Town Centre Safety

Barry Sheerman Excerpts

Tuesday 5th December 2023 Commons Chamber

[Alex Norris]

Policing is a reserved matter, as the hon. Gentleman says, but the experience of communities like his is reflected across all our four nations. That is why I said to his hon. Friend, the hon. Member for North Shropshire (Helen Morgan), that we ought to have that staffing kit as well as the equipment in order to try to protect the public.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

I represent the Labour and Co-operative party and I have great sympathy for shop workers who are being harassed and attacked, and having a really tough time. Does my hon. Friend agree that we need not only more community police, but far better co-operation with the big supermarkets and their staff, and for them to bring together a whole team to protect both shoppers and those who are serving?

[Alex Norris]

I am grateful for that intervention from my Co-operative party colleague, because I can express our pride that the Co-operative party is spearheading this work in Parliament. I agree that there needs to be work between retailers and staff, but we should take pride in the work that has already gone on between retailers and the unions. They are in lockstep on this, which is not always the case, and that co-operation is a great asset in this fight.

Even when the Government have attempted to reverse the disastrous implications of cutting 20,000 police officers, they have failed, because in adding back officers, they have squeezed out police staff and moored warranted officers away from the frontline, so we are 10,000 neighbourhood police short of the previous figure, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Rushanara Ali) said. Each officer is another gap in that thin blue line, allowing criminals to run amok. Half the population say they rarely see police on the beat, a figure that has doubled since 2010.

However, we know that the Minister for Crime, Policing and Fire has a cunning plan, which he unveiled last week at Home Office questions. To beef up the number of neighbourhood police, the Government are now going to count response police as neighbourhood police. That is risible nonsense. The clue is in the name: neighbourhood police are out on the streets, in their communities, providing a named presence, and building trust and relationships. The dynamic is different.

Neighbourhood police can be proactive, go to local community projects, get to know people, and build trust and relationships. That is a different dynamic from response police, who might attend a community event, but then a day later be in a situation down the road where they have to put in someone’s door or supervise a significant or difficult moment in a community. The relationship with the community is inherently different.

Similarly, response police can be called away at a moment’s notice, to the other side of the force area. It is simply not the same and it is deeply worrying that the Government think that it is. It represents a triple failure: officers cut, officers added back in the wrong place and now other types of officers being rebadged. They are failing communities and failing our hard-working police.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alex Norris]

I will not take lectures on police numbers from a member of a party that cut them. As I said to his hon. Friend, the hon. Member for Rother Valley (Alexander Stafford), those are devolved matters. As a Government, we will make available the resourcing for 13,000 more police and police and community support officers.

[Mr Sheerman]

My hon. Friend is making a very good speech. We want to protect shop workers and stop shoplifting—it would be wrong to say that we did not—but in my constituency, which is similar to that of my hon. Friend, poverty stalks our land. The gap between rich and poor means that the country is the most divided I can remember in my 44 years in Parliament. There are desperate people in our communities. I do not approve of any of them breaking the law, but does my hon. Friend agree that it would be dishonest for any of us to pretend that poverty does not stalk this land?

[Alex Norris]

I do agree. One of the core missions of a future Labour Government will be to tackle that poverty and give everybody the opportunity to live full, productive and happy lives.

Secondly, on our policing guarantee, we will tackle antisocial behaviour in our town centres head on. In particular, we pledge to introduce new respect orders that will give the police and local communities the right tools to exclude from town centres those who repeatedly disrespect them. They will be a quick, effective tool that tilts the balance back to the vast majority of people who do things the right way.

Thirdly, we will stand up for shopworkers. We will scrap the disastrous £200 downgrade in the 2014 Act and thereby make it clear to thieves that open season is over and to retailers that we value their businesses. In the same vein, we will heed the call from USDAW, from all the major retailers and from all the representative bodies for a new specific offence of assault against a retail worker. As a Labour and Co-operative party Member of Parliament, I am proud to have spearheaded attempts to recognise assault against retail workers as an aggravating factor in sentencing, but we need greater clarity in the law. Having it as a sentencing factor alone does not seem to be acting as a deterrent, so we need a specific offence, as there is in Scotland thanks to the excellent work of Daniel Johnson MSP. That will send a clear signal to those who perpetrate attacks that it is not acceptable, and make it easier for the police to police this scourge.

Fourthly, we want to put communities back into community policing. Too often, people tell us that they feel policing is done to them rather than with them, and that they do not think that local policing priorities necessarily match their own. Much of the problem is about resourcing, given the Government’s denuding of police our forces. Our commitment is for town centre planning so that those who live, work, play and trade in our town centres will get to have a say in how they are protected. There will be proper community police plans to reflect the community’s priorities, with a named officer to work with as the plans develop.

Fifthly, the final component of our community policing guarantee is that we will restore the value and cachet of community policing. We will ensure that the path to career progression in policing is through officers getting to know their community, and that all neighbourhood officers have the skills and training to be problem solvers as well as recorders of crime. We will also work with the College of Policing and police chiefs to ensure that neighbourhood policing has access to cutting-edge technology and methods, including data analytics and hotspot policing.

That is our community policing guarantee. Taken in its aggregate, it is by far the boldest commitment to keeping our town centres safe that has been made in recent memory. That is the scale of ambition that we ought to see from the Government, but we simply do not.

This is good moment to talk about the Criminal Justice Bill, which is to some degree an attempt to address some of the issues we are debating. We did not oppose it on Second Reading and intend to work constructively in Committee to improve it. There are good things in the legislation—we are glad to see an enhanced focus on fraud; to see the police given powers to address issues that annoy our constituents, such as the search and seizure of stolen items that are GPs tracked; and to see greater flexibility around public spaces protection orders—but is that really it? This is the final year of this parliamentary term and we have a crime Bill that is tougher on homeless people than it is on those who terrorise our town centres. There is nothing on retail crime and nothing on neighbourhood policing. We will look to add measures in Committee, but we should not have to.

The Government can take the first step to addressing the situation by accepting our motion, but I fear that they may well not be minded to do so. I fear that we will hear the same messages we always hear: an attempt to convince the British public that they have never had it so good on policing—record this or record that—or that in some way our proposals will happen soon. [Interruption.] The right hon. Minister for Crime, Policing and Fire has not learned from the Home Secretary the lesson about chirping from the Front Bench. I say to him that the British public do not buy those arguments and deserve better. If he genuinely believes that the status quo is better than what is offered by those on the Opposition Benches, let us let the British public decide. Ask them whether they have never had it so good, or are ready for change. I will take my chances with them any day.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.