Now Brown suggests women should be able to use police as 'travel
consultants' to get home at night
By Ian Drury
Last updated at 7:53 PM on 08th December 2008
Commuters walking home late at night should be able to phone the police
to ask for the safest route, Gordon Brown has claimed.
Police officers would provide a glorified 'sat nav' service to make sure
travellers remained safe after getting off a bus, train or Tube, said
the Prime Minister.
But he faced ridicule for attempting to turn the police into 'travel
consultants'
Mr Brown said he wanted to tackle 'last mile home syndrome' - when
people, and especially women, felt most at risk on their journeys.
In an interview in Glamour magazine's January edition, he floated the
idea of people being able to ring the police at night and ask for
directions through an unfamiliar neighbourhood.
He said: 'We want to extend this so it’s like a personal police service,
so if you’re going through an area late at night, you can phone them up
and say, "What's the safest way of getting home?"
'Take the Last Mile Home syndrome - once you get off the bus or the
Underground, how safe are you in this last mile home?
'I'm really aware that these are issues for young people who rightly
want to have the chance to be out late at night.'
But there was no indication of how the phone service would be funded or
staffed by cash-strapped police forces.
Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Chris Huhne said: 'Surely the
best way of making people feel safe on the streets is to put more police
on the beat.
'This is a half-baked idea which has got as much chance of being put
into practice as the ludicrous suggestion of marching offenders to cash
machines.
'The police have better things to do than act as a glorified travel
consultancy.
Tory police spokesman David Ruffley said: 'Instead of the police
offering a travel-line for commuters, Gordon Brown should cut red tape
so more of them can get out onto the streets to tackle crime. This idea
will never be delivered.'
A Home Office spokesman said the scheme was 'a vision for where
neighbourhood policing could go in future rather than a fully developed
policy.
'We cannot say when it is going to happen or say what the details would
be.'
In his interview with the magazine - popular among young women - the
Prime Minister also said that judges should never accept that there were
mitigating circumstances for rape - including if the victim had been
drinking.
He said: 'There is no justification, no excuse and no mitigating
circumstances for rape. Unless we make that message absolutely clear we
will drift into something unacceptable.
The interview is indicative of Downing Street's attempt to make Mr Brown
reach out beyond his traditional target audiences and connect more with
female voters.
Meanwhile, a scheme in which drunken students are given lifts home by
police has been attacked as a waste of taxpayers' money.
Merseyside Police launched the £75,000 scheme as part of a crackdown on
crime in Liverpool's student hotspots.
Measures include issuing safety advice, a dedicated burglary crime
hotline and visible police patrols with officers giving a 'handful' of
worse-for-wear and vulnerable students a lift home each week.
A spokesman for the Taxpayers Alliance described the scheme, in an area
known as The Dales, as 'ludicrous' and said it was another example of
the 'nanny-state'
But the police said anti-social behaviour had been halved, violent crime
was down 40 per cent and robberies had plunged by 80 per cent since the
scheme was launched.
Neighbourhood inspector Stuart Quirk, of Merseyside Police, said giving
students a lift home was 'not a taxi service' but designed to help those
who were vulnerable because they were drunk or alone.
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Tuesday, 9 December 2008
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