Government puts fight against crime at heart of its agenda

Sweeping changes to courts unveiled; public to run elite new hospitals; u-turn on draconian mental health reform

The Government put measures to combat crime and antisocial behaviour at the heart of its agenda yesterday but staged a surprise retreat over plans to reform the mental health laws.

Five of the 19 Bills announced in the Queen's Speech at the start of the new parliamentary year will implement sweeping reforms of the courts and sentencing. They aim to stamp out vandalism, violence and petty crime.

In another move Alan Milburn, the Secretary of State for Health, will announce today that foundation hospitals, Labour's model for public services, are to be run by a management board largely made up of elected local people.

The measures in the Queen's Speech come after Labour's private polling, presented to the Cabinet last Friday, showed that people were increasingly worried by "a general sense of insecurity", ranging from concerns over vandalism and robbery to terrorist strikes and fears for their economic prospects.

The main surprise in yesterday's package was the last-minute omission of a draft Mental Health Bill that had draconian powers to detain people with severe personality disorders even if they had not committed a crime.

The Government appears to have been stung by widespread criticism of its controversial proposals, which have been condemned by the Mental Health Alliance, representing 50 organisations, including Mind and the Royal College of Psychiatrists, and highlighted in a campaign by The Independent on Sunday.

Although legislation now looks unlikely in the current parliamentary session, Downing Street insisted last night that the reform of mental health laws had not been abandoned. Mr Blair's official spokesman said: "We have not moved away from the Bill. We are still committed to it. We had 2,000 responses to our consultation exercise. It will take time to go through them and to respond accordingly."

Other measures in the Queen's Speech included plans to allow high-performing hospitals to win foundation status with freedom from Whitehall; to ban or restrict hunting with hounds; to bring in new rules on cross-media ownership; to allow pubs to open round the clock; to give local authorities more freedom; and to permit English regions to hold referendums on setting up regional assemblies.

The most controversial plank of the programme will be far-reaching reforms to the criminal justice system, which have put the Government on a collision course with the legal profession. They include allowing defendants to be tried twice for the same offence; restricting trial by jury in complex cases; and the disclosure of a defendant's previous offences to the jury in some cases.

Mr Blair launched a drive to portray the Tories as "soft" on crime because they will oppose some of the measures. He said the Tories were "out of touch and backward. Not so much nasty or nice. Just plain simply irrelevant."

Iain Duncan Smith, the Tory leader, said the Government had promised "bold measures" on crime but "after five wasted years and 12 Criminal Justice Acts" had failed to deliver.