THE murder of young Rhys Jones was an unspeakable crime which stirred the emotions of the nation.

There is the intense anger that such an act could happen in this country, and then the feeling we all have for Rhys's family.

But inevitably, and rightly, such outrage raises profound questions about the kind of society we live in where a teenager on a BMX bike has a gun and goes out to commit a murder, and whether all of us - from that teen's family, the community, and local and central government - have not just done "enough", but enough of the right things to stop such criminal behaviour from happening in the first place.

In a democracy like ours central government is not all-powerful, thank God. The responsibilities for the nature of the society in which we live go well beyond Parliament to every citizen.

But central government does have more power than any other institution so the expectation is rightly high.

Coverage of this kind of heinous crime quite quickly widens to a wider debate about the government's overall record on crime. I do not for a moment complain about that. We have been in power for over 10 years and have been committed to being tough on crime. Once Tony Blair became my party's leader in 1994 it fell to me as Shadow Home Secretary to work up the details of our approach.

Much of what I later introduced into the law, including ASBOs and major youth justice reforms were developed in Blackburn and East Lancashire, and were based on our real, day-to-day experiences.

Have all these policies worked?

In answering this, particularly at a time like this, I'm conscious of two things.

First that if you are a victim of crime, whether it is classified as "relatively minor", or one of the most appalling, all the policies and statistics in the world are of no comfort to you; nor should they be.

Even for "minor" crimes the experience can live with people for many years.

Partly because of this, people are more sceptical about the numbers on crime and disorder than in almost any other area of our life; and when a politician like me starts to use the figures there's the added danger of being accused of complacency.

The problem however is that if we are to move from the particular to the bigger picture we have to know the numbers.

In case you think the figures are "massaged" by ministers - they are not.

Statisticians independent of ministers are responsible for them, and that independence is being guaranteed by law.

Overall the figures do show a significant drop in crime in the last decade.

This is the case whether crime is measured by the British Crime Survey, in which a large sample of people are asked for their experience of crime in the previous year whether they reported the crimes or not, and in the police figures.

But within these totals, gun-related crime in the last 10 years has risen.

In the last three years there has been a concerted effort to get gun crime down.

The number of homicides in the UK involving a firearm is well below that of many European countries and the USA.

I know all of this will mean nothing to the family of Rhys. My heart goes out to them. Beyond offering our deepest sympathies, we must make a solemn vow that we will do everything we can in the fight against crime.

No politician can promise that there won't be more appalling acts in the future.

But we can promise that doing everything we can to protect the public is always our most pressing priority. It is, and it will always be.