Crime and Policing Bill

Anna Dixon Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 10th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

Still no apology for the deep damage the Conservatives have done. Let us be clear: they halved the number of PCSOs, and they cut the number of neighbourhood police officers, probably by more than 10,000, but we cannot be precise about that, because their measuring of neighbourhood police officers was so ropey and all over the place that we cannot be certain what the cuts were precisely.

This Government are committed to increasing neighbourhood policing and PCSOs by 13,000. In the first year, the neighbourhood policing increase will be funded by £200 million. That funding is already delivering plans from police forces across the country, which we will set out in due course, to increase the recruitment of new police officers and PCSOs, and redeploy some police officers, whose posts will then be backfilled through the recruitment of other new police officers and staff—[Interruption.] Conservative Members should hugely welcome these measures, because they mean that we will get police back on the streets, and into our communities and neighbourhoods, for the first time in years.

[Anna Dixon (Shipley) (Lab)]

Antisocial behaviour is breaking communities in places like Windhill, Baildon, Cottingley and Denholme. It is a direct result of the cuts made to neighbourhood policing by the Conservative party. When I speak to local residents, they express concerns about the misuse of fireworks, drug dealing, fly-tipping and the dangerous use of e-bikes and scooters. Will the Secretary of State reassure me and my residents that as part of the safer streets mission, the new neighbourhood police will tackle antisocial behaviour in communities like mine, as a matter of urgency?

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend is exactly right that we need the police back on the streets. Let us be honest: everyone can see this in their community. People know. Conservative Members may think that everything was hunky-dory at the end of their 14 years in government, but communities across the country can see the reality. As part of our neighbourhood policing guarantee, we need to get more boots on the beat, and we need more town centre patrols by officers who know the community and are trusted by them to go after local perpetrators and prevent persistent crime. These are not outlandish demands—they are just the basics. We need a return to the Peel principles that lie at the heart of British policing, including the principle that the police are the public and the public are the police. We need trusted officers in the community, working to keep people safe.

The Bill gives neighbourhood police more powers to tackle the local crimes that undermine and damage communities: antisocial behaviour, street theft, shoplifting, harassment in our town centres. In too many areas, those powers were too often weakened. Travelling around the country, I and many others will have heard the same story too many times—shop owners who say that thieves have become increasingly brazen; crime driven by organised gangs; elderly shoppers who say that they do not go into town any more because they do not feel safe; people who have had their phones stolen in the street, with all the details of their life ripped away from them; and residents driven mad by the soaring number of roaring off-road bikes and scooters driven in an antisocial and intimidating way.

In the two years before the election, shop theft went up by more than 60%. Snatch theft, mainly the theft of mobile phones, went up by more than 50% in two years. Thousands of such crimes were reported every single day, yet the police have been left with too few powers to act. Too often, because of changes made by the Conservative Government 10 years ago, they have been left with weakened powers to tackle those antisocial behaviours and crimes.