Prime Minister backs city bid

He met business owners, police and members of the public in Station Road, Harris Arcade and Friar Street before a key speech on crime in Reading Town Hall on Monday morning.

He told the Midweek: "Reading's a great place, I've visited many times. I've been talking to Martin Salter about this, I hope that the bid is successful. There's a great community spirit in this area. I certainly support the bid."

His speech emphasised that although crime has fallen, fear of it has not and that people needed more ways to contact the police and hold them to account.

He thanked the police and community volunteers in the audience, saying: "The people of Reading are safer because of the work you do."

In his speech he said the only police target now is to increase public confidence, and demanded that all neighbourhood officers spend at least 80% of their time on the beat.

Mr Brown criticised some police forces which say it creates "too much bureaucracy", adding: "That is not acceptable."

He also said people need to know more about their police forces, and what happens to criminals once they are caught. He told police to stop hiding behind the Data Protection and Human Rights acts and instead tell people about arrests, trials and sentences because this increases public confidence in the fight against crime.

He announced: "From next week, Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary will publish for the first time online report cards of police performance - and every force has committed to publishing on its website a clear explanation of how people can complain if standards are not being met.

"We will build on the monthly beat meetings that neighbourhood policing teams already have with their communities, so from this summer people will have the right to petition online for extraordinary public meetings with senior police officers, to hold them to account for overall performance, or to call for action to address particular concerns."

He rebutted talk of cuts, saying: "We will halve the deficit by 2014 and we will protect our investment in local frontline services, and that includes policing."

He announced more powers for people to petition their councils to install CCTV, and also restated the importance of the DNA database. But he warned if the DNA of those arrested but never convicted was removed from the database, as demanded by a European court ruling, then those responsible for some "sickening and harrowing crimes" may never be caught.

Mr Brown said victims of persistent anti-social behaviour should be able to take out injunctions against their abusers, with legal costs met by the agencies who had let them down.

He also hit back at one of Tory leader David Cameron's big election themes, that of 'Broken Britain', saying: "I greatly resent those who seek to talk down what has been achieved in our communities. We will never accept the simplistic and defeatist argument that our society is broken."

Susie Carr, voted Thames Valley Police's PCSO of the year, spoke to Mr Brown ahead of the speech, telling him about policing in the villages and farms around Reading and plans to make it easier for them to text her and her team.

She said: "I love doing it and it's my passion. It's about the visibility, the reassurance we offer and I think that they see us as a go-between. They don't necessarily want to bother the police but can talk to us about any issue they have."

After the speech, Mr Brown was surrounded by a crowd outside the Town Hall, eager to catch a glimpse of him, shake his hand and take photos.

Commuter Janette McKillop, who had just got in from Basingstoke on her way to work in Reading, was stopped by Mr Brown for a chat at a sandwich bar in Victoria Street.

She said: "He was a very nice and pleasant man, we just talked about why he was in Reading. He was charming, I had no idea he was going to be in Reading this morning!"

But the visit did not go off without a hitch - Mr Brown's train back to London was held up for 25 minutes because of a track circuit failure, according to fellow passengers.

One of them, Andy Olver, said: "I have to report that there was some grim satisfaction among Great Western travellers that the Prime Minister had, this time, shared in their frustration."

- GORDON Brown and Home Secretary Alan Johnson took questions before and after the speech on all aspects of crime, policing and problem families.

Guy Douglas, who represents town centre businesses as manager of the Business Improvement District (Bid), pressed Mr Brown on repeat offenders such as shoplifters, who he said got away too often with small fines.

Mr Brown replied: "We can't have a situation where there are no further consequences. We are looking at further action on repeat offenders."

Reading West MP Martin Salter asked about Tory proposals on directly-elected police commissioners, which Mr Johnson said would put policing on "very dangerous territory".

He warned that giving politicians more day-to-day control of operational policing could mean public pressure that would result in something "very close to a lynch mob".

Cllr Bet Tickner referred to a CCTV camera in Mandela Court, east Reading, long known as a drug dealing hotspot, which had ended up in the canal, was reinstalled and then stolen and was now in a private garden.

She blamed this on "organised crime" and Mr Brown assured her that more would be done to tackle higher-level criminals and drug-dealing gangs.

Bill Donne, of Reading Pubwatch, said an element of a new mandatory code due to come in for pubs and retailers could do more harm than good, by undermining the Challenge 21 and Challenge 25 schemes in which people who look under those ages are automatically asked for ID if they try to buy alcohol.

But Mr Johnson said: "It's very important that we get this wording right, so Challenge 21 doesn't go back to Challenge 18. The principle is that nothing changes if Challenge 21 is there at the moment. We're not looking to make your job harder."

Thames Valley Police chief constable Sara Thornton broadly welcomed the Prime Minister's message, but on anti-social behaviour warned that councils and the NHS also had a vital role.

She asked: "Can we be careful we don't promise too much, or that the police will solve every problem?"

She said many anti-social behaviour problems, and reports about it, were tied up with mental illness and were sometimes more the responsibility of the health service or care workers than police officers.

Mr Johnson agreed: "Police can't do this by themselves, local authorities can't deal with it themselves, community groups can't deal with it by themselves - but together they can be such a powerful force."

Also in the audience was Labour's Reading West hopeful Naz Sarkar, but Reading East's Anneliese Dodds was on holiday ahead of what is likely to be a punishing election campaign.