David Blunkett
David Blunkett
David Blunkett, Baron Blunkett, PCis best known as a British politician and more recently as an academic, having represented the Sheffield Brightside and Hillsborough constituency for 28 years through to 7 May 2015 when he stepped down at the general election. Blind since birth, and coming from a poor family in one of Sheffield's most deprived districts, he rose to become Education and Employment Secretary, Home Secretary and Work and Pensions Secretary in Tony Blair's Cabinet following Labour's victory in...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionPolitician
Date of Birth6 June 1947
We've got to get back to old-fashioned politics that's in touch with the people we seek to represent and to avoid self-inflicted wounds.
What we are proposing are some sensible additional security measures.
The government wants to be able to attack extremism and hatred wherever it occurs.
The government must give men and women without power a real say over what happens to them, and the means of engaging in a participative, invigorated and living democracy.
When it comes to those who are accused and their right to defend themselves, it is perfectly reasonable to expect relevant evidence to be made public, and I am in favour of open justice.
Yes, it will go through the disciplines that all puppies go through including house training and puppy walking, then at twelve month old it the training becomes a lot more rigorous which has to be done carefully otherwise you are in danger of stressing the dog.
We rightly pride ourselves on the safe haven we offer to those genuinely fleeing terror. But our moral obligation and love of freedom does not extend to offering hospitality to terrorists.
To punish MPs because of the distance they live from London - those with fast train journeys quite close to London as well as those at some distance from both the capital or an appropriate airport - is perverse, but also dangerous to democracy.
Without the political parties and the volunteering work of their members day in, day out, we would have a very different sort of politics and society.
We didn't consider closing Heathrow Airport because those who are threatening us would have been the victors,
Throughout my political life, I've not been a stranger to controversy.
The people we are dealing with are sophisticated, well organized and entirely ruthless, but they are also in a position to exploit the very freedoms we seek to protect.
What I am clear about is that I have made a mistake, ... I thought there was going to be increasing damage done to the government by me.
There are some really good experiments with the youth offending service, joining up youth offending teams with the youth justice board, and good local authority and primary care trusts working together.