Tougher powers to tackle teenage drinking

I know that anti-social behaviour is a real problem for some people in Birmingham and a lot of this is caused by teenage drinking. 

Often we can feel powerless when trying to deal with it. As your MP I will always do what I can to help people feel safe in their homes and communities.

So I was really pleased that Labour's Home Secretary Jacqui Smith MP this week outlined tougher police powers and called for parents and the drinks industry to play their part in preventing young people drinking in public.

Police must have all the powers they need to make groups of young people drinking in public a thing of the past. A new campaign to confiscate alcohol from underage drinkers begins this month and lessons will be learned from it.

At the same time we will continue to punish those few irresponsible retailers that flout the law by persistently selling to children.
 
Government must lead the way and I am determined that they should use all the powers at their disposal to bring about change in Hall Green.

But in order to do this they also need the support of industry, enforcement authorities and communities. Everyone needs to meet their responsibilities to make a difference.   And parents must play their part too.  We will give parents whose children are drinking the support they need to change their damaging behaviour.

There is a lot of good work being done to tackle the damage that alcohol misuse can do to individuals, to the people around them, and to the communities they live in. But I want to us go further, so I fully support what the Home Secretary has announced.

What's going to happen?

• A major new national crackdown by police to confiscate alcohol from all under-18s drinking in public
•  Extra powers for police to make it clear that children drinking in public is unacceptable
•  Wider use of parenting contracts when poor parenting is identified
•  An independent review to see how well the retail industry is doing in meeting alcohol sale standards

More schools trips for pupils

We should never let a fear of a compensation culture prevent pupils from learning outside the classroom.

We need to help parents and teachers find the right balance between protecting our children and allowing them the freedom to develop and enjoy childhood.

So I support new guidance and measures announced this week will make it easier to take pupils on schools trips, with less bureaucracy and more popular destinations.  

I believe that learning outside the classroom helps pupils understand their subjects better and increases their self- confidence. School trips also help young people explore and learn about risk and how to manage it.

The new guidance awards ‘quality badges’ to organisations that run high-quality and safe destinations for schools visits, helping to ease the burden on teachers of assessing places for visits.

I hope that by making it easier for teachers to take their students outside the classroom we will help a generation of pupils develop their independence and raise their attainment.

Freeing up police time

A major review was published this week by former Chief Constable Sir Ronnie Flanagan. His independent Review of Policing in England and Wales, making a compelling case for radical changes that could free up the equivalent of 3,500 additional police.  The report estimates that 5 million to 7 million hours of police time each year could be re-focused on the front lines if the recommended changes are made.
 
I'm very pleased that Home Secretary Jacqui Smith has accepted recommendations to cut unnecessary bureaucracy, exploit new technology and enable police officers to spend more time on front line policing. 

I'm also pleased that in the report Sir Ronnie celebrates the development and delivery of neighbourhood policing.  Thanks to our Labour Government and the hard work of forces and police authorities throughout England and Wales, there will be a team for every neighbourhood in April.

More than 3600 teams are now in place and 16,000 police community support officers have been recruited. Up and down the country, at public meetings and in street briefings, local communities are helping to influence their team’s priorities.  And throughout March, people will be hearing more about who their local teams are and how they can contact them.  Please contact my office if you would like more details.

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith announced measures that Labour would

• Scrap the lengthy form used to record Stop and Account.
• Maintain proportionate recording requirements for Stop and Search. She encouraged Chief Constables to streamline their forms to include only information relevant to the aim of a search, building on the work to shorten the form already underway by the Metropolitan Police Authority, in co-operation with community representatives.
• Pilot the use of hand held devices to enable officers to input information directly, cutting the average time taken to record stop and search information from 25 to 6 minutes.
• Introduce a new standard one page form to record crime.
• Extend police powers to tackle gun and knife crime by enabling police officers to stop and search in designated areas where an act of serious violence has taken place, as well as in anticipation of serious violence. Measures passed in the Serious Crime Act would come into force in April. 
• Streamline IT systems to make them more compatible. The Home Office, Association of Chief Police Officers and the Association of Police Authorities have commissioned the National Policing Improving Agency to review the police’s IT strategy and report in May.