The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Laura Farris)
I am glad to have this opportunity to speak and hope to set the record straight. Forgive me if I do not recognise the counsel of despair emanating from the Opposition Benches. The hon. Member for Nottingham North (Alex Norris) invites us to believe that there has been a catalogue of failure and that everything is getting worse, but the facts tell us something different. I do not pretend that everything is perfect—of course we need to protect our town centres and the people who use them, and I will come to all that in a moment—but for all the noise that these debates can generate, we do the public a disservice if we seek to distil everything into a row across the Dispatch Box without sometimes acknowledging the merits of the other side and the meaningful progress they have sometimes made.
Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)
On that conciliatory note, could we all just pay tribute to what the police do, because they are the focus of the debate? They put on the uniform in the morning and say goodbye to their loved ones not knowing how their day is going to turn out. As we argue about where things should go in future, perhaps we can all agree that they do such an important job for our society and that we owe them a huge debt of gratitude.
Laura Farris
I thank my right hon. Friend for that intervention. I accept without reservation that there is considerable courage and selflessness in being a first responder whose job and duty is to run towards danger when everybody else is running away from it.
Let me begin with the simplest facts. Since 2010, neighbourhood crime—the crimes that undermine the fabric of communities and make people feel unsafe in their homes and on their local streets—has fallen. The crime survey for England and Wales, which the Office for National Statistics described as
“the best estimate of long-term trends in crimes against the household population”,
shows that since 2010 overall crime levels are down by more than 50%. Violent crimes as a whole, which include crimes that involve any form of offensive weapon, are down by 52%. Theft overall, which includes domestic burglary and the theft of a vehicle—some of the most invasive thefts that go directly to a person’s sense of personal security—has almost halved since we came into office. Domestic burglary currently stands at its lowest ever level.
Jim McMahon (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab/Co-op)
Does the Minister accept that the workplace is a personal place for those who work there? The Co-op Group has reported that in the year to date some 300,000 incidents of abuse and violence have taken place in shops up and down the country. Employees who are just there to sell to the public in their community are the victims of abuse and, in some cases, violence, but the police do not even turn up to 76% of reports, so how can people feel safe going to work?
Laura Farris
I will come specifically to shop workers. I have no difference of opinion with the Opposition on the points about the role of shop workers and some of the issues that affect them personally, and I reassure the hon. Gentleman that I will come to that.
There are today more police officers in England and Wales than at any other point in our nation’s history—
Laura Farris
If I could just finish my sentence, I will of course give way to the hon. Lady. The most recent figures we have are from March 2023, when the figure for police offices in England and Wales was 149,566. It has never been higher. With that, I give way.
Jess Phillips
I wonder whether the Minister can provide the per capita of population figures.
Laura Farris
I do not have that figure, so I will have to write to the hon. Lady.
It is right that decisions about how police resources are deployed, including the number and composition of people in neighbourhood and local policing roles, are for the determination of chief constables, who know their beat better than anyone and are accountable to democratically elected police and crime commissioners. Nevertheless, the numbers have a broader significance, and I want to draw the Opposition’s attention to four points.
First, due to the investment in the police uplift programme, the number of police officers in local policing roles is the highest since comparable data began to be collected, with an increase of 6.5% in the 12 months to 31 March. We have more female officers and more officers from minority ethnic backgrounds than ever before—something that I hope the hon. Member for Nottingham North will agree is consistent with some of the conclusions that were certainly implied, if not made explicit, on the nature of representation in Baroness Casey’s report into conduct in the Metropolitan police.
We have more officers receiving specialist training for specific categories of crime. I will give the House one example, because yesterday I visited Avon and Somerset Police, the pioneering force conducting Operation Soteria Bluestone in the investigation of rape. They made it perfectly clear to me that the increase in numbers that they have seen locally has facilitated a huge increase in the number of specialist trained rape and serious sexual offences police officers. In fact, there are 2,000 nationwide. I noted that the hon. Gentleman said that we were setting the police up to fail. That could not be more different from the information that that force gave me yesterday—and if they are incorrect, I would appreciate it if he would explain why when he closes.
Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)
I put on record my support for the police, particularly Thames Valley Police—like the Minister, I represent a constituency in Berkshire. Can she update the House on the proportion of new officers who are still in training? It seems to be a very serious issue in Reading and the surrounding areas that, while officers have been recruited, they are still in training, as opposed to the fully trained and experienced officers who were lost through austerity.
Laura Farris
The hon. Gentleman asks a fair question, and I will have to get back to him on that. I know that the number in my part of the Thames Valley is quite low, but that may not extend to Reading. He deserves an answer on that, and I will get one to him.
The Government have also ensured that the police have the resources they need. This year they received record funding of above £17.2 billion. That is an extra £550 million for frontline policing compared with last year. I gently remind those on the Opposition Benches that they voted against our police funding settlements every single year between 2016 and 2019.
I want to draw our attention down to community level and make a few observations. We have had a commitment from the National Police Chiefs’ Council—it was announced in August, as the hon. Member for Nottingham North will recall—that the police will follow up on all reasonable lines of inquiry and that there is no offence too small. That commitment is intended to offer huge reassurance to the public. It was also this Government who introduced the safer streets fund, which has been in receipt of £120 million already, for 270 projects covering all 43 police forces in England and Wales, and which is complemented by the StreetSafe app.
All that kind of thing can seem quite microscopic, as though it only affects individual streets or individual parks, reporting a broken light or a dark and dangerous corner of a popular area for jogging. The point is that people can report the area and action will be taken, and all that contributes to improving the fabric of communities up and down the United Kingdom.
I want to spend a moment on retail crime, which I will deal with in two parts: first I will cover shoplifting itself, and then I will move on to assault on retail workers. I take issue, very respectfully, with the suggestion that somehow the Government are being complacent in shoplifting. The Government are clear that we expect the police to take a zero-tolerance approach to shoplifting and violence towards shop workers. I want to disabuse anyone of the notion that somehow we have decriminalised shoplifting offences below £200.
I gently draw the shadow Minister’s attention to the following. In 2020, the National Business Crime Centre surveyed police forces in England and Wales, asking whether they had a policy of not responding to shoplifting if the goods were worth less than £200. Not one force in England and Wales said that it had such a policy. He will know as well as I do that the National Police Chiefs’ Council recently produced a retail crime action plan, which included a commitment to prioritise police attendance at the scene where violence had been used against shop staff.
Jim McMahon
I accept the explanation that it is not a written policy, but how does the Minister explain that in 76% of the 300,000 sample cases, the police did not turn up?
Laura Farris
It is difficult for me to identify every single complaint and whether somebody has attended, but one thing I think is relevant is that the increase in shoplifting that we have regrettably seen over the past 12 months has been met by a corresponding and equivalent increase in the volume of charges for shoplifting offences. Charges are up by 29% in the past 12 months. I gently draw the hon. Gentleman’s attention to that.
I want to talk specifically about offences against retail workers. I invite the hon. Member for Nottingham North to answer this point when he closes—it is not put in an aggressive way, because I recognise the role that retail workers perform and it is completely unacceptable that they should be subject to violence in the line of their duties, but it is already unlawful to commit an act of assault. It is criminalised under the Criminal Justice Act 1988 and the Offences against the Person Act 1861.
The hon. Gentleman knows, because we have already had this discussion, that there is a statutory obligation to treat the fact that an individual is a retail worker as an aggravating factor. He has identified the fact that the trade unions support a new law, but I say very respectfully that the judges do not, the Crown Prosecution Service does not and the police forces I have spoken to do not. The practitioners in this area of the law do not support a new law. Even though he has made that point, he has not identified any case where he considers there to have been a miscarriage of justice because the laws were not sufficient to offer protection. It is not enough simply to assert that we need new laws without setting out clearly why the existing statutory protection does not succeed.
Let me now turn to the issue of antisocial behaviour—it is not minor or trivial, and I make no bones about that. It is probably the principal crime that all MPs hear about, irrespective of the constituencies we represent. I want to reassure the hon. Gentleman that we have taken a range of legislative and non-legislative action. A new antisocial behaviour action plan was introduced earlier this year, backed by £160 million of funding to ensure that our commitments have real teeth. He will be aware of the hotspot patrolling pilot that has been conducted across 10 police forces and is about to be rolled out on a national basis because of its success.
Alexander Stafford (Rother Valley) (Con)
I thank the Minister for the £2.4 million given to South Yorkshire Police for antisocial behaviour hotspots, including in Maltby and Dinnington, areas in my constituency that are plagued by antisocial behaviour. When I met the police and the police and crime commissioner, they said that that money is making a real difference to getting boots on the ground and on patrols. I thank the Minister for the extra funds to clamp down on antisocial behaviour in Rother Valley.
Laura Farris
It is very heartening to hear that those funds are making a real difference in my hon. Friend’s constituency.
I also draw the shadow Minister’s attention to some of the new teeth, if I may call them that, in the Criminal Justice Bill. He will be aware that we have lowered the minimum age at which a community protection notice can be ordered to 10 years old. That is not just to achieve consistency with other aspects of criminal justice, but because we recognise that in reality quite a lot of antisocial behaviour is committed by those in the age 10 to 16 bracket. That is a common complaint that many in this House will be familiar with.
We have extended police powers to implement a public spaces protection order. I mention that simply because I could not differentiate between that and the respect order that the hon. Gentleman was describing, but it gives the police greater powers for a rapid response. We have also expanded the minimum exclusion period by 50%, from 48 hours to 72 hours, to give authorities more powers to implement dispersal arrangements.
Moving on to our Criminal Justice Bill, I think I noted the shadow Minister’s qualified agreement with at least some of its contents, and certainly those on the Opposition Benches did not vote against it on Second Reading. We respectfully say that the Bill takes the fight to the criminals, introducing new powers to enter premises and seize stolen goods—the example given repeatedly during the debate was of stolen mobile phones, the everyday theft that people endure. It contains new powers on knife crime to seize, retain and destroy a bladed article found on private property, without evidence that it has been used in conjunction with a criminal offence, but where there is a reasonable belief that it may be, and new laws on possession of a knife with intent.
I would add one or two other measures that are just as important to community safety. This Bill, for the first time, recognises coercive control as the cancer of a crime that it is, by putting those convicted of a serious offence in that regard under the multi-agency public protection arrangements and then putting them on the violent and sex offender register.
The hon. Member for Nottingham North was critical of the Criminal Justice Bill, but he neglected to say anything about the Sentencing Bill, which has its Second Reading tomorrow. That Bill will put some of the worst offenders away for longer, so some of the men who maraud on our streets to carry out the most grotesque offences against women—we all know their names—can anticipate a whole-life order without the possibility of parole, even if theirs was a one-off offence. Rapists, who under the last Labour Government served just 50% of their sentence behind bars under section 44 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003, can now look forward to spending the entirety of their sentence in custody without the possibility of parole.
Mr Sheerman
I am not sure that I like the language of “taking the fight to the criminals.” The fact of the matter is that we want to deal with criminals in the right way. If only the Minister would look at the injustices of joint enterprise, under which almost 1,000 young people are in prison with long sentences for crimes in which they did not actually physically take the fight to anyone.
Laura Farris
The hon. Gentleman has been a compassionate campaigner on the issue of joint enterprise, and I have listened to him a lot over the years. I know that the matter was considered by the Court of Appeal, and its decision was not consistent with some of his remarks, but that conversation should be continued because it is a developing area of the law.
I will conclude with a quotation from a non-political figure. His Majesty’s chief inspector of constabulary, Andy Cooke, said recently:
“England and Wales are arguably safer than they have ever been.”
I make no apology for ending where I began: neighbourhood crime has fallen by 50% since 2010, and I am proud of that. Of course, we can go further, and we are building and developing police powers, new laws and community measures so that we can get there, protecting the law-abiding majority and cherishing the town centres in our communities by keeping them safe.
Alex Davies-Jones
I welcome the intervention, and I know that stop and search has an appropriate place, particularly in targeting knife crime and offensive weapons. It can be an appropriate tool if used appropriately, with the police obviously having the appropriate training and support to do so. It cannot be a blanket policy to target everybody in our town centres; it has to be used appropriately, proportionately and effectively if it is to be used at all. It can be used as an appropriate tool and I recognise that it has a place, but there are other schemes and, as I have said, crime prevention has been overlooked far too much by this Government. There are many schemes to deal with that, and I will be outlining our plan.
I will welcome an intervention by the Minister if he wants to reach out to me, but I offer him an olive branch. I invite him to come and spend the day with me in Pontypridd, because I am confident that it will take him all of 10 minutes to understand the real issues that we are discussing.
The Minister for Crime, Policing and Fire (Chris Philp)
And in Croydon South?
Alex Davies-Jones
Yes, happily.
In fact, my community, along with many others across the country, recently came together to commemorate White Ribbon Day, which is always a poignant moment to reflect on the huge battle we continue to face as we seek to end male violence against women and girls for good. One of the most shameful consequences of the last 13 years is the systemic failure to tackle violence against women and girls, which is having serious consequences. I rarely have to state the obvious, but sometimes clarity is overlooked in this place. I genuinely do not know whether men can truly understand the fear and the constant, often underlying concern that women feel when out on our streets and in our town centres. Our safety is not always at the forefront of our minds, but let it be known that it is always present in them. I know that women, across ages and across the political divide, know that feeling of asking a friend to take a longer and safer route home or to message when they are back. We have all become used to exhibiting such behaviour as second nature, but how on earth have we got to a point where women and girls cannot reliably feel safe when simply walking through our town centres?
Something commonly overlooked is the huge impact that the situation is having on older people, who may be equally vulnerable and the targets of crime. I have heard from a number of older residents—male and female—in my own area, who no longer feel safe visiting Pontypridd on market day. What used to be a bustling day for local businesses on the high street is now often a busy day for my local police force, who are having to do more and more with less and less. That is the simple reality of the situation: this Tory Government have sat by and made cuts to policing that are having a huge impact. Visible policing on our streets remains at record lows, and often police officers have to travel across county lines, which means the connections and knowledge of a local area are sadly lost.
I am lucky in south Wales to have the support of a fantastic, hardworking and award-winning set of police community support officers covering our town centre, including Constable Liam Noyce, Hannah Lowe, Christopher Jones, Lisa Banfield, and Shanie Ross. Sadly, I know that many other areas are not as fortunate. The Government’s lack of leadership means that they have failed to ensure that professional standards in policing are high enough. Recent events and appalling evidence of misconduct have also shown us the extent to which trust in policing can be shattered, and without that trust, policing by consent sadly becomes impossible.
Patterns of crime and vulnerability are changing, but neither the police nor the criminal justice system has kept up. Labour can, and will, do better. As a priority, a Labour Government will crack down on serious violent crime by preventing young people from getting drawn into crime and criminal gangs in the first place. We recognise that there are series issues with knife crime, which is destroying young lives, devastating families and undermining our communities.
To tackle that we need a serious programme of police reform and crime prevention. Government Departments must work together, and work with the Home Office, to intervene where young people are at risk and act quickly when knife crime incidents are recorded. At the moment police forces and local authorities are lacking in direction, but a Labour Government will take action at the root.
Whether that is by tackling websites that promote and sell machetes and dangerous knives, or taking action to stop vulnerable young people being drawn into crime and gangs by putting access to mental health support workers into every school, it is the Labour party that takes safety seriously.
It is utterly wrong that this Government have abandoned their basic duty to keep people safe on our streets and online. The numbers speak for themselves. Most of all, after 13 years of Tory Government, more than 90% of crimes are going unsolved. That means that criminals are less than half as likely to be caught now than when Labour was last in government. The Conservatives’ legacy on crime and justice is one of damaging decline and collapsing confidence, and victims and communities are paying the price. I echo the pleas of my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North (Alex Norris), who asked the Minister to do better. If he cannot commit to getting the basics right on personal safety, people across the country will sadly continue to suffer. Only Labour has a solid plan for change, and never, ever, has the need been stronger.
The Minister for Crime, Policing and Fire (Chris Philp)
I thank both shadow Ministers for the opportunity to debate this important topic, and it is a particular pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones). We worked together when we were both on the Culture, Media and Sport Front Benches. I am not sure whether she is following me or vice-versa, but it is a pleasure to continue to work with her.
I agree that the retail community, which serves this country so well, is the lifeblood of our town centres, and it breathes life into the heart of our communities. My very first job was working in a shop, in Sainsbury’s in south London, not far from my current constituency. I was stacking shelves among other things, so I have had direct experience of working on the frontline of retail, as I am sure other hon. Members have had as well.
Before I talk a little about shoplifting and antisocial behaviour—as a number of Members from across the House have said, more needs to be done there—I want to talk about the facts on crime and policing as a whole. We have heard many Opposition Members trying to paint a sort of dystopian, almost Dickensian picture as part of their pre-election campaigning—they have referred repeatedly to an election, and make no bones about it: this is a piece of electioneering. Their dystopian anecdotes do not bear scrutiny when measured against the facts. We owe it to this House and the public to be clear about the facts.
Let me start with the crime statistics. The Office for National Statistics says that the only reliable source of crime data is the crime survey of England and Wales. In the past year, all crime as measured by the crime survey has fallen by 10%. Since 2010, when this Government came into office, crime has fallen by 56% on a like-for-like basis, meaning that crime under the last Labour Government was around double the level it is today.
Looking at some of the more serious crime types individually, here are the falls we have seen since 2010: criminal damage is down by 73%, domestic burglary is down by 47%, theft from the person is down by 44%, vehicle theft is down by 39%, violence is down by 52% and total theft is down by 47%. Those are the facts, those are the figures and they are published by the independent Office for National Statistics. [Interruption.] The figures for the last year include fraud and are down by 10%.
Let me talk for a moment about police numbers. Some Opposition Members referred to the reduction in police numbers that occurred in the years following 2010, before I was even a Member of Parliament. Let us remember why there was financial pressure in those years. That was because, as the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne), the former Chief Secretary to the Treasury, helpfully said, there was no money left. The economic devastation left by the last Labour Government led to difficult choices. In the past three years, we have hired 21,000 more police officers.
Chris Philp
I will give way in a moment. We now have 149,556 police officers employed in England and Wales. That is more than we have ever had at any time in this country’s history, including 2010. Labour has chosen to look today at neighbourhood policing, which is a subset of local policing. When we look at all local policing, which includes several different subcategories, the number has gone up from 61,000 to 67,000. That includes a number of categories, not just neighbourhood and response.
Chris Philp
I will give way first to the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips), and then to my hon. Friend.
Jess Phillips
I just wonder, as the Minister is doing such enthusiastic cheerleading for his Government, whether he could remind me who the biggest cheerleader was for the mini-Budget.
Chris Philp
I am not sure what that has to do with the devastation that the last Labour Government wreaked on the economy, with the biggest recession for a generation and unemployment at twice the level it is today. I am surprised that the hon. Member wants to talk about the last Labour Government’s appalling economic record.
Let me return to crime and policing, or you will tick me off for being out of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. I acknowledged a moment ago that there are some areas where we need to do better, and shoplifting and antisocial behaviour are two of those, as Members on both sides of the House have said.
Let me start with shoplifting. Across the western world, including in the US, Germany and France, in the past year or two we have seen a considerable increase in shoplifting, and the same has happened in the United Kingdom. While the 29% increase in prosecutions for shoplifting in the past year is welcome, we clearly need to do more. That is why the Government set out a retail crime action plan to do more in this area, as my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling (Tom Randall) said in his excellent speech. That was published just a few weeks ago. It includes a commitment by the police to attend shoplifting incidents where that is necessary to secure evidence, where there has been an assault, or where a suspect has been detained, for example, by store security staff.
It is not acceptable, frankly, that the Co-op has discovered that in about three quarters of cases where its staff have detained an offender, the police did not attend. I have said directly to the police that that is not acceptable, and they have responded with the commitment they have made in the recent action plan. I expect better, and the police have committed to delivering better.
Chris Philp
I promised to give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling, but I will then give way to the hon. Member.
Tom Randall
I am old enough to remember the last Labour Government. They went into the 2010 election promising a £1 billion cut to the Home Office budget, which I am sure would have had an effect on police numbers. Whether it was the coalition Government cleaning up Labour’s mess or the Labour Government cleaning up their own mess, someone would have had to make the difficult financial decisions in 2010 that my right hon. Friend the Minister outlined.
Chris Philp
My hon. Friend has a much better memory than some Opposition Members.
Jim McMahon
If we accept that there was nothing the Government could do about the near quarter of a million cases—the Minister has used the Co-operative Group’s figure himself—where a police officer did not turn up when somebody had been apprehended, is he now saying that, from today, a police officer will turn up to every single call from a Co-op store?
Chris Philp
Chief Constable Amanda Blakeman, who is the National Police Chiefs’ Council lead on this issue, has committed in the retail crime action plan, which I urge the hon. Member to read, that where an offender has been detained, the police will prioritise attendance. I expect all of us in Parliament, and police and crime commissioners, to hold the police to account in delivering that commitment. The police have also committed to identify and target prolific offenders, and to always follow reasonable lines of inquiry in relation to all crimes, not just shoplifting. That includes, for example, always retrieving CCTV or mobile phone footage and running it through the police national database to seek a facial recognition match to identify offenders.
The technology has improved enormously, even in the last six to 12 months. The artificial intelligence that drives it means that images that appear to be blurred or partially obscured, which a year or two ago could not be matched, now can be matched. Always running images from Ring doorbells, mobile phone pictures, dashcam footage and CCTV footage through the police national database will lead to very many more offenders—shoplifters, but also others—being caught. I have asked all 43 police forces across England and Wales to double the use of retrospective facial recognition in the coming year, to make sure that more offenders are caught.
Time is pressing, so let me move on to antisocial behaviour, which a number of Members on both sides of the House rightly identified as a challenge in town centres. My hon. Friends the Members for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis) and for Stoke-on-Trent South (Jack Brereton) both made, in their very different ways, powerful speeches on this topic, as did my hon. Friends the Members for Ipswich (Tom Hunt) and for Broadland (Jerome Mayhew) and others on both sides. Antisocial behaviour is a scourge. It leaves people feeling uneasy when they visit their town centres, and I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich that we need a zero-tolerance approach.
In the last five or six months, we have trialled antisocial behaviour hotspot patrols in a number of police force areas, and they have been extremely successful. In the areas where they have been run—they have been fully funded with extra money, by the way—they have reduced antisocial behaviour by something like 20% to 30%. Staffordshire is one of the counties that has been trialling the patrols, along with Lancashire and Essex. Because the approach has been so successful, we will roll it out across the whole country from April next year. It will be fully funded and that will pay for something like 30,000 hours a year of hotspot patrolling in each police force area, to address the issue of people feeling unsafe or uneasy in town centres. My hon. Friends the Members for Ipswich, for Stoke-on-Trent North and for Stoke-on-Trent South mentioned that in their excellent speeches. It is coming soon; in fact, it is coming as soon as April.
I have set out the actions being taken on retail crime and on ASB, and I have set out the fact that crime is falling and that we have record police numbers, so let me come to the electioneering we heard from the Opposition. The hon. Members for Luton South (Rachel Hopkins) and for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) called for an election in what was an extraordinary display of overconfidence, so let us have a look at what Labour delivers in government.
The last Labour Government delivered fewer police officers than we now have. They delivered double the levels of crime that we now have. In London, where there is a Labour police and crime commissioner, Sadiq Khan failed to recruit 1,089 officers, despite being given money by the Government, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Nickie Aiken) pointed out. He could have recruited them—the money was there—but he failed to do so. Knife crime under Sadiq Khan has gone up, and he was told off by the Office for National Statistics for misleading the public—let us be generous and say that it was unintentional—by claiming that knife crime had fallen on his watch. In the west midlands, where there is a Labour police and crime commissioner, they are looking at closing police stations.
Finally, let us look at the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022. Just a year ago, the Labour party voted against that Bill. Labour Members voted against increasing the sentences for people assaulting emergency workers. They voted against making assaulting a shop worker a statutory aggravating factor. They voted against measures to clamp down on disruptive protests. They voted against making whole-life orders for premeditated child murder mandatory. In fact, in the Bill Committee Labour even voted against keeping rapists in prison for longer, having introduced release at the halfway point in 2003.
We have seen Labour’s record in government and its record in London and the west midlands, and we have seen Labour Members voting against strong legislative measures. The Government have delivered record police numbers and falling crime. We have got a plan on antisocial behaviour and on shoplifting. I commend that to the House.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House condemns the Government’s failure to tackle town centre crime; is concerned that shoplifting has reached record levels, with a 25% rise over the past year and 1,000 offences per day, while the detection rate for shoplifters has fallen; believes that immediate action must be taken to stop the increasing number of unacceptable incidents of violence and abuse faced by shop workers; notes that the number of neighbourhood police officers and police community support officers has been reduced by 10,000 since 2015; and calls on the Government to back Labour’s community policing guarantee, which includes scrapping the £200 limit on crown court prosecutions for shoplifting in the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014, creating a new specific offence of violence against shop workers, rolling out town centre policing plans and putting 13,000 extra police and community support officers back in town centres to crack down on antisocial behaviour.