Don’t create more rules, Priti – just enforce them

Setting out his nine principles of policing that underpinned the creation of the Metropolitan force in 1829, the home secretary Sir Robert Peel wrote that ‘the test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with them’. But those wise words are lost on today’s busy politicians who seem to measure their effectiveness by how many new burdens they impose on the justice system.