Cameron promises tougher police powers after British riots

British Prime Minister David Cameron promised to give police more powers but rejected calls to reverse budget cuts in a parliamentary debate on this week’s riots in London and other cities.

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In an emergency session of parliament, Cameron claimed that the decision to bring 16,000 extra police to London was responsible for Wednesday being the first calm night since the riots broke out at the weekend.

He rejected Labour leader Ed Milliband’s call to reverse cuts in the police budget, arguing that the government will "still be able to surge as many police on the streets as we have in recent days in London, in Wolverhampton and in Manchester".

Promising compensation to businesses and home owners whose property has been destroyed, he said that police will be given more powers to order people to remove face masks and said that powers to declare curfews and censor instant messaging services will be reviewed.

“We are working with the police, the intelligence services and industry to look at whether it would be right to stop people communicating via these websites and services when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality," he said.

Having declared Wednesday that human rights considerations would not prevent police identifying criminals from photographs, he told backbenchers from his Conservative Party that there was no obstruction to doing so, adding a promise to reform the previous Labour government’s Human Rights Act.

Injunctions against gangs will be extended throughout the UK, he said.

Government policies were not responsible for the riots, Cameron insisted, adding that a “hard core” of people are not frightened enough of the criminal justice system.

"We need to make sure that they are," he said.

After some courts stayed open all night to take cases against alleged looters and rioters, cases continued today.

Birmingham police said they had arrested a man on suspicion of murder over the deaths of three Muslim men who were run over while trying to defend their area.

Concerns have surfaced that far-right groups were involved in self-defence groups that sprang up in some areas.

London’s acting Metropolitian Police Commissioner Tim Godwin said that intelligence reports indicated that the ultranationalist English Defence League had “inflitrated” a group in Enfield, north London.