'Too many summits just produce hot air'

Another day, another summit. Yesterday, David Blunkett summoned police, customs, immigration and other agencies to the Home Office for a "summit" on gun crime.

The meeting was disclosed to last weekend's Sunday newspapers, but the talks ended with an announcement of a guns amnesty that was planned before the tragic shootings in Birmingham, which sparked the "summit". The amnesty was revealed in The Independent on 27 December.

Home Office officials insist they billed the event as a "round-table discussion", saying the media dubbed it a "summit".The meeting was not the first "summit" and will not be the last. But there are signs that the Government is realising the dangers of overhyping its "summits", and they may be called less frequently in future. One Blair aide said: "Too many summits have just been hot air. They must not be a substitute for a proper policy."

DRUGS

A drug summit in February 2000 ended with a pledge by Mr Blair to give police and customs chiefs all the powers and resources they needed. It was called after figures revealed increases in drug-related crimes, with arrests up by 13 per cent in a year and drug seizures up by eight per cent.

By the general election 16 months later, Keith Hellawell, the "Drugs Tsar", and Mo Mowlam, the minister responsible, had been squeezed out.

RAIL

John Prescott, as Secretary of State for Transport, talked tough at two summits on Britain's crumbling rail system. In February 1999, he lambasted the railways as a "national disgrace". But there was little progress to report at the next meeting 15 months later. Public disillusionment with the system had also intensified following the Paddington disaster.

Since then, the Hatfield and Potters Bar crashes have highlighted safety fears, Railtrack has been abolished, Mr Prescott has been sidelined and Stephen Byers has come and gone as transport supremo.

STREET CRIME

Amid growing public concern – and media coverage – about street crime, Mr Blair called a summit at Downing Street last March. Although seen as a headline-grabbing gimmick, it led to the formation of a task force that met regularly.

The Prime Minister set a target of bringing street crime under control by last September in 10 metropolitan areas. He managed it in nine of them, but critics claimed a comparison with the previous year showed an improvement in only six.