David Cameron on riots: broken society is top of my political agenda
Allegra Stratton, political correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Monday 15 August 2011 12.10 BST
Prime minister delivers a speech describing last week's rioting a 'wake-up call' for the country and says ministers will ensure policies address the causes of 'broken Britain'
David Cameron makes a speech at a youth centre in Witney, Oxfordshire. Photograph: Alastair Grant/AP
David Cameron pledged his government would "turn around the lives of the 120,000 most troubled families" by the next election as he said his broken society analysis is "back at the top of my political agenda".
He made the ambitious commitment in a speech delivered on Monday at a youth centre in his Witney constituency in Oxfordshire, in which he described the rioting as a "wake-up call" for the country. He said his ministers would use the summer to ensure their departments' policies address the causes of broken Britain.
The government has assessed there are 120,000 families across the UK that cause much of the disturbance in communities across the country – and he is now to use the government's success in turning around their lives as a benchmark against which he should be judged in 2015.
Cameron made the pledge as he reasserted his analysis that Britain is broken, but he joined Ed Miliband in drawing a link between the riots, and recent scandals in banking, parliament and journalism, his words almost precisely mirroring those of the Labour leader.
Cameron said: "In the banking crisis, with MPs' expenses, in the phone-hacking scandal, we have seen some of the worst cases of greed, irresponsibility and entitlement. The restoration of responsibility has to cut right across our society.
"Do we have the determination to confront the slow-motion moral collapse that has taken place in parts of our country these past few generations?
"Irresponsibility. Selfishness. Behaving as if your choices have no consequences. Children without fathers. Schools without discipline. Reward without effort.
"Crime without punishment. Rights without responsibilities. Communities without control. Some of the worst aspects of human nature tolerated, indulged – sometimes even incentivised – by a state and its agencies that in parts have become literally de-moralised.
"So do we have the determination to confront all this and turn it around? I have the very strong sense that the responsible majority of people in this country not only have that determination; they are crying out for their government to act upon it. And I can assure you, I will not be found wanting."
He rehearsed many of the policies the government already has underway that he hopes will help to improve conditions in which children are raised to drain the conditions for rioting in future, but he suggested in many areas he wanted his ministers to go further.
The government is bringing in a national citizens service and Cameron said he wanted to make it available to all 16-year-olds: "Teamwork, discipline, duty, decency: these might sound old-fashioned words but they are part of the solution to this very modern problem of alienated, angry young people."
City academies which he said would have higher expectations of discipline and standards. "If young people have left school without being able to read or write, why shouldn't that school be held more directly accountable? Yes, these questions are already being asked across government but what happened last week gives them a new urgency – and we need to act on it."
Cameron said he wanted to look at making tougher the welfare reform bill going through parliament. "I'm not satisfied that we're doing all we can. I want us to look at toughening up the conditions for those who are out of work and receiving benefits … and speeding up our efforts to get all those who can work back to work."
The home secretary, Theresa May, would be setting out on Tuesday how the government intended to overhaul policing to enable them to do less paperwork and spend more time on the beat.
Cameron also suggested the government would redouble its efforts to renegotiate the relationship between British and European law whereby the government has often felt thwarted by the EU in implementing some of its policies.
He said his government would look at the "twisting and misrepresenting of human rights that has undermined personal responsibility" and the "obsession with health and safety that has eroded people's willingness to act according to common sense".
Nonetheless, he said he had now ordered his ministers to conduct a review of all their departments' policies to ensure they are helping ameliorate what Cameron described as a "moral collapse".
Setting out his central argument, Cameron said: "As we begin the necessary processes of inquiry, investigation, listening and learning, let's be clear: these riots were not about race: the perpetrators and the victims were white, black and Asian.
"These riots were not about government cuts: they were directed at high street stores, not parliament. And these riots were not about poverty: that insults the millions of people who, whatever the hardship, would never dream of making others suffer like this. No, this was about behaviour.
"People showing indifference to right and wrong. People with a twisted moral code. People with a complete absence of self-restraint.
"Now I know as soon as I use words like 'behaviour' and 'moral' people will say – what gives politicians the right to lecture us? Of course we're not perfect. But politicians shying away from speaking the truth about behaviour, about morality. This has actually helped to cause the social problems we see around us."
Cameron has honed this thesis over the last five years but he is, in the words of one aide, seeking to "re-energise" his ministers in the face of opinion polls suggesting the public believe his response to the riots was unconvincing, and that he has not fully understood the causes.
He addressed head on the attack made in a speech by the leader of the opposition on Monday morning in which Miliband said the difference between the pair's positions was that Cameron believed a "culture" of depravity led some people to riot, while Miliband believed issues of social deprivation needed to be considered as a context but not as an excuse.
Cameron said politicians must be braver in addressing decades of erosion of social values rather than clinging to moral "relativism".
While there were local triggers, most of the disturbances had been down to "criminality" and "indifference to right and wrong".
He said: "In my very first act as leader, I signalled my personal priority: to mend our broken society – that passion is stronger today than ever.
"Social problems that have been festering for decades have exploded in our face," he said.
"Now, just as people wanted criminals robustly confronted on our street, so they want to see these problems taken on and defeated.
"Our security fightback must be matched by a social fightback. We must fight back against the attitudes and assumptions that have brought parts of our society to this shocking state."
