John Bercow
Main Page: John Bercow (Speaker - Buckingham)Department Debates - View all John Bercow's debates with the Home Office
(13 years, 1 month ago)
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Mr Speaker
Order. We have statements by the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for Education and a heavily subscribed Budget debate to follow, so there is pressure on time. Short questions and short answers are essential.
Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)
It is incumbent on those of us willing to criticise the police when they make mistakes, as they did during the G20 protest, to step in and correct the record when inaccurate and unjust criticisms are made, as happened over the weekend. The simple fact is that few police forces in the world could have delivered the peaceful outcome for the vast majority of 200,000, 300,000, 400,000 or 500,000 demonstrators during a march in which none was harmed or hurt, and in which all were able to exercise their democratic right properly. Similarly, the police were able to use intelligence to make the arrests to which the Home Secretary referred. However, I hope she will not pay any attention to the sort of thing said in The Times this morning by a retired police officer, when he called on her to use “dawn raids” and “snatch squads”. That is the sort of thing we might expect in Tripoli, not London.