• Question by: Darren Johnson
• Meeting date: 15 June 2005

): If it is not the whole answer, then basically we are just providing another tool for people to counterfeit, and it is not going to tackle any of the problems of identity theft, of fraudulent access to benefits, or whatever, is it?

• Question by: Darren Johnson
• Meeting date: 15 June 2005

On the issue of carrying ID cards, and I was very reassured by your comments that you do not want to go down the route at all of having to produce your ID on demand in the street, if we do not have a `stop and produce- approach to this, then how can they be effective?

• Question by: Angie Bray
• Meeting date: 15 June 2005

Do you think that in hindsight, given those doubts which you are expressing today, albeit within certain limits, that it was entirely appropriate for you to wade in on such a controversial issue as this, when all three mainstream parties had particular views on it, during the general election campaign? The Independent on Sunday said, `it should have been unthinkable for Britain's most senior police officer to endorse a controversial government policy in the run up to the general election'. Others were also critical of you, and given that you could have couched it, as you have done today, in...

• Question by: Darren Johnson
• Meeting date: 15 June 2005

I appreciate your answers but they do beg an awful lot of questions at this stage about the Government's proposals, and the Government`s proposals are now fairly well advanced. For Britain's most senior police officer to be asking such fundamental questions about whether they will be effective or not, or how they will be used, does beg some serious questions about whether we are going down the right road with these.

• Question by: Angie Bray
• Meeting date: 15 June 2005

Sir Ian (Blair), it can scarcely help the public debate, I suggest, when a senior person like yourself goes in public to express a range of views on this issue, if I may put that to you. First of all we had you as a bit of a doubter. Then we had your interview on `Breakfast with Frost', on 17 April, when you said, `I was not particularly keen on ID cards until recently', which tended to give the impression that you had now been persuaded that they were indeed a good thing to be introduced, and now you are...

• Question by: Richard Barnes
• Meeting date: 15 June 2005

If you had listened to the whole of that interview, you would have heard me mention exactly those figures that you have done now, and the Serious Crime Directorate is doing particularly well, and they come under that, but when I look at the variation in crime and detection rates for both burglary, vehicle crime, whatever it is, borough by borough, it gives me the impression that there are boroughs that are suffering from a lack of detectives, from a lack of detective skill, both in numbers and experience and all the rest, and whilst we concentrate on the uniform...

• Question by: Richard Barnes
• Meeting date: 15 June 2005

- only in part, to be fair -

• Question by: Sally Hamwee
• Meeting date: 15 June 2005

Thank you. We had a very useful meeting of the Budget Committee a few months ago, when we discussed this at some length, and one of the issues that came up, which I think links with that, is the amount of information available locally. I take your point, at any rate for the purposes of the question, about accountability, but the amount of information locally that is collected, can that be used any more effectively ' since you have a resource collected within the stations ' than is the case now?

• Question by: Tony Arbour
• Meeting date: 15 June 2005

Therefore, with no funding it will not happen?

• Question by: Graham Tope
• Meeting date: 15 June 2005

We both agreed just now that the importance of the success of these teams rests primarily with the sergeant but also with the constables and the PCSOs, and my question specifically was: what are we doing to help them achieve that, and to understand, I will just put it simply, how local authorities, for instance, actually work?