There is a question we perhaps do not ask often enough. What does a country owe its own citizens?
We hear constantly about our responsibilities. Pay your taxes. Obey the law. Contribute to society. Respect others. Serve your community. And, for some, put on a uniform and be prepared to put your own safety, even your life on the line for everyone else.
But responsibility cannot run in only one direction. There has to be something on the other side of that bargain.
A country must protect the people who protect it. It must protect the people who live peacefully within it. And above all, it must be prepared to put the safety and security of its own citizens at the heart of government.
PC Andrew Harper
Few cases demonstrate this more painfully than the killing of PC Andrew Harper. In August 2019, PC Harper attended reports of a burglary. He was doing precisely what society asks police officers to do: responding when somebody needed help.
He never came home.
Now the prospect of two of the men convicted of his manslaughter being released after serving half of their 13-year sentences has caused understandable anger.
There are arguments about sentencing law, prison capacity and how release rules operate. But there is also a much simpler human question.
What message does it send to the police officer putting on a uniform tomorrow morning?
We ask police officers to walk towards situations the rest of us instinctively walk away from.
We ask them to confront violence.
We ask them to intervene when people are armed, dangerous or unpredictable.
We ask their families to accept that every shift carries a risk most of us never have to contemplate.
If the justice system then appears unable to reflect the seriousness of killing an officer carrying out that duty, we should not be surprised when confidence begins to fracture.
This is bigger than one sentence or one case.
It is about the relationship between the state and those it asks to protect us.
And What About Those Who Defend the Country?
The same principle applies to our Armed Forces.
We ask young men and women to serve overseas, live apart from their families and, when necessary, fight for this country.
Some return carrying injuries. Some return carrying experiences the rest of us cannot imagine. And some struggle profoundly with the transition back into civilian life.
Yet Britain still requires specific programmes to prevent veterans becoming homeless and to help those who already are.
That should trouble us.
Surely one of the most basic promises a country can make is this:
If you are prepared to serve your country, your country will not abandon you when your service ends.
That does not mean every veteran should receive unlimited state support.
It means nobody who has served Britain should find himself sleeping in a doorway because the transition from military to civilian life failed him.
Service should create an obligation on both sides.
Protecting Our Borders Is Part of the Same Contract
Then there is immigration.
Britain has every right to offer refuge to people genuinely fleeing persecution and to welcome people who come here legally to work, study, build businesses and contribute to our society.
Millions have done exactly that.
But compassion does not require a country to surrender control of its borders.
Nor should concern about immigration prevent us discussing difficult questions about integration, crime and cultural attitudes.
The terrible history of group-based child sexual exploitation should have taught Britain that lesson.
Baroness Casey’s national audit found serious failures in the way authorities dealt with these crimes and concluded that questions around ethnicity had sometimes been avoided or inadequately recorded.
That does not justify treating an entire ethnicity, religion or immigrant population as responsible for the crimes of particular offenders.
But neither should fear of causing offence ever again prevent authorities from investigating whether culture, religion, ethnicity or attitudes towards women and girls are relevant to particular patterns of offending.
There is a simple principle that should apply to everyone.
If you come to Britain, Britain’s laws apply to you.
Women are equal before the law.
Girls are not possessions.
Sexual abuse is not a cultural difference.
Violence cannot be excused by tradition.
And protecting children must always matter more than protecting institutions from accusations of prejudice.
A confident country should be capable of saying all of those things without apology while equally refusing to demonise millions of law-abiding people.
Charity Abroad — Responsibility at Home
Britain is also one of the world’s significant providers of international development assistance.
There are good reasons for foreign aid.
Preventing famine, responding to disasters, fighting disease and helping stabilise fragile countries can save lives — and sometimes serves Britain’s own security and economic interests as well.
But governments also have to understand how this looks to the citizen struggling at home.
When someone cannot get a home…
when a veteran is sleeping rough…
when families cannot access the services they need…
when police forces, prisons and councils say they are stretched…
people are entitled to ask where the Government’s priorities lie.
It should not be controversial to say that a British government has a particular responsibility to the people it governs.
That does not mean turning our backs on the rest of the world.
It means remembering where government’s first duty begins.
The Social Contract
Ultimately, all of these issues come back to the same thing.
There is an unwritten contract between a nation and its people.
We contribute.
We obey its laws.
Some of us police its streets.
Some fight its wars.
Some work in its hospitals, drive its ambulances, rescue people from burning buildings or spend their lives caring for others.
And in return we expect something remarkably simple.
Protect us.
Protect our borders.
Protect our children.
Protect those who protect us.
Support those who have served us.
Punish those who seriously harm us.
And spend our money with an understanding that it was earned by the people whose interests government exists to represent.
Because if that contract is repeatedly weakened, something much more important than confidence in an individual government begins to disappear.
Trust in the country itself begins to disappear.
And then we should ask an uncomfortable question.
If the people who are asked to protect Britain begin to believe Britain will not protect them, what happens when the country next needs them?
A nation cannot continually demand loyalty, service and sacrifice from its people without offering loyalty in return.
Looking after our own should not be an embarrassment.
It should be one of the fundamental duties of government.