UK:CONSERVATIVE LEADER David Cameron called for "a presumption to prison" for people found carrying knives yesterday as he launched his party's campaign in what he called Britain's "broken society by-election" in Glasgow East. FRANK MILLAR, London Editor reports
Scottish first minister Alex Salmond claimed a political earthquake could see his Scottish National Party win the previously "safe" Labour seat, amid speculation that failure to hold his Scottish stronghold could finally precipitate a challenge to prime minister Gordon Brown's leadership.
Mr Cameron, meanwhile, added to the pressure on Mr Brown - linking deprivation and welfare dependency in the Glasgow constituency to wider family breakdown, a failure of morality and "the casualisation of carrying a knife", to depict a rising "tide of violence" across the United Kingdom.
The Conservative leader was unveiling his new "knife-crime action plan", promising tougher policing and more robust sentencing following new figures showing the number of people being treated in hospitals for stab wounds rose by almost 20 per cent over five years to nearly 14,000 last year.
Home office figures show an increase in the number of people prosecuted for carrying a knife and going to prison, from just 6 per cent in 1996 to 17 per cent in 2006. And justice secretary Jack Straw signalled that ministers were ready to review sentencing guidelines for knife crime due to come into force next month.
However, Mr Cameron insisted he did not believe Mr Brown's "presumption to prosecute" was enough. "We need a 'presumption to prison'," he told his audience at an event organised by former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith's social justice poverty group: "So we are proposing that anyone convicted of knife crime should expect to go to jail."
Since the by-election had been called, said Mr Cameron, a lot had been written about the Glasgow constituency.
"Most of it has been negative. People have focused on the fact that public health is so bad, you're likely to live longer in Gaza or North Korea. That welfare dependency is so bad, half the adults are on out of work benefits. That social breakdown is so bad,
"Channel 4's Dispatches documentary on knife crime found kids here talking about being stabbed as if it's no worse than grazing your knee."
However, while it was important to learn the lessons from Easterhouse, Shettleston and Gallowgate, the Conservative leader said he did not want to focus on "the negative", or even on Glasgow East alone, because the social breakdown seen there was "just a version" of what could be seen everywhere.
"With over five million people in Britain on out-of-work benefits, many of them on incapacity benefit, welfare dependency is now a crisis for the whole country," declared Mr Cameron.
"And you don't need to come to Glasgow East to know that the casualisation of carrying a knife, and the horrific crime that goes with it, is now keeping mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters awake at night in London, in Leeds, in Manchester, in Bristol. It feels as if none of our towns and cities is safe from the tide of violence."
A 14-year-old boy stabbed almost three weeks ago in London died yesterday.
David Idowu lost his 20-day fight for life at an east London hospital just days after a senior Scotland Yard officer suggested fighting knife crime had overtaken terrorism as his officers' immediate priority.