos publishes three pamphlets which recommend a range of policies to tackle income and wealth inequality; not just at the bottom, but at the top-end too. One Society will be taking forward this menu of policy options to push the case that a more equal society is possible, plausible and would benefit all.

Politicians must grasp this issue quickly though, to start alleviating the shrinking of opportunities and the greater pressures many young people are currently faced with.

Our guest writer is Malcolm Clark, campaign director of One Society, a new campaign (set up in association with The Equality Trust) to highlight the negative effects of income inequality, bringing together people and organisations in support of a more equal society

• Visit www.onesociety.org.uk and follow @one_society

Leading secularists have said an accommodation with religious groups needs to be found in the light of a judge’s comments that Sikh children should be allowed to wear the Kirpan, the Sikh ceremonial dagger, to school.

Sir Mota Singh QC, Britain’s first Asian judge, in an interview with the BBC, had said that it is “not right” to prevent Sikhs wearing the Kirpan.

Terry Sanderson, president of the National Secular Society, told Left Foot Forward:

“The issue of the Kirpan is unlike those of the turban, niqab or cross. We need to work together to find an accommodation with Sikhs – one way to do this could be to insist the Kirpan is glued inside its sheath so it cannot be used to cause harm.

“This issue is of paramount importance, no one should be allowed to carry weapons into schools. In our society now you cannot carry daggers and expect to get through security and detectors, which some inner-city schools now have.”

There were real fears of what could happen if the daggers weren’t banned, he added:

“Pupils wearing turbans could be robbed of their daggers by bigger kids, who could use them on them or others.

“It’s not racist to say that the Sikhs will have to accept that and find a way of abiding by society’s rules.

“There is no government guidance on this; schools have to make their own decisions.”

The Kirpan is one of five Sikh “Articles of Faith“, alongside Kes (unshorn hair), the Kangha (comb), Kara (steel bracelet) and Kaccehra (soldier’s shorts), designed “to unify and bind them to the beliefs of the religion and to remind them of their commitment to the Sikh Gurus at all times”.

Following Chris Grayling’s very public slap on the wrist for manipulating crime statistics yesterday, it has emerged that it is not only the Shadow Home Secretary engaging in sharp practice – backbench Tory MPs are doing the same off their own backs.

As far back as last autumn, long before Grayling’s memos to Tory candidates, Putney MP Justine Greening falsely claimed on her blog that there had been a “burglary rise locally”, writing “locally we’ve recently also seen burglaries rise which is very concerning indeed”.

The statistics, however, tell a very different story: The burglary rate in every single ward in Putney fell in the year to October 2009.

And in July, she said:

“We’ve recently seen a large increase in burglaries”

The stats, again, prove her wrong – from May 2007 to July 2009 the burglary rate in Putney fell from more than 15 burglaries per thousand of the population to less than 10.

Earlier this week, Left Foot Forward reported Grayling’s ignorance on the inclusion of under-16s in the British Crime Survey, following the BBC’s eposé of his misrepresentation of crime statistics and his disastrous appearance on the Today programme.

• Hat tip: Stuart King

The Herald newspaper has reported a warning from the Scottish Police Federation that budget cuts to the police will see crime rates increase across Scotland.

According to the newspaper, research published by the Federation found:

• Police forces in Scotland are facing overall losses of £11 million from councils since the introduction by the SNP in 2008 of the Government’s concordat with local authorities;

• The overall proportion of funding for the police from local councils dropped from 10 per cent prior to the concordat to 8.8 per cent last year; and

• Whilst the concordat between the Government in Edinburgh and Scotland’s Local Government Association, Cosla, resulted in a modest increase in councils’ share of the budget, it removed ring-fencing of budgets such as on policing.

Les Gray, Chairman of the Scottish Police Federation said of the findings:

“There seems to be some sort of blissful ignorance at the minute that the cuts won’t really affect anyone. The reality is that there will be a drastic reduction in police numbers and that more people will become victims of crime as a result.

“Calls will go unanswered. The crime rate will rise unnecessarily. Detections will go down because there will not be the officers available. This is not scaremongering. It’s the reality. History has taught us that crime goes up in a recession anyway.

“It is a false economy, too. More crimes will lead to hikes in insurance and additional costs for the hospitals having to stitch people up. Taking a serious assault to trial costs £250,000. Taking a murder costs £1m. And that doesn’t even take account of the human cost to the victims.”

The research came however just days after it was reported that Strathclyde Police, Scotland’s largest force announced it was considering a £45 million move to a new headquarters in Glasgow, with a feasibility study into the move likely to cost £1 million.

The warning on the likely impact on crime of cuts to the police came as the Scottish Parliament voted to support the SNP Government’s £30 billion budget for 2010-11, though not without a number of concessions to gain opposition support.

Among the key highlights are:

• A new Independent Budget Review process will be established to consider the implications of forecasts of reducing public spending across Scotland, and make recommendations on how to deliver services within a much tighter fiscal environment. This had previously been called for by Conservative Leader, Annabel Goldie. Likewise, Conservative calls for the Government, every month, to publish online all spending above £25,000 will come into force in April;

• Total public sector pay will fall by 5.5% with Ministers taking a pay freeze and quango bosses expected to waive their bonuses, a key Liberal Democrat demand;

• An additional £31 million will be spent on affordable housing. Furthermore, following pressure by Scottish Labour, the Government will introduce a boiler scrappage scheme similar to England, with those who qualify able to receive £400 towards the cost of a more efficient boiler;

• £10 million will be spent on a new Home Insulation Scheme as called for by the Scottish Green Party; and

• A £20 million fund to meet the surge in demand for college places will be established in line with Liberal Democrat demands.

For the SNP, it’s Finance Secretary, John Swinney concluded:

“This is a Budget that will support economic recovery and protect frontline services – a Budget for all of Scotland.”

Labour rejected the budget plans, in protest over Mr Swinney’s decision to cancel the Glasgow Airport rail link project. Senior Labour MSP for Glasgow Baillieston, Margaret Curran was critical of the decision, making clear:

“The SNP and the Conservatives have stabbed Glasgow in the back by voting down Labour’s efforts to save the Glasgow Airport Rail Link. They will not be forgiven for betraying their constituents in this way.”

Despite efforts to gain their support, the Liberal Democrat took the decision to abstain in a belief that the proposed pay cuts for senior public sector managers did not go far enough.

The SNP were therefore only able to secure its budget as a result of the support of the Conservatives and Greens.

Speaking about the concessions they had received on an Independent Budget Review process and the publication of all public sector spending over £25,000, Conservative Finance Spokesman, Derek Brownlee hailed the budget “a transparency revolution”.

The decision by the Tories to support the SNP’s budget was a repeat of events last year which saw the SNP relying on the Conservatives to secure its budget for 2009-10. Could this be what Labour Leader, Iain Gray meant when he spoke in First Minister’s Question’s last week of the SNP’s “Tory budget buddies”.

Chris Grayling’s attack on the British Crime Survey (BCS), which he described as “fundamentally flawed” on the Today programme this morning, is unravelling fast. Living up to his reputation as the weak link in the Tory line-up, he claimed there had been a “98 PER CENT INCREASE in serious violent crime” – the true figure, as the BBC’s Mark Easton reminded him, is a “50 PER CENT FALL in violent crime since 1995″.

He also claimed the BCS “didn’t take account of crimes committed by people under the age of 16″ – again, the Shadow Home Secretary is simply wrong.

Not only were crimes committed by under-16s against adults already included in the survey, but from last January – January 2009 – the experiences of under-16s were included as well.

Grayling also said a major flaw of the survey was that it didn’t include murder or manslaughter. Using the figures which do include those crimes, however, reveals a downward trend – a fact Grayling failed to mention, claiming that “since the start of the decade there have been steady year-by-year increases in violent crime”.

As Left Foot Forward reported last month, the “Home Office Statistical Bulletin: Homicides, Firearm Offences and Intimate Violence 2008/09″ shows a 14 per cent fall in homicides year-on-year, from 753 to 651 – the lowest level for ten years – with shooting homicides down 26 per cent since 2007/8 from 53 to 39.

• Listen to Grayling’s interview and read the transcript.

UPDATE 12:30

Andrew Pakes, Labour PPC for Milton Keynes North, has told Left Foot Forward that the Tories’ false claims that there had been 6,000 violent attacks in Milton Keynes in 2008/09 – a 236 per cent increase, equivalent to a violent attack every 90 mins – were a “disgraceful attempt” to play politics with crime.

He said:

“It is incredible to see just how far the Tories are prepared to go in manipulating the figures for their own partisan gain. No wonder the local police and BBC felt the need to speak out on this issue and make clear that the Tories were misleading the public.

“I am really proud of the work done by our local police and their dedication to helping make our city a safer place to live. This is a disgraceful attempt to play party politics with crime and the fear of anti-social behaviour. The Tories should start standing up our city and not simply spinning for his party bosses in London.”

The drugs adviser sacked by the Government last year has said that they will eventually “have to accept” that his scientific view is “correct”. In an interview with Left Foot Forward’s Mark Thompson, David Nutt explained why he felt his new drugs committe would work where the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) had failed.

Professor Nutt said of the new Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs:

“It contains 20 top scientists, a lot of them from the ACMD, spanning all the range of science right through from chemistry to human pharmacology and clinical experience. I think this will become the voice of science on drugs in the country. The ACMD science group has pretty much disbanded – there’s only two scientists left. They cannot do the science.

“I’m hoping eventually the Government may well say “ok, we’ll let the independent committee do the science and we’ll contract them to produce some scientific reports”, and then the ACMD can do policy and we can do science and then people will know exactly where they stand because at present everything gets mixed up with political interference.

“I think the Government will have to listen because the people will listen, the public will listen, the media will come, and they’re already coming to us as the opinion on drugs and I think eventually the Government will have to accept that we are the correct, we’re the best scientific opinion they can get on drugs and why not come to us?

“To do something other than that would actually, there would be endless battles between our scientists and their scientists and our scientists are stronger, we’ve got very strong scientists; people would see that we were telling the truth and they would never believe what the Government scientists say.”

Watch the interview:

Earlier, he had described the problems with the present system, saying:

“We need to have a re-think and go to a science based policy. At the moment, a bit of it is science based, a bit of it is moral based and a bit of it politically based and it just confuses people – no one knows for sure exactly what it means when a drug is in a particular class…

“I think also people are confused because drugs like alcohol and tobacco are legal and they kind of deny the fact that they’re drugs and so a lot of people are very comfortable with the fact that other drugs are things that bad people take, the underclass…”

He added:

“I would completely dismantle the classification system and rebuild it in an evidence-based way and I would remove the penalties for drug posession. I think people shouldn’t be penalised for posessing drugs or using drugs – they should be treated in a different way like they do in Portugal.

“We should understand why they use them and try to minimise the harms and i think imprisoning people for using drugs is truly the most expensive and ridiculous way of dealing with the problem.”

• Read Mark’s review of “An Audience with Professor David Nutt”, an event at Reading University last week in which he outlined how best to proceed.