If we are honest, most of us thinking back to 1997 would remember the tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime slogan but not much else. That s a shame, because our record in office as opposed to our rhetoric in opposition has been central to New Labour s success as a progressive government.
The unprecedented electoral achievement of New Labour in building and maintaining support among voters from every class, background and part of Britain has been directly related to our programme on home affairs. If we lose that bond, the political foundations of the New Labour project will be fatally weakened. I am clear that liberal values and a progressive society can only flourish when order, safety and stability are guaranteed.
The foundations built by the Home Office ministerial team between 1997 and 2001 were impressive, covering crime reduction, youth justice, race, asylum, terrorism and criminal justice reform. Indeed, the most striking feature when studying what Jack and his team delivered in those four years is how little the Tories had done in these areas during their eighteen years of power.
On crime reduction and policing, our government set up the network of local crime reduction and disorder partnerships which are the bedrock of so much of our work in this area. These partnerships have provided a solid community forum from which to implement other policies; particularly the substantial investment in CCTV and the development of a range of measures to tackle disorder, such as anti-social behaviour contracts, action plan orders, parenting orders and reparation orders. Work was also done on investing in record police numbers and tackling the proceeds of crime, which we have seen through to success in the last year.
The importance of youth justice was prominent because of the 1997 pledge to halve arrest to sentence time for young offenders this has been delivered within five years, as promised. But just as importantly, the establishment of the youth justice board and youth offending teams has reformed the way in which we deal with young people in the criminal justice system. Of course, there is more to do but Progress readers should treat with their usual scepticism Oliver Letwin s sudden interest in this area of policy, five years after Labour made it a priority on entering government.
Foundations were established elsewhere too. The setting up of a national asylum support system took responsibility for asylum support back to Whitehall, while the Halliday and Auld reports provided cogent analysis of the case for the wide-ranging reforms of the criminal justice system we are now developing. The Freedom of Information Act, Data Protection Act and Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act all strengthened citizens rights and provided extra protection against a big brother state. The Race Relations Amendment Act updated race laws for the 21st century, while we toughened the laws on racist hate crimes. Finally, the Terrorism Act 2000 anticipated the increasingly global terrorist threat, which tragically came to all our attentions on September 11th 2001.
The constant challenge for progressive governments, however, is to drive change and renewal, not rest on their record, however substantive. That is why the mantra of investment matched by reform is central to Labour s second term and essential if we are to ensure that the money available because of our economic success under Gordon Brown is well spent.
The programme of reform we are now driving is the most substantial the Home Office has ever seen. The three core areas of the Home Office s responsibility policing, asylum and immigration and the criminal justice system are all being radically revamped to equip them for the challenges we face. This is not reform for change s sake, nor is it driven by a desire for greater central control. The driving principles are to ensure the services we provide make a bigger difference on the ground, whoever is responsible for providing them. We have a key role as a department to act for the citizen, fostering strong, active communities, rather than attempting to impose monolithic structures from Whitehall.
In policing, we have achieved a huge programme of reform: a new pay and conditions structure, which rewards frontline and experienced officers; and a Police Reform Act, which devolves more power to local commanders, ensuring that forces work more closely and that basic standards are met, whatever the police force.
We have coupled this with a major study of police red tape, which we are following through with practical measures that will free up officer time to spend in the community, not the police station. Together with the new community support officers in 26 forces in England and Wales, we are refocusing policing on the community-based, visible work which is essential to tackle both crime and the fear of it.
In the area of asylum and immigration, we have had to take forward substantial further change to ensure our systems are robust enough to cope with the demands that unprecedented migration levels are placing on the developed countries. In doing so, we have not just focused on our asylum systems in isolation but developed a new policy encompassing migration, citizenship and nationality policy as well. This balance is crucial; we must toughen up our barriers against illegal immigration but we are offsetting this by increasing the number and type of work permits available for immigrants and by taking certified refugees through the UN. We are introducing an end-to-end system for asylum seekers, which will ease the pressures on inner-city areas that take most of the strain, while providing for a tighter processing of claims.
Success in this area is vital because, if we cannot provide a system of migration and asylum that commands trust and confidence from the public at large, they will increasingly turn to the far right and be more receptive to the racists who would happily destroy the diversity with integration we are trying to achieve. The fate of centre-left governments in other European countries such as France is a good reminder that we relinquish these sensitive issues to the right at our peril.
Meanwhile, the reform programme in parliament over the coming year will focus on the criminal justice system, rebalancing it to give greater prominence to victims and witnesses, developing a range of community-based sentences and to better co-ordinate the system. We are already facing the entirely predictable charge from the civil liberties lobby that, in arguing for radical reform, we are jettisoning ancient freedoms in favour of a police state. This accusation cannot be justified, either by the detail of our plans or the thrust of them. Giving greater rights to victims and witnesses such as allowing for a second trial should compelling new DNA evidence come to light does not diminish the principle of a fair trial based on the presumption of innocence. Equally, allowing a judge to disclose relevant previous convictions in the course of trial should be about whether truth and justice are best served by disclosure, not whether a defendant is able to employ legal tricks to lie with impunity in court.
We must rid ourselves of the mindset that a miscarriage of justice only occurs when the innocent are proclaimed guilty; the victim of a crime seeing its perpetrator walk free also feels betrayed by the system. The public have very little confidence in the system and will hold us to account if we fail to implement radical reform which delivers justice for all.
On drugs policy, we are reclassifying cannabis to focus prevention and detection on class A drugs such as heroin and crack, while on race we are now working with communities to develop social cohesion and implementation of our race laws.
Reform in the Home Office is non-negotiable but there is much here to debate for our movement in the years ahead. Indeed, it is only by continuing to engage with these crucial issues of crime and disorder, asylum and immigration and the criminal justice system that we will be able to renew ourselves in government and retain our electoral base. The challenge for us all is to continue to hear the concerns of the people we serve, to build on the foundations we lay and constantly to push the boundaries of what is possible. For progressive politics to flourish, Labour must remain firmly at the steering wheel of the home affairs agenda.