Quote of the week

"This is a humiliating climbdown for Gordon Brown after he was forced to accept that people will not tolerate MPs continuing to act like members of a secret society. It is also a victory for everyone who think that politicians should be open and accountable to the people who pay their wages."

Nick Clegg, Leader of the Liberal Democrats, commenting on news that Gordon Brown has retreated from plans to exempt MPs' expenses from the Freedom of Information Act - 21 January

One third of suspected crimes fail to reach court

Almost a third of criminal suspects arrested in the past year were not charged, government figures have shown.

Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, has admitted that out of 550,000 cases leading to arrests last year, 160,000 were dropped.

This is a substantially higher number than was expected by the government and we need to know why.

Either police are not preparing cases as well as they should be, which seems unlikely, or the Crown Prosecution Service are getting more choosy about when to charge.

We owe it to the victims concerned to get to the bottom of this. At the moment it is out of order that so many cases are being investigated and then nothing happens.

Expel Lords who break the law

Lords who are convicted of a criminal offence and face a prison sentence should be expelled from Parliament.

The allegations of accepting payment in return for changing legislation are serious enough. But on top of that the sanctions applied to the peers if they are found guilty are so weak.

The most the accused peers will have to do if the Lords’ investigation finds them guilty is to apologise.

It is wholly out of step with the public’s legitimate demand for transparency in politics that just because someone happens to be in the House of Lords they are exempt from the most basic standards of accountability.

Anti-knife campaign fails as crime soars

We are facing a crimewave which is being fuelled by the recession. Latest figures show a big rise in knife-point robberies, burglaries, and fraud.

Robberies at knife-point are up 18 per cent, domestic burglaries are up four per cent and fraud or forgery is up 16 per cent.

More people died last year as a result of stabbings than at any time since records began. The Home Office figures show that robberies involving “knives or sharp instruments” were up 18 per cent between July and September last year, compared with the same period in 2007.

Fatal stabbings increased by 10 per cent to 270 in 2007-8, the highest since records began in 1977.

Domestic burglaries were up for the first time since 2002, by four per cent from 66,900 between July and September 2007 to 69,700 in the same period last year.

Other types of burglary were also up, by three per cent.

Drugs offences were nine per cent higher in July to September 2008 than in the same quarter the previous year and fraud and forgery increased by 16 per cent.

There is now clear evidence of rising crime as the recession bites.

The effectiveness of the anti-knife crime campaign launched by the government last June is questionable. The Government has failed to effectively roll out the measures that we know work against knife crime.

Posturing about penalties is no substitute for the hard graft of visible and intensive policing.

Labour's housing failure as repossessions soar

Yesterday, it was announced that repossessions were rising at an alarming rate; today we hear that the number of households on local authority housing waiting lists has hit 1.77 million - official statistics show this is up 100,000 on last year.

With the banks overstretching their credit facilities it could well mean that in the coming months that councils will have to help pick up the pieces as people end up on social housing waiting lists.

Since Labour took power 12 years ago the council house waiting list has risen from one million to almost 1.8 million, showing this Government has failed to build anywhere near the number of social homes Britain desperately needs.

The Government’s response to the social housing crisis is not only inadequate but scandalous. It is essential that the Government uses the current economic crisis to allow councils and housing associations to buy up land to build new social houses for the increasing number of families left waiting for social housing.

By allowing social housing to wither, the Government has let down hundreds of thousands of families.