BLAIR SHOULD HAVE ANOTHER CRACK AT SCHOOLING

Education May Not Be As Sexy As Drugs Policy, But It Change Many More Lives

For a man at the centre of a vortex which could sweep him off the political
stage, the Home Secretary has been looking remarkably relaxed. David
Blunkett never seems happier than at the eye of a storm, and has brewed for
himself quite a little tempest this week. Crime up, cannabis out, cops
feeling a bit down.

The new crime statistics will bring a welter of headlines about rising
crime. Much of the increase can be explained away by the new recording
method introduced by Mr Blunkett. There has, however, been a real and
shocking increase in street crime for which no one quite knows the reason.
Ministers are confident, however, that they are now getting street robbery
under control. More than 80 per cent of it occurs in ten areas which are
the recipients of keen attention from No 10 under the Prime Minister's
street crime initiative. Officials say it is having an impact. Police
officers in those areas say, however, that focusing all their resources on
street crime may cause increases in other offences. We shall see what the
numbers show in a year's time.

The Police Reform Bill that the Home Secretary steered through the Commons
in the shadow of the crime figures massively strengthens his power to
monitor performance and to intervene where forces are failing. He has done
this rather cleverly. Senior officers are restless, but they are not
revolting. Mr Blunkett did throw a bone to the most hard-pressed forces in
inner-city areas where arresting cannabis users is a complete waste of
police time.

Ah, the reclassification of cannabis. Have so many words ever been written
upon a topic of so little consequence? That little Bing or Bong baby of Liz
Hurley's, I suppose. Hurley gives birth to baby. Home Secretary declares
cannabis still illegal. The move this week merely formalises what is
already the practice in many forces around the country -- not to arrest
cannabis smokers unless there are aggravating factors. Given the
traditional hysteria over drugs, it was a brave thing for Mr Blunkett to
do, but symbolic not substantial: pledge card policy, quintessential new
Labour, lots of headlines, but no meaningful reform.

The drugs which ought to be reclassified as C, or legalised altogether, are
the class A ones. These are the drugs destroying the lives of people well
beyond those who use them. If a crack cocaine and heroin addict spends half
his life being processed round and round the criminal justice system and
the rest of it stealing to fund his habit, it would be far cheaper
financially and in terms of social cost simply to provide those drugs for free.

If you need ?200 a week to buy drugs, you have to steal things to the value
of ?2,000 because of the low price you get for them on the black market.
Insurance premiums rocket; peoples' livelihoods and, worse, sense of
security, are plundered. If you really want to tackle the problem of drugs,
rather than just pose and send signals, you start at the hard end, not the
soft. It doesn't matter how cannabis is classified; it does no harm to
society either way. The prohibition of class A drugs does.

Of course, legalisation would be as unsaleable as William Hague in Brixton.
Voters simply wouldn't buy it, despite the fact that one of the more
enlightened members of the Shadow Cabinet even believes that prisoners with
drug problems would be better off being treated than jailed. No, public
concern about crime will continue to be met not with proposals which would
at a stroke cut crime by half, but with an eye-catching initiative from the
Prime Minister.

The real causes of crime do not lend themselves to eye-catching
initiatives. Fighting crime at its roots has to involve health, housing and
education officials as well as the police. Fighting crime ought to begin in
nursery school. The obsession with newspaper headlines about crime led the
Government in the wrong direction, marching to cash machines to collect
spot fines, in the first term, just as headlines about the NHS steered it
into its massive spending spree on the health service.

Both were moves in the wrong direction. Health should never have been
allowed to take precedence over education. Tony Blair's first obsession --
education, education, education -- was the right one and next week's
Comprehensive Spending Review needs to take a step back to it. Government
figures will admit that they let education "drift" for a while. Yet a
decent education system is the best way of affecting the health and wealth
of the nation and even crime levels -- but in the future. Health spending
goes on prolonging death, education spending is investment in life.

The reason the education agenda drifted is that most of the public doesn't
get upset about schools. While the state of the education system might
concern some people, it doesn't actually scare anyone. It doesn't make
anybody feel personally at risk. So the Government has never felt
politically threatened because school standards are not improving, as it
has when the electorate has grown afraid of being mugged, expiring on a
hospital trolley, or dying in a train crash.

And unlike crime, education is not a sexy story. No wonder Mr Blunkett
looks so happy at the Home Office, drowning in headlines. Schools, unlike
hospitals, aren't particularly exciting. How many TV dramas are there about
doctors and police, and how many about teachers? Secondary education
doesn't lend itself to eye-catching initiatives, or to eye-catching
headlines. Alastair Campbell stole the only one of those when he referred
to bog standard comprehensives. Education is a boring story about a long
hard slog which will make a difference to someone for the rest of their
life. It is also the story the Government should be focusing on. Next
week's CSR should fulfil its promise of being really, really dull.