Crime and Policing Bill

Clive Jones Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 10th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Tristan Osborne]

I could not concur more. Police funding and police officer numbers have resulted in fewer fines being issued for many types of crime. In fact, the Bill will give the police more powers to challenge nuisance biking and other offences. The Bill is an absolutely necessary first step.

[Clive Jones (Wokingham) (LD)]

On Saturday, I visited quite a few retailers in Wokingham. There was no police presence at all in the town, despite crime occurring hourly in our shops. Someone is always shoplifting. Thames Valley police has only 198 police officers per 100,000 people, which is well below the national average of 245. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that is not enough?

[Tristan Osborne]

I agree that insufficient police numbers in recent years resulted in a shoplifters’ charter under the last Government, when people were allowed to shoplift up to a set amount.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Tipton and Wednesbury (Antonia Bance) for her Westminster Hall debate last week, and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Luke Akehurst) for his ten-minute rule Bill on nuisance biking. The number of reckless bikers and boy racers who tear through our streets and churn up our parks has significantly increased in previous years. Under the previous Government, the weak section 59 of the Police Reform Act 2002 effectively allowed these bikers to get away with a slap on the wrist.

I welcome the measures in this Bill that will allow these vehicles to be seized, which will send a message that those who are caught with these vehicles will lose that asset immediately. Kent police called for these powers when I went on an operation in November and witnessed the cat-and-mouse tactics of perpetrators and the resources needed to impose these extremely weak penalties.

Knife crime has surged since 2010 and disproportionately affects younger people. The Bill gives the police new stop-and-search powers in high-crime areas, allowing law enforcement to be much more proactive in intercepting potential threats. I welcome this measure, specifically in areas of high knife crime in the urban centres of Chatham and Aylesford.

The digital age has produced new avenues for crime. As many colleagues have mentioned, that includes child sexual exploitation, as well as exploitation and violence against women. The Bill will introduce more powers to challenge stalkers and strengthen protections against child sexual exploitation. I am a former teacher, and I had to look at safeguarding cases involving online activity on a weekly basis. Without these additional powers, it will be increasingly difficult to catch the malign influences that are harming our young people.

I believe that the Bill will also enhance police transparency and accountability. It improves police training, focusing on de-escalation techniques and mental health awareness. It equips officers with the skills necessary to handle a wide range of situations with sensitivity and professionalism. We know police officers do this every day, but we also know that the diversity of challenges they face requires new training.

As colleagues have said so eloquently, domestic violence is often a hidden crime that leaves victims feeling trapped and powerless to escape. The Bill strengthens the legal framework for protecting victims by introducing new provisions for protective orders, including the ability to ban a perpetrator from returning to a victim’s home even before their trial. It also mandates better support for victims, offering increased access to legal and social services.

This Bill is not just about laws; it is about lives, safer streets, protecting communities, and justice that truly serves the people. It represents a forward-thinking, balanced approach to law and order and public safety. It provides our police with the powers they need to combat crime, supports our justice system to deliver fair and effective sentences, promotes greater community engagement and, most importantly, ensures that victims of crime and our communities receive the care and protection they deserve.

[Callum Anderson (Buckingham and Bletchley) (Lab)]

I am pleased to support the Bill, which will be welcomed in urban and rural communities across Buckingham and Bletchley. Given the time constraints, I will focus my remarks on part 3, on the protection of retail workers.

I have a particular interest in Britain’s 3.5 million retail workers, not least because my mum is one of them, having worked on the shop floor at Morrisons for over 20 years. During that time, she has seen it all—the good, the bad and the ugly. In my conversations with her, particularly over the last decade, two themes have become much more prevalent, and they have already been raised by Members on both sides of the House.

The first theme is the increasingly casual and habitual nature of shoplifting and other retail crime. Data from the British Retail Consortium suggests that this is already costing businesses across the country more than £2 billion a year. In the Thames Valley police area, retail crime rose by over a third between April 2023 and February 2024. This year alone, the Co-op store in Winslow has faced two violent raids aiming to remove its cash machine. This is not just petty crime; too often, it is organised. It is this kind of emboldened criminality that must be stopped. Such activity is not just a blot on a company’s balance sheet; it punishes good-faith customers and demoralises the workers, who take pride in the work that they do. That is why I welcome the repeal of section 176 of the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014, to finally call time on Britain’s open invitation to criminals to steal goods worth £200 or less.

Secondly, I want to touch on the growing occurrence of abuse and the threat of violence faced by too many shop workers in their workplace. In a 2024 survey of USDAW members, more than two thirds of retail workers revealed they had been verbally abused, almost half had been threatened, and one in five had been physically assaulted while doing their job. That is clearly totally intolerable. Nobody in this country should go to work fearing for their own physical safety. I believe that we in this House, with our security guards and our armed police, have a particular duty to ensure that those who work in our shops feel just as safe as we do.

[Clive Jones]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Callum Anderson]

I will not, just because there is so little time and too many people want to speak.

That is why the Bill’s introduction of the new offence of assaulting a retail worker is so important. It is also why I welcome the new respect orders, which will give the courts the power to ban repeat offenders from retail premises. Ultimately, this is a Bill that delivers for retail workers and ensures they are given the respect and dignity they deserve. That is why I will be supporting it tonight.

--- Later in debate ---

[Connor Naismith (Crewe and Nantwich) (Lab)]

I begin my remarks by reflecting on the non-attendance throughout the debate of Reform MPs. It appears that they spend more time these days litigating against each other than they do legislating in this place.

When I knock on doors in Crewe and Nantwich or sit in my constituency surgery, I too often meet people who live in perpetual fear in their own community. The thing that those people have in common is that they want to see neighbourhood policing restored, and I am proud that this Government are committed to doing that. Anybody with a set of eyes could see that neighbourhood policing was decimated under the previous Government, despite what the shadow Home Secretary said earlier.

[Clive Jones]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Connor Naismith]

I will not, because I am conscious that others wish to get in.

My constituents also tell me that they want to feel as if the police are equipped with the powers that they need to grip the problems that leave people fearful on the streets or, worse, in their homes. Rising antisocial behaviour has been a scourge on our streets, affecting my constituents’ businesses, their livelihoods and even their health.

A young woman contacted me recently about the young males who make her and her children’s lives a misery by bomb-knocking and kicking her door in the evenings, and shouting “bitch” as they pass her home. My constituent Steve told me at my constituency surgery over the weekend that his family’s life is being made a living hell by a small number of social housing tenants, and the housing provider has so far failed to take any action to address that. That is why I fully support the introduction of respect orders, which will allow a number of agencies, including housing providers, to place restrictions on that kind of behaviour.

I declare an interest: I started my working life as a shop worker, first in Woolworths—yes, I am old enough—and then in betting shops, a part of the retail sector that has, unfortunately, never been a stranger to violence and intimidation for workers. However, as I found out when I met James, the manager of my local Co-operative store in Crewe, brazen crime and the intimidation of shop workers have become commonplace, even in our local convenience stores.

I believe that the Bill will make a lasting difference to the lives of my constituents. Business owners, workers and decent law-abiding people just want to live in a community where they feel safe. These powers are ambitious, and we must ensure that they deliver real, lasting change for the people who need it most.