THIS week, our MPs go off on their welldeserved summer break. Yes, my face was as straight as yours is now when I wrote those words. Maybe we need a rest, too, as no government in living memory has made so many changes in so short a time.

It is 12 weeks since the General Election.

Remember the predictions that the alliance would unravel? Well, David Cameron and Nick Clegg didn’t read that script. It may be their determination, or the Opposition’s demoralisation – probably a bit of both. But their approach has been that of a government with a thumping majority, not a coalition of convenience.

This Government’s in a hurry. That is no surprise or criticism. Maybe some decisions will be repented later. The confusion of the Building Schools for the Future announcement proved Gordon Brown wasn’t the lone victim of foot-in-mouth disease. The scope of NHS reform is staggering. This isn’t cosmetic surgery. They’ve got to get it right.

Policing is now on the agenda and I’ll say straightaway there’s clear need for reform.

The Government believes in local choice and decision-making. The days of one-sizefits- all, top-down solutions are over. Communities and local people are trusted to develop their own ways of holding public service providers to account. That has to be right.

The devil’s in the detail, of course, and I want to see a lot more detail and do my own consultation before I decide if elected police and crime commissioners are the way forward.

But I know that all the structural and administrative changes in the world won’t make our streets and homes safer unless there is also a change in attitude among the police and the public. That is what this energetic Government should focus on.

We have experienced what I call the depolicing of our streets. Police officers, to their own and the public’s dismay and frustration, have become invisible and immobile. Don’t blame them for this. They have been shoehorned into a system devised by politicians and bureaucrats who breathe a different air from the rest of us.

What the police need and the public wants are the capability, resources and freedom to pursue vigorous, visible and interventionist policing. What they have been given for the best part of two decades is a target-driven, politically-correct system. It is a system that means police spend more time battling red tape rather than they do criminals and louts.

This is why that social cancer, fear of crime, still eats away at far too many communities.

The root cause of the disease is the anti-social behaviour that has slipped off the authorities’ radar, but which is in the face of the law-abiding citizen whenever they go to their local shops, club or community centre.

The cure is a clear government signal that it will empower police to adopt active, energetic measures to ensure this behaviour is no longer tolerated in public places. No measure will be more effective in restoring public confidence in the criminal justice system.

It will mean readjustments, too, in police priorities and mindset. Senior officers must trust the judgement of the men and women on the front-line. They must give them freedom to act and intervene and understand there are other ways of demonstrating authority than writing out an Asbo notice.

It will mean re-educating some police officers in their primary public duty. The good news, from what I have seen, is there are many experienced, traditional officers who would be more than happy to be mentors. We must give them the freedom to act – quickly.