Welcome to our continuing coverage of the riots. Here are few of today's main developments in parliament following David Cameron's statement:
• Instant messaging services will be reviewed:
"We are working with the police, the intelligence services and industry to look at whether it would be right to stop people communicating via these websites and services when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality," said the prime minister.
• The police will have new powers to order people to remove facemasks.
"On facemasks, currently [the police] can only remove these in a specific geographical location and for a limited time," Cameron said. "So I can announce today that we are going to give the police the discretion to remove face coverings under any circumstances where there is reasonable suspicion that they are related to criminal activity."
• Curfew powers will be reviewed. "On dealing with crowds, we are also looking at the use of existing dispersal powers and whether any wider power of curfew is necessary," he said.
• Sentencing powers will be kept under review to ensure that the courts have the powers they need.
• Individuals and companies will get compensation for damage caused by rioting. "On repairing the damages, I can confirm that any individual, homeowner or business that has suffered damage to or loss of their buildings or property as a result of rioting, can seek compensation under the Riot Damages Act, even if uninsured," he said.
• The police will receive "the funds they need to meet the cost of any legitimate aims".
• The government will set up a £20m fund to help high street firms affected by the rioting. Businesses affected will be able to defer tax payments.
• The government will allow councils to grant business rate relief. Whitehall will fund three quarters of the cost of such schemes.
• Gang injunctions will be extended across the whole of the UK.
• A ministerial group will prepare a programme of action on gang culture. It will report in October. People like Bill Bratton, the American police chief, will be consulted.
A bit of further recapping:
• David Cameron has used a marathon statement in the Commons to announce a series of measures intended to show that the rioting crisis is over and that order has been restored. There were at least 10 separate announcements in the list (see 12.01pm) — some of which were relatively minor, or very provisional — but collectively they amounted to a reasonably weighty package which should convey the impression that, after a period when it looked weak, the government is now firmly back in control. The measures include a £20m high street support scheme that will help businesses affected by the rioting.
Boris Johnson, the London mayor, has also announced £50m to repair damage in London. Cameron spent almost two-and-a half hours answering questions about the phone hacking affair in July and today he was on his feet even longer. (In fact, his statement went on for 2 hours and 45 minutes, breaking the 2hr 31m that George Osborne managed when he announced the comprehensive spending review). This may well be a record. After the phone hacking statement, Cameron told a journalist that going on for so long allowed MPs to "let off steam" and today's statement seemed to have the same effect. At the end of his statement, Cameron insisted that the the government was staging a "fightback" on behalf of the law-abiding majority.
This is a time for our country to pull together.To the law abiding people who play by the rules, and who are the overwhelming majority in this country, I say the fightback has begun, we will protect you, if you've had your livelihood and property damaged, we will compensate you. We are on your side.
And to the lawless minority, the criminals who've taken what they can get. I say: We will track you down, we will find you, we will charge you, we will punish you. You will pay for what you have done.
We need to show the world, which has looked on appalled, that the perpetrators of the violence we have seen on our streets are not in any way representative of our country – nor of our young people.
We need to show them that we will address our broken society and restore a sense of stronger sense of morality and responsibility – in every town, in every street and in every estate.
And a year away from the Olympics, we need to show them the Britain that doesn't destroy, but that builds; that doesn't give up but stands up; that doesn't look back, but always forwards."
• Cameron has admitted that the initial police response to the rioting was flawed. In what are probably the most critical comments he has made about the policing operation he has made, he said that they did not put enough officers on the street and did not recognise what they were dealing with.
What became increasingly clear earlier this week was that there were simply far too few police were deployed onto the streets. And the tactics they were using weren't working.
Police chiefs have been frank with me about why this happened.
Initially the police treated the situation too much as a public order issue – rather than essentially one of crime.
The truth is they have been facing a new sort of challenge, with different people doing the same thing – basically looting – in different places all at the same time."
• Cameron has rejected Ed Miliiband's call for an immediate independent inquiry into the riots. But the prime minister did not rule one out entirely, saying that he wanted to let the Commons home affairs committee conduct its inquiry first. After that he would "take it from there", Cameron said. In his response to Cameron, Miliband said it was important to have an independent inquiry, not one "sitting in Whitehall hearing evidence from academic experts", but one "reaching out to those affected by these terrible events".
• Cameron also rejected Labour calls for him to shelve the government's police cuts. Miliband and many other Labour MPs said that, in the light of the riots, it would be wrong to cut police budgets. But Cameron said he did not want the debate to become one about resources. "When you have deep moral failures you don't hit them with a wall of money," he said. He also insisted that it was possible to cut police budgets without affecting the number of officers available for frontline duty. "I can make this very clear pledge: at the end of this process of making sure our police budgets are affordable, we will still be able to surge as many police on to the streets as we have in recent days in London, in Wolverhampton, in Manchester," he said. At any one time only 12% of officers are on the beat, he said. Labour were being "completely intellectually idle" because they refused to accept the possibility of reform, he said.
• The police have also said that 922 people have now been arrested in connection with the rioting in London, and 401 of them have been charged. Courts in London and other parts of the country are staying open 24 hours a day to process offenders.
Here's a little reaction to Cameron's statement from the civil liberties group Big Brother Watch.
The group's director, Daniel Hamilton, says:
While the prime minister was right to respond to the public's call for tough action against looters, the government must avoid the temptation to engage in populist authoritarianism.
"Restricting the ability of people to communicate via social networks, imposing curfews and outlawing the wearing of face-masks are tactics more reminiscent of Mubarak's Egypt than 21st century Britain.
"The police must be given the power to effectively do their job, including the ability to use force where absolutely necessary. Tougher sentences must also be imposed on those committing public order crimes."
The Commons debate on the riots will be starting in the next few minutes. Theresa May, the home secretary, will be opening it. It's going to run until 7pm and there will be a five-minute time limit for backbenchers who want to speak.
The chief constable of the West Midlands has visited the home of one of three men who were killed while guarding shops from looters.
After a private meeting with Tariq Jahan, whose son Haroon was killed early yesterday, Chris Sims paid tribute to the grieving father's much-lauded appeal for calm.
Speaking to reporters at the scene of the tragedy in Dudley Road, Sims described Tariq Jahan's message as a "powerful, generous and far-sighted intervention" at a moment of absolute grief and devastation.
After a largely trouble-free night on the streets of the West Midlands, Sims was asked what effect Mr Jahan's words had had. He replied:
I think it was a decisive impact. Those words were so powerful, so heart-felt and so spontaneous and generous that I think anyone that heard them must have been moved.
"I think that was a decisive intervention in terms of Birmingham not suffering tension and violence between communities.
"Certainly, anyone that felt that there was any mileage from continuing a cycle of violence in the name of those young men that died will have thought twice about it."
I'll be focusing on the Commons debate on the riots. But they have also been discussing it in the Lords, where Lord Strathclyde, the leader of the Lords, repeated the statement made by Cameron. Afterwards Lady Browning, a Home Office minister, said that her son had to barricade himself in his London home because of the riots.
According to the Press Association, this is what she said:
I didn't sleep on Monday night because one of my children had been forced to barricade himself into his house in London because of what was going on on the road outside.
Here's a full account of what's been going on at Manchester magistrates' court today, courtesy of Helen Clifton:
A 12-year-old looter was this morning sentenced just yards away from the Sainsbury's he took a bottle of wine from during Manchester's riots on Tuesday night.
Sitting outside court, his 33-year-old mother insisted he was sorry. The child giggled and repeatedly said he "didn't know" why he took the bottle, before being handed a nine-month referral order at the court.
The cases came thick and fast this morning; Deputy District Judge Alan Berg repeatedly said that he wanted to make an example of the rioters; and that no society should tolerate such behaviour.
Manchester Metropolitan University computing student Kumail Rizvi, 19, of Hill Lane, Manchester, came from a 'good stable home' and had no previous convictions. Yet he pleaded guilty to stealing two bangles and three rings worth £690 from jewellery shop Links of London in St Ann's Square, as well as a charge of affray.
His parents apparently had no idea he was in trouble. He admitted being both "ashamed and disgusted in himself". His solicitor tried to get him bailed; the judge refused, and set a date for him to be seen in Manchester crown court.
Karl Brown, of no fixed abode, admitted taking a £40 T-shirt from Pretty Green, Liam Gallagher's King Street boutique, which suffered £2000,000 losses in the riots, as well as being in possession of cannabis.
Despite his protestations that he, "didn't smoke weed", Brown, who has a pregnant girlfriend, was given a seven-day sentence for drug possession, and also ordered to appear before the crown court in September.
Jordan Kelly, 20, of Newton Heath, faced a charge of being equipped for burglary after being caught by police heading into the city centre with a homemade balaclava and a bin liner. He admitted that was intending to take trainers previously looted from JD Sports.
Judge Berg sentenced him to six months in a young offenders' institute. He said.
It is a great pity that you didn't take heed of the warnings given to you by the police.
"You came specifically for one purpose … and that purpose was plunder.
"Decent members of the public are sick and tired or people like you taking advantage. I have to send out a message to people like you. It will not be tolerated. I have to pass an exemplary sentence."
Full-time carer Dayle Blinkhorn, 23, and trainee plasterer John Millbanks, 26, both of Hulme, Manchester, both pleaded guilty to the theft of a £4,500 plasma TV from Bang and Olufsen. They were also ordered to appear before the crown court.
Judge Berg said:
They went into town knowing what was happening. This is intolerable lawlessness which no civilised society should be expected to put up with."
Court sources said there may be another night court — as there was between 7pm and 6.30am last night — to deal with the backlog of cases related to Tuesday's riots.
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And here is more from the Lords. Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury, has condemned "criminality" but said that it happened in a context.
"Seeking explanations is not the same as seeking excuses," he said.
He also spoke of the need not just to rebuild parenting skills in some communities, but also to "rebuild education itself".
For the past 20 years, he said, educational philosophy had been "dominated by the instrumentalist model". He added:
Can we once again build a society which takes seriously the tasks of educating citizens, not consumers, not cogs in an economic system, but citizens? … What we have seen is a breakdown not of society as such but a breakdown of a sense of civic identity, shared identity, shared responsibility.
Meanwhile, Henry McDonald, who's in Birmingham, has been talking to a cousin of the two bother who were killed alongside Haroon Jahan:
An angry Abdul Nassir said he does not care how their family gets justice, and expressed scepticism that the police would bring those behind the fatal hit-and-run to justice.
He was speaking this lunchtime on a visit to the site of where Jahan, 21, and brothers Shazad Ali, 30 and Abdul Musavir, 31, were mown down by a car in the early hours of Wednesday morning. He told the Guardian:
We just want justice. I don't care if the police do it, the army do it or whoever does it — there has to be justice."
Asked if the police could obtain justice for his cousins and his wider family, Nassir said:
No, no, no … I am not satisfied with the police at all. Because they don't do anything, they stand there and sit there in their cars. That is what they are good for."
He said that the brothers' father was already ill with diabetes before this tragedy struck the family, adding:
At the end of the day I have lost two close cousins and my family are devastated. I am finding it very hard to speak about this."
The rioting debate is starting now. Or the "public disorder" debate, as it is officially billed.
Theresa May says it is important to understand the reasons behind the rioting.
Everyone is free to choose between right and wrong, she says. Those who committed a crime must be punished.
Labour's Alun Michael says every crime has context. Doesn't that illustrate why it is important to have an inquiry?
May says the home affairs committee is conducting an inquiry. She will be bringing her own recommendations to the Commons in October in relation to gang culture.
Theresa May confirms that nobody has so far been charged with rioting. That's because that's a "very specific offence", she says.
May says the events of the last few days show that something is very "deeply wrong" with our society.
Almost 2m children are brought up in single-parent households, she says.
A Labour MP asks May why she is not defending her Home Office budget. May says it is now clear that the Labour party has abandoned any pretence to have a credible deficit reduction strategy.
Isabella Sankey, director of policy for Liberty, has given us her point-by-point reaction to the prime minister's statement:
The police already have powers to require the removal of face-coverings and inciting violence using social media is already a criminal offence.
"The fact that we haven't seen police using the existing powers on face-coverings over recent days suggests that it's not particularly useful when combating violence in a riot scenario.
"Punishing the majority of innocent users of phone and social media networks, including those warning others of violence, seems hugely disproportionate not to mention ineffective.
"The events of the past few days have understandably led to calls for tough new measures — but kneejerk powers which bare little logical connection to the harm they seek to address could cause more problems than they solve."
Back to the debate:
May says that more than 90% of the 16,000 police officers who have been deployed in London have been from the Met.
Labour's Frank Dobson asks May to confirm that the difficulty of defining the offence "riot" won't be used by the Met to get out of its obligation to pay compensation to those affected by the disturbances.
May says she can confirm that that won't be the case.
Caroline Lucas MP, leader of the Green party, has put out a statement condemning the "horrendous violence, arson and looting" of recent days but saying lessons must be taken from it:
If we stop at denunciations and crackdowns, nothing will be learned about why sections of our own population feel they can riot, loot and treat their neighbours and communities so appallingly.
"The bigger picture has to be considered. Britain is deeply unequal.
"Last year, London's richest people were worth 273 times more than its poorest.
"Given the growing evidence … that increasing inequality had a role to play in at least some of the rioting, the government must commit to an impact assessment of any further policies to establish if they will increase inequality …
"The prime minister has said this is 'not about poverty but about culture'. But it is about both. It is about inequality and culture and how dangerous it is when you mix growing inequality with a culture which puts consumerism above citizenship."
In what Henry McDonald, our Ireland correspondent, terms "a historic first", the Irish government has warned its citizens today about the dangers they may face in London and other parts of Britain.
The Republic's department of foreign affairs issued the warning about a country which since the foundation of the Irish State has been a land of opportunity for Irish immigrants and often a safe haven for those escaping political and sectarian violence north of the border.
In a statement today, the Irish foreign ministry said:
Localised civil unrest has been occurring at night in parts of London since Saturday 6 August when a protest against the police shooting of a man in Tottenham turned violent.
"Riot police have been deployed to contain the unrest which has at times seen vehicles and rubbish bins set alight and shops looted. Areas affected by the unrest in London include parts of Oxford Circus, Tottenham, Hackney, Peckham, Lewisham, Clapham Junction, Brixton, Ealing Broadway, West Ealing, Northfields and Croydon. Civil unrest has also been reported in Birmingham, Bristol and Liverpool."
It also advised citizens crossing the Irish Sea:
Avoid areas where civil unrest is occurring and follow any instructions issued by the police and local authorities. Disruptions to traffic and public transport in areas worst affected can be expected and should be planned for accordingly to minimise inconvenience. Irish citizens living in any affected areas should be vigilant, monitor local media for current information and follow the advice of local authorities."
In the House, May is now talking about gangs. She says 6% of young people are thought to belong to a gang of one kind or another.
Gangs are "inherently criminal", she says. "On average, entrenched gang members have 11 criminal convictions and the average age for the first conviction of a gang member is just 15."
She goes on:
They are also inherently violent. Gangs across the country are involved with the use and supply of firearms, drugs and knives. And, talking to chief constables who have dealt with the violence of the last few days, it is clear that many of the perpetrators - but by no means all of them - are known gang members."
She says that the Association of Chief Police Officers will be setting up an anti-gang violence team. It will map the extent of the problem, and expert advice on how the problem can be tackled.
May is still speaking. Labour's Diane Abbott says people saw people being able to loot in Wood Green without the police intervening. That gave the green light to "every little hooligan in London" to go out and loot.
May concedes that the police did not respond properly at first.
Labour's Chuka Umunna asks why the police "surge" did not take place on Monday instead of Tuesday. It was clear in his constituency — Streatham — that there would be trouble on Monday, he says.
May says the police were dealing with a situation they had not come across before. Social media made a difference, she says.
May says that, although she is not complacent, at this stage order appears to have been restored.
May says that in some situations officers did not intervene with force because they have been criticised for using excessive force in the past:
After criticism of previous public order operations for excessive force, some officers appeared reluctant to be sufficiently robust in breaking up groups."
She says she wants to ensure that this is not a problem in the future.
Too often the police and damned if they do and damned if they don't. And no where is this truer than in public order policing. And I want to be clear: as long as officers act within reason and the law themselves, this home secretary will never damn the police if they do."
Towards the end of her speech, May mentioned the government's decision to consider a possible clampdown on the use of instant message services in riot situations.
A colleague wonders whether William Hague is in favour. In February, Hague said it was a "huge mistake" for Egypt to shut down the internet.
Jeff Jarvis, the internet guru, has made a similar point in a post for Comment is free:
Cameron also said, according to a Guardian tweet, that he would look at asking online services to take down offending photos. Again, who decides that content is offending? If you give authority to government and telco and social companies to censor that, what else can and will they censor?
Beware, sir. If you take these steps, what separates you from the Saudi government demanding the ability to listen to and restrict its BBM networks? What separates you from Arab tyrannies cutting off social communication via Twitter or from China banning it?"
This on church reactions to the rioting and looting, courtesy of my colleague Andrew Brown:
Rowan Williams and the Bishop of London, Richard Chartres, have both spoken powerfully in the aftermath of the riots: condemning the criminality, and asking what can be done to rebuild parenting skills and education in the communities affected. They feel that the church is among the biggest parts of society's response to the riots.
Williams, speaking in the House of Lords, said:
There is nothing to romanticise and there is nothing to condone in the behaviour that has spread across our streets. This is indeed criminality – criminality pure and simple."
For Williams, the cure for further outbreaks could only be found in the long-term and in the reorientation of schools towards teaching virtues rather than skills:
Over the last two decades, our educational philosophy at every level has been more and more dominated by an instrumentalist model; less and less concerned with a building of virtue, character and citizenship — 'civic excellence' as we might say. And a good educational system in a healthy society is one that builds character, that builds virtue.
"Character involves ... a deepened sense of empathy with others, a deepened sense of our involvement together in a social project in which we all have to participate.
"Are we prepared to think not only about discipline in classrooms, but also about the content and ethos of our educational institutions — asking can we once again build a society which takes seriously the task of educating citizens, not consumers, not cogs in an economic system, but citizens."
Chartres, writing to his clergy, picked up the same note but more practically:
Those who went on the rampage … seem to lack the restraint and the moral compass which comes from clear teaching about right and wrong communicated through nourishing relationships. The background to the riots is family breakdown and the absence of strong and positive role models.
"This once again underlines the vital importance of the work that the church has been doing through its schools where we share the responsibility for educating 50,000 young Londoners a day."
He also announced the formation of a fund for the affected parishes, started with a £15,000 cheque from an anonymous donor in the City. There will be further collections towards this fund in churches around London this Sunday.
Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, is speaking now. She says that Labour supports what the government is saying about face coverings, curfews and a review of sentencing options.
But she says that in the past the Conservatives have voted against toughening the rules on face coverings.
As Cooper speaks, Ed Miliband seems at times to be finding it hard to stay awake. PoliticsHome have posted a picture on Twitter.
Cooper is still speaking. Labour's Tony Lloyd asks if the police would have been able to move officers around the country to help the Met if chief constables were accountable to elected police commissioners. (Labour are opposed to elected police commissioners.)
Cooper says this is a good point. Under the elected police commissioner system, forces might be more reluctant to help each other out, she suggests.
How did the prime minister do? And what can we expect next? Here's Julian Glover's verdict:
This could have been a disastrous week for Cameron. Caught out on holiday and faced with a public order crisis, he might have wobbled badly in parliament today. It didn't happen. Helped by calm on the streets last night, the prime minister cruised through his marathon statement unruffled."
"Yet the politics of unrest remain uncertain: both Labour and the Conservatives can see the downside of letting their instincts rip.
"Stray too far into condemning what he called 'phoney human rights concerns' and Cameron will damage his claim to be a different kind of Tory. Harp on about the possible victimhood of criminals, and Miliband would lose voters to the right. That is why both converged today on the word responsibility. Now they need to define it."
Cooper asks May to explain exactly what extra help police forces will get from the government. She invites May to respond, but May stays sitting down. Cooper says that, as she understands it, police forces will have to find the money to pay the costs incurred during the riots from their own reserves, instead of getting money from the Treasury reserve.
Here's video of Met officers carrying out a raid on a property on the Churchill Gardens estate in Pimlico, south-west London today. Officers have begun a series of raids of addresses across London as they make further arrests connected with the recent riots.
Boris Johnson seems to be getting a warmer welcome in Ealing than elsewhere in London this week. But, as PA reports, his trip to west London wasn't all sunshine:
The mayor of visited riot-hit Ealing today to see first hand the extensive damage and talk to residents.
Johnson spent nearly two hours walking through the area, listening to business owners' stories and talking to them about the police response and a compensation scheme.
As heavy rain fell during his walkabout he promptly stopped at a roadside stall and asked if he could buy an umbrella.
Trader Aish Al-Shokairy did not sell them but said: "You can have mine," and handed Mr Johnson his own tucked away at the side of the stall.
The Mayor gave him a £10 note.
Asked why he was willing to surrender his umbrella, the stallholder said:
I love him. He is working really hard and I feel really sorry for him with what's happened.
"It is a lot of pressure for him."
Johnson was greeted with warmth by residents and was routinely asked to stop for photographs. He was heckled several times by passersby but stopped to talk to them.
In the Commons, Cooper is talking about the police cuts. May intervenes to ask if the opposition are still committed to cuts of about 12%.
Cooper says that cuts of about 12% would be sustainable. But cuts of 20% - as proposed by the government, according to Cooper - are not sustainable, she says.
Cooper says there are four areas where there is a disagreement between Labour and the government.
1. Labour want a proper inquiry.
2. Labour want assurances that the Met will get help to deal with the extra costs incurred.
3. Labour want the government to reopen the police spending settlement.
4. Labour want the government to make it easier to deploy CCTV, not harder.
After Yvette Cooper finishes, Sir George Young, the leader of the Commons, uses a point of order to announce that the debate will go on until 8pm, not 7pm as originally planned.
Gavin Barwell, the Conservative MP for Croydon Central, is speaking now. Politicians have to consider why people are marginalised, he says.
David Lammy, the Labour MP for Tottenham, spoke next. (He set out his initial thoughts in an article for Comment is free on Sunday.)
He insisted that nothing justifies the violence. But he said it was important to understand the reasons behind it.
I would also say that a Grand Theft Auto culture that glamorises violence must be confronted. A consumer culture fixated on brands that we wear, rather than who we are or what we achieve, must be confronted. A gang culture with warped notions of loyalty, respect and honour must also be confronted.
A civilised society should be policed not just by uniformed officers, but by notions of pride and shame and responsibility towards others. In this House and beyond we have some deep thinking to do about what that means …"
Lammy said that those involved in the rioting felt they had nothing to lose.
The events of the last week were a "wake up call", he said.
We cannot live in a society where the banks are too big to fail but whole neighbourhoods are allowed to sink without trace …
Following the race riots 10 years ago, the Cantle report warned of white and black communities living parallel lives. Today the same is true, but the polarisation is not between black and white. It is between those who have a stake in society and those who do not; those who can see a future through education and those who cannot; those who can imagine doing a job that is respected and well-paid and those who cannot; those who might one day own their own home and those who do not."
Simon Hughes, the Lib Dem deputy leader and MP for Bermondsey and Old Southwark, told MPs in his speech that the media should be willing to hand their footage to the police to help them identify rioters.
There has to be a willingness to report the culprits. And the media — my friends in the media — have to hand over the information they have. It is no good just standing there, recording it, and not offering the information that would allow people to be dealt with."
This update on things in Birmingham from PA:
Detectives investigating the deaths of three men killed while protecting shops in Birmingham from looters have arrested three more people — two youths and a man — on suspicion of murder, West Midlands Police said.
A 32-year-old man arrested on suspicion of murder yesterday has been bailed pending further inquiries, a force spokesman said.
Labour's Shabana Mahmood, MP for Birmingham Ladywood, and Angie Bray, the Conservative MP for Ealing Central and Acton, have both spoken.
Mahmood paid tribute to Tariq Jahan for the way he appealed for calm following the death of his son Haroon in the riots in Birmingham. Bray said she hoped that the national citizenship programme would address some of the problems behind the riots.
Sir Gerald Kaufman, the Labour MP for Manchester Gorton, is speaking now. He says there is no point having a simple "blanket condemnation" of young people who go wrong. "We can make this society work better," he says.
Lindsay Hoyle, the deputy speaker, says that he is cutting the time limit to four minutes to allow more MPs to speak.
A further arrest bulletin: a 20-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of robbery in connection with the attack on Malaysian student Ashraf Rossli, according to Scotland Yard.
Labour's Heidi Alexander, MP for Lewisham East, says she first learnt about the disorder in her community when she was in America on her honeymoon.
Some argue that the riots are a direct result of government cuts. "I don't buy that," she says. The rioters are not the kind of people who use youth centres. They are disaffected young people.
But governments of all parties have to take responsibility for allowing a group like this to emerge.
More arrests news — this time from the southwest:
Three people were arrested today on suspicion of incitement to riot, Dorset police said.
A 23 year-old man, from Poole, and two 16-year-old boys — one from Poole and one from Bournemouth — were detained by officers.
Assistant Chief Constable Adrian Whiting said:
Anyone planning on either inciting or causing disorder should understand that their behaviour will not be tolerated and Dorset police will arrest them and set about bringing them to justice."
Police are also visiting anyone linked in any way to discussions on social networking sites about the planning of or involvement in disorder to warn them about the potential consequences of their continued participation.
The three arrests follow that of a 23-year-old man from Bournemouth, who was detained yesterday. (PA)
Sir George Young, the leader of the Commons, has put out a statement saying that the e-petition calling for rioters to lose benefits will now be considered by the backbench committee that decides what subjects are going to be debated on backbench business days.
The petition says:
Any persons convicted of criminal acts during the current London riots should have all financial benefits removed. No tax payer should have to contribute to those who have destroyed property, stolen from their community and shown a disregard for the country that provides for them."
It will be considered by the committee because it has attracted support from more than 100,000 people.
Nick de Bois, the Conservative MP for Enfield North, is speaking now. He says most of the rioters who caused trouble in Enfield were not from the area.
Enfield is open for business. It has recovered well, he says.
Tony Lloyd, the Labour MP for Manchester Central, says the riots are unlike those of 1981.
Jane Ellison, the Conservative MP for Battersea, says she witnessed some of the looting at Clapham Junction.
She does not know what shocked her more: hearing young looters phone their friends to check their trainer size; seeing a group of seven or eight people pile out of a van after driving to Clapham Junction to take part in the looting, or the fact that one of the first people convicted turned out to be a teaching assistant.
Attacking retail was particularly stupid because retail is one of the sectors of the economy that provides entry-level jobs for school leavers, she says.
My colleague James Meikle has this on Ashraf Haziq, the Malaysian student mugged and left with a broken jaw in an attack in Barking, east London.
The 20-year-old, who is studying accountancy, said he still felt "great" about Britain and bore no malice or ill-feeling towards the country despite his ordeal, which started when rioters demanded his bicycle.
Speaking at a press conference after being discharged from the Royal London hospital on Thursday, Haziq, from Kuala Lumpur, said he felt "sorry" for his attackers.
I was really sad for them because amongst them there were children.
"There was a boy from a primary school, I think. It was shocking because I expected it to to be someone older, but there was this boy."
The student had only been in the country for a month when he was caught up in the trouble, held up at knifepoint and punched.
Several people were seen helping him to his feet and looked like they were comforting him before going through the contents of his backpack and stealing items. He underwent a three-four hour operation on Wednesday.
Minutes after his press conference finished, police said a 20-year-old man had been arrested on suspicion of robbery in connection with the attack.
Haziq said:
My family are worried about me and my mother would like me to go home. But I am determined to stay. Britain is great. Before I came here I was very eager and I haven't got any ill-feeling about what happened."
Later he said: "It is really strange. I am just a normal person. These things happened so suddenly."
Told that money was being raised through a social media campaign, he said he would like his mother to come to visit him.
"It is very nice of you to help me. I plan to finish my study here and then after I finish, I am returning back home. That will be in two years time."
He appreciated David Cameron's support for him but said he did not want to comment on the prime minister's description of a "sick society".
The Malaysian High Commission in Belgravia, London, has warned its citizens to "exercise maximum alert and vigilance while they are in public places, especially in areas affected by the riots".
Malcolm Wicks, the Labour MP for Croydon North, says he returned home from holiday as soon as he heard about the riot in Croydon.
There was no law in Croydon on Monday night, he says: "People are angry. We've got to do better in the future."
Yesterday a colleague asked if I could recommend any particularly good blogs or articles about the riot. I thought I would compile a reading list and I've taken soundings on Twitter. And here are the results - 10 articles on the riots and what caused them. They are not necessarily the best 10 articles on the subject - I haven't read everything - but you might find them interesting.
• David Aaronovitch in the Times (paywall) says only a relatively small number of people were involved in the riots.
The highest realistic estimate I've seen for rioters in one place was 200, and pictures of that event suggest that it was too high. It also seems that one must make a practical distinction (if not a moral one) between rioters and looters — people who entered shops already broken into to steal goods. There is some evidence of the same people moving from one location to another. With the number of arrests at about 500, I seriously wonder if many more than a few thousand people were involved in rioting.
This is important because it tells us two things. First, we are not dealing with a mass criminal insurrection. And second, that a remarkably small number of people, if they are mobile and use surprise, can cause mayhem out of all proportion to their numbers. I was told this by Tony Blair once, in the context of terrorism, and it's true.
• Zoe Williams in the Guardian says the rioters were influenced by consumerism.
I think it's just about possible that you could see your actions refashioned into a noble cause if you were stealing the staples: bread, milk. But it can't be done while you're nicking trainers, let alone laptops. In Clapham Junction, the only shop left untouched was Waterstone's, and the looters of Boots had, unaccountably, stolen a load of Imodium. So this kept Twitter alive all night with tweets about how uneducated these people must be and the condition of their digestive systems. While that palled after a bit, it remains the case that these are shopping riots, characterised by their consumer choices: that's the bit we've never seen before. A violent act by the authorities, triggering a howl of protest – that bit is as old as time. But crowds moving from shopping centre to shopping centre? Actively trying to avoid a confrontation with police, trying to get in and out of JD Sports before the "feds" arrive? That bit is new.
• Aditya Chakrabortty in the Guardian says economists have been looking at the link between rioting and growth.
Many economists have spent the past few days passing around a paper on the Hindu-Muslim riots in India in the 80s and 90s. Written by Anjali Thomas Bohlken and Ernest John Sergeant in 2010, it finds that "just a 1% increase in the [economic] growth rate decreases the expected number of riots by over 5%". Recessions are good for riots: perhaps no surprise, there. What matters, they argue, is when people suffer abrupt drops in living standards – and that goes for Hackney as well as Athens.
• Danny Kruger in the Financial Times (subscription) says the riots represented "the intifada of the underclass".
London has an underclass (a hateful word to the people in it, but no worse, and more accurate, than "the poor"). To generalise brutally, they are un-nurtured, brought up in a microculture of neglect, arbitrary and erratic discipline, and love without its concomitant need for boundaries and good behaviour.
Meanwhile the wider culture – that is us – has abandoned virtue and adopted the ethics of indifference, dressed as liberalism. We have substituted welfare payments for relationships, rights for love, and the sterile processes of the public sector for the warm morality of living communities. Once the police have put down the riots, the rest of us have more to do than clean up the broken glass.
• Patrick Dunleavy at the LSE's blog says the riots have highlighted the vulnerability of the British state.
In her excellent (and entertaining) book The March of Folly, the historian Barbara Tuchman dwelt on the quality of 'wooden-headedness' in political leaders – the capacity to rack up political fiascos in the face of (lots of) advice to the contrary. The recent collapse of public order across London, and its threatened or near collapse in every major city of the country, will be an object lesson for political science students for years to come in how close a government can come to creating a crisis out of almost nothing, through inattention and neglect of the complexity of governance.
• Owen Jones says the riots are a catastrophe for those affected, those who took part and for the left.
My real fear is that we have just witnessed another crucial stage in the political ascendancy of the right. When asked how he would cure what he described as a "sickness", one of David Cameron's key suggestions was "a welfare state that doesn't reward idleness". And so begins an attempt to link the actions of a few with benefit claimants as a whole.
• Camila Batmanghelidjh in the Independent says the rioters are alienated from the community.
Working at street level in London, over a number of years, many of us have been concerned about large groups of young adults creating their own parallel antisocial communities with different rules. The individual is responsible for their own survival because the established community is perceived to provide nothing. Acquisition of goods through violence is justified in neighbourhoods where the notion of dog eat dog pervades and the top dog survives the best. The drug economy facilitates a parallel subculture with the drug dealer producing more fiscally efficient solutions than the social care agencies who are too under-resourced to compete.
• Will Davies at Potlatch offers a Hegelian analysis.
Marxists need to remember the Hegelian distinction between 'in itself' and 'for itself'. In themselves, these riots may indeed be about inequality: the concentration of wealth and power may simply have become too unwieldy, regardless of what the rioters think is going on. But for themselves, they are about power, hedonism, consumption and sovereignty of the ego. Anyone who disagrees with that is simply not crediting the participants with being able to make sense of what they're doing. And if there's one thing likely to incite even more rioting, it's treating the participants as lacking independence of thought. In many ways, blame is what they each individually deserve, because recognition of their own individual agency is what they most desire.
• John Redwood on his blog says poverty was not to blame for the riots:
It is difficult to conclude from the TV pictures that this is a revolt of the very poor. Many of them went looting in cars, or were directed to the crime scenes through their blackberries as they raced there in their designer trainers and tops.
As many say, we have created a society where this type of behaviour is possible. There are too many children without parents controlling and encouraging them, too many school pupils who are not motivated and disciplined within the walls of academy, too many young people who know their rights but do not accept their responsibilities. We have concentrated on the politically correct at the expense of old fashioned virtues and orderly conduct. The last government encouraged the police to to spend more time and energy on thought crime and less on anti social behaviour or worse. People have been encouraged to worship the cult of celebrity, to think the possession of branded products is what matters most, and to think that almost any means are justified by the end. Civility, courtesy, moderate language, mutual respect, consideration for others and efforts to improve the social fabric have been regarded as old fashioned or middle class. Everyone else has been told to look to the state, to insist on their entitlement, and to think more public money will solve all ills and create fine lives. Deprivation, past hardship, low income beginnings have been advanced as excuses for criminal or self defeating behaviour. Ambition has been set low or snuffed out for those from poor backgrounds.
In the Lords, the archbishop of York, the Most Rev John Sentamu, also spoke about the riots. (You can read what the archbishop of Canterbury said at 4.36pm.)
The Press Association report suggests he came out against police cuts, because it quotes him saying this: "An under-resourced police will always be a brutal and repressive police."
Back in the Commons, Hazel Blears, the former Labour communities secretary, says she is glad that the debate has focused on the difference between right and wrong, not right and left. Like Simon Hughes (see 5.30pm), she says media organisations should hand over all their rioting pictures to the police.
Labour's Diane Abbott, MP for Hackney North, is speaking now. She says the rioters did not represent people in Hackney. And she praises the council staff for their work. They were up all night cleaning up, she says.
Abbott says some MPs are suggesting that violent, criminal urban youth are a new phenomenon. But there is a third generation of black children who have been allowed to fail, she says.
She says she has been working on this issue for years. It is hard to get publicity for the work she does. But as soon as these people riot, the media pays attention.
A website has been set up to raise funds to repair the barbershop of 89-year-old Aaron Biber, which was wrecked in the Tottenham riots.
Biber has been in the Tottenham area for 41 years and said he would probably have to close his business because "I haven't got insurance and I can't afford the repairs." People have so far donated more than £16,700.
Back in the Commons, David Winnick, the Labour MP for Walsall North, says he is no apologist for law-breakers. But it would be a mistake not to accept that social and economic factors aren't relevant.
The reduction in police numbers "makes no sense at all", he says.
Charlotte Grant, a reporter for ITV central news, has posted a photo of a huge flatscreen TV being recovered in a police raid in Birmingham.
Philip Hollobone, the Conservative MP for Kettering, says he cannot understand why water cannons aren't used in Britain. Rioters do not like being cold and wet, he says. And if you were to spray them with water containing dye, it would be easy to arrest them afterwards.
Turning away from the chamber for a moment, I see that Greater Manchester Police is using its Twitter feed to name all those convicted of disorder in relation to the riots.
Keith Vaz, the Labour MP for Leicester East and chairman of the home affairs committee, says that his committee is holding in inquiry into the riots. It has just published its terms of reference on its website. He says the debate has been like an initial evidence-gathering session. Boris Johnson, the mayor of London, will be giving evidence, he says.
The Metropolitan Police says 950 people have been arrested in connection with violence, disorder and looting in the London riots, with 457 people charged with offences.
Here's the Guardian's story about the £20m high street relief fund set up by the government to stop some of the shopkeepers whose stores were destroyed during the riots from going out of business.
Back in the Commons, Andrew Selous, the Conservative MP for South West Bedfordshire, says that shoplifting should be renamed "shop theft". And sentences for it should be tougher, he says.
He says he salutes single parents, many of whom do a fantastic job. But if there were more fathers around, there would be fewer boys joining gangs, he says.
The Guardian's datablog has produced a breakdown of who is ending up in the magistrates courts accused of riot-related offences.
In an indication of the tough justice being metered out to people accused of offences related to this week's riots, a Guardian analysis of more than 120 cases before magistrates courts so far has found the majority of defendants being remanded in custody – even when they have pleaded guilty to minor offences.
People facing court charged with riot-related offences are overwhelmingly young, male and unemployed. Those who are found guilty are receiving prison sentences - or being passed onto higher courts for sentencing. Out of the 1.7m cases heard in magistrates courts last year, only 3.5% were remanded to jail. These figures from this week show a rate of nearly 60%.
The Met Police says around half of the 240 people who have appeared in court so far charged with being involved in the riots in London are under the age of 18. Our analysis also emphasises the youth of those arrested and charged. Nearly 80% of those in court were aged under 25 - with 22 cases of those we looked at aged between 11 and 17. Only a very small number were aged over 30.
Labour's Karen Buck, MP for Westminster North, says cuts in public services did not cause the riots. But youth unemployment did not help.
The problems did not begin at the general election, she says. But they did not start in May 1997 either, she says.
There has been an "explosion" of gang activity, she says.
"We can turn this gang culture around and we can do it quickly."
Stephen McCabe, the Labour MP for Birmingham Selly Oak, says he was concerned to read in the Birmingham Mail that one of the first people sentenced in the city for assaulting a police officer was only sentenced to 10 weeks.
A justice system perceived as soft will only embolden those minded to attack the police, he says.
My colleague James Meikle has a story about the government's pledge to provide financial assistance to the 100-plus families made homeless and those whose homes were damaged in the arson and looting since Saturday
Andy Burnham, the shadow education secretary, is winding up for Labour in the Commons debate. He says parliament has voiced the public's concerns.
He says parliament will not allow a "senseless minority" to sully the reputation of young people.
Burnham says he thinks he has detected a change of tone in what David Cameron said about CCTV in his speech.
Burnham also says he does not think any part of British society is "sick or broken".
Michael Gove, the education secretary, is winding up for the government. He says many MPs have spoken with force and eloquence.
Asked about holding a public inquiry, Gove says he is not ruling anything out. It would be "premature" to take a final decision on this now, he says.
Gove says that the riots have illustrated the best and worst of Britain. Among the worst things, he cites the involvement of a teaching assistant in looting and the robbing of the Malaysian student.
MPs need to ask why has a culture of greed and hedonism has taken hold.
But the response to the riots has often been admirable, he says. As an example, he cites those who have defended their communities and the work of the police.
The debate has now finished. I'll post a summary shortly.
That's it. All being well, MPs are now free to resume their holidays. Parliament is not due to sit again until Monday 5 September.
Earlier, before David Cameron's statement and the debate started, I identified three issues that might get resolved during the course of the day. Here's where we stand now.
1. What's the government going to do? Quite a lot really. David Cameron did not have any great surprises to announce, but he managed to rustle up a reasonably substantial package of initiatives. My colleague Nicholas Watt has a story about them here, and you can read more detail in Cameron's statement.
2. Who won politically? David Cameron, but only in the sense that he no longer looks like a luckless prime minister who has lost control of events, as he did on Monday night. The prime minister performed with aplomb, but there will be a limit to how often he can defuse a crisis by standing at the despatch box for 150 minutes or more. At one point Cameron said it was "not a big day for politics" and, apart from some skirmishing about police funding, the exchanges were relatively non-partisan. That said, Ed Miliband didn't do badly either. His speech was fine; he reaffirmed his call for the police budget cuts to be reversed without sounding as if he was trying to make political capital out of the riots and, by calling for an inquiry, he has laid down a marker which he may find it helpful to revisit in the future (particularly if rioting breaks out again).
3. Did parliament rise to the occasion? It probably did, in the sense that the debate was intelligent and informative. There was very little stereotypical "hang 'em and flog 'em" tub-thumping from the right" or "the cuts are to blame" hand-wringing from the left. In fact, if you read the debate in Hansard tomorrow without looking at the names, you may find it hard with some of the speeches to guess if they came from the government benches or the Labour ones (or at least you would if references to the spending cuts were omitted). There is a surprising amount of agreement about the fact that something has happened to create a small core of young people who are marginalised and alienated. Whether the political class can do much about this is another matter, although parliament is not short of people who have thought about the matter deeply. There were many good speeches, but David Lammy's was particularly outstanding.
That's it from me. My colleague David Batty will be taking over now for the rest of the evening.
This is David Batty - I'm taking over the live blog for the rest of the evening. You can follow me on Twitter @David_Batty
A student has today been jailed for six months for looting a £3.50 case of water from Lidl in Brixton, which seems to support the analysis provided by the Guardian datablog that magistrates appear to be taking a hard line with those convicted of riot-related offences.
Nicholas Robinson, 23, was walking back from his girlfriend's house in Brixton in the early hours of Monday morning when he saw the store on Acre Lane being looted.
Camberwell magistrates court heard the electrical engineering student took the opportunity to go in and help himself to a case of water because he was "thirsty".
But when the police came in, at around 2.40am, he discarded the bottles and attempted to flee the scene. He was caught and arrested by officers at the scene.
PA reports that there were gasps from the public gallery as district judge Alan Baldwin handed down the maximum penalty he could to Robinson, who has no previous convictions, for his part in the "chaos".
The judge said: "The burglary of commercial premises in circumstances such as this, where substantial and serious public disorder is or has taken place is commonly known as looting."
Robinson, of Borough, south London, had pleaded guilty on Tuesday to a charge of burglary.
He claimed it was an "opportunistic" crime, and he only went in when he saw the store unsecure and wanted a drink.
Robinson will have to spend three months in prison before being released on licence.
My colleague Riazat Butt has more details about those arrested by West Midlands Police in relation to the unrest in the region.
Of the 389 arrests made so far, 116 were for violent disorder, 137 were for burglary, 37 were for theft and four were for assaulting a constable. Other offences range from affray, criminal damage and going equipped to assault, handling stolen goods and theft. Sixty of those arrested were under 18.
The force has been providing regular "disorder updates". Here's the one issued at 7pm:
Over 1,000 additional officers have been deployed tonight, including colleagues from around the country. These are supplementing the usual West Midlands Police officers who are working extended 12 hours shifts.
Chief Superintendent Phil Kay said: "Following last night's successful policing operation we continue to work closely with our partner agencies and most importantly our communities to prevent any repetition of the disorder we saw earlier this week and to ensure a swift return to normality.
"In parallel with this, we have a large scale investigation underway to identify and bring to justice those individuals who were involved in criminal acts on Monday and Tuesday night.
"We have teams of detectives trawling through hundreds of CCTV images, five hundred of which have been received in the form of emails sent in from the public. We are very grateful for this level of support and would ask for it to continue."
Riazat adds:
One of the things I saw while working through Birmingham's Broad Street earlier today was a display van bearing the images of some of the people the police want to talk to. One passer-by stopped, looked at the faces, and said: "They should be strung up and shot, the lot of them."
Two people arrested in connection with an arson attack in Croydon which destroyed a 100-year-old furniture store have been released from police custody, PA reports.
Police arrested a 15-year-old boy and a 25-year-old man last night on suspicion of arson with intent to endanger life following the large fire that razed the House of Reeves store.
The teenager has been released on bail to a date to be fixed and the 25-year-old released with no further action being taken, Scotland Yard said tonight.
A 21-year-old man who was arrested on Tuesday over the arson attack has been bailed until September.
The family-run furniture store, which has stood in Croydon for more than 100 years, was set alight following rioting that erupted in the south London suburb.
My colleague Sarah Boseley reports on concerns that those involved in the riots and looting of the past few days will get rough justice because of the speed with which they are being shunted through the judicial system.
She writes:
Experts also have anxieties about the ability of an overcrowded prison system to cope with the influx. So far more than 900 people have been arrested in connection with the violence and looting, and more than 500 have appeared in court.
Harry Fletcher, assistant general secretary of the probation officers' union Napo, estimated on Thursday there would be an extra 1,500 cases for the London courts, and 2,500 in total across England, just based on numbers of suspected looters and rioters identified so far.
My colleague Amelia Gentleman reports on a London MP's concerns about the use of social media to organise growing gang activity - and its likely role in orchestrating looting in this week's riots.
Karen Buck, the Labour MP for Westminster North, also told the Commons that there is "deep denial" of the spread of gang culture in the city.
We are so behind the curve in understanding its impact. We have been talking about this and pressing for action for at least two years. The phenomenon of postcode gangs is relatively new. Previously it was concentrated in a few areas of London, Hackney and Lambeth, but there has been deep denial of how much things have spread.
A number of blogs have raised concerns about the racial views of the founder of the "Supporting the Met police against the London rioters" Facebook group.
The group, which has close to a million members, was set up on Monday night at the height of the London looting, and was praised by David Cameron in a speech yesterday. But on his New Statesman blog Tom Calvocoressi suggests those who joined may want to reconsider their membership once they check out its founder Sean Boscott's Twitter history.
Calvocoressi writes that Boscott's "self-professed "bad taste/offensive jokes" are appalling, sub-Bernard Manning rubbish. (...) Boscott initially claimed his Twitter account had been hacked, but it seems rather unlikely that all his previous tweets were similarly the work of a hacker, ones he doesn't deny responsibility for."
Boscott's Twitter posts have now been deleted.
Photographer William Bloomfield has sent through a report of the Coalition of Resistance meeting at the University of London's student union about the past week's riots.
Bloomfield says around 300 activists at the Riots, Recession and Resistance event heard from speakers including Labour politicians, race equality campaigners and student activists.
John McDonnell, Labour MP for Hayes and Harlington, drew parallels between looters and bankers, arguing that the banking sector had effectively looted from the country.
He also made comparisons with MPs' expenses, telling the audience: "Those people […] want to teach our society morals when they have been complicit in immorality themselves."
The speakers condemned the looting and violence during the riots but added that it was imperative to seek out the root cause behind the unrest.
Andrew Murray, chair of Union Unite, disputed the government's line that the riots were not politically motivated. He said: "Six police stations were attacked, they don't attack police stations to get a pair of trainers."
Here's the Guardian's latest gallery of the aftermath of the unrest and efforts to clean-up after the riots and looting.
Scotland Yard has launched a murder investigation after Richard Mannington Bowes, 68, who was set upon as he tried to stamp out a fire during riots in Ealing, west London, died last night.
West Midlands police says no riot-related incidents reported have been reported across the region for a second night.
In a statement on its website, the force said the total number of people arrested in connection with the disorder across the West Midlands now stands at 445.
The force earlier announced it had arrested three more men, including a juvenile, over the triple hit-and-run deaths in Birmingham in the early hours of Wednesday.
Here's a round-up of Friday's front page stories, which are still dominated by coverage of the aftermath of the riots earlier this week.
"Too few, too slow, too timid – Tories attack police over riots" is the headline of the Guardian's lead story.
The Financial Times' lead story is "Osborne holds firm on police cutbacks".
"Back on the streets" is the headline of the Telegraph's lead story, which complains that child looters have been freed by the courts.
The Times' lead story focuses on the case of social work graduate Natasha Reid who stole a flatscreen TV during riots in Enfield under the headline "Why did I do it?"
"Cameron's law" is the lead story in the Independent, which sets out the range of new powers planned by the government to crackdown on rioters.
"You're a disgrace to your country" is the headline of the Daily Mail's lead story, which reports how society exacted retribution on the rioters in the courts.
The Express leads with the story of Olympic ambassador Chelsea Ives who was shopped to the police by her mother after taking part in the riots, under the headline "Olympic girl's rioting shame".
The Daily Star leads with the same story under the headline "Olympic athlete 'hurled bricks at riot police'".
We're wrapping up this blog now but live coverage will continue tomorrow.
In the meantime, here's a round up of today's main developments:
David Cameron has set out plans to crackdown on those involved in this weeks riots and looting, and to compensate the victims of the violence and destruction:
• Theresa May, the home secretary, and Iain Duncan Smith, the work and pensions secretary, will produce a cross-government action programme on gangs.
• The army could be used for guarding duties if there were a repeat of such widespread riots in order to free up police to deal with violence.
• Police could be allowed to remove face masks from people on the street "under any circumstances where there is reasonable suspicion that they are related to criminal activity".
• Any homeowner or business person whose property was damaged will be able to seek compensation under the Riot Damages Act even if they were uninsured.
• Ministers are to work with the police and MI5 to assess whether it would be right to stop people communicating via social network sites "when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality".
But Cameron also criticised the initial police response to the riots, contending it had been too slow and too timid, as he also vowed to stick to the government's planned cuts to the police.
Thanks for reading and for your comments.
