Crime and Policing Bill

Deirdre Costigan Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 10th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Deirdre Costigan (Ealing Southall) (Lab)]

The legacy of the Conservative Government’s 14 years in power is one of failure to keep us safe, and it is felt every day in my constituency of Ealing Southall. On Guru Nanak Road, King Street and Western Road in Southall, drug dealing is a common sight and makes the area feel unsafe for everyone. The police do not have enough resources, so the Singh Sabha gurdwara has had to employ its own patrols, at a cost of thousands of pounds, to keep its worshippers safe.

Hanwell clock tower has become a magnet for street drinkers. The police try to move them on, but they just do not have the powers under the weak laws left by the Conservatives. In west Ealing, drug dealers openly ply their trade, even sitting in residents’ front porches when they are out, while the police cannot do much about it. Across London, it is not safe to take a phone call on the street, as people are liable to have their phone snatched. On top of that, fly-tipping increased by one third under the previous Government, making local neighbourhoods feel neglected and unloved—of course the drug dealers, phone thieves and street drinkers moved in.

Under the last Labour Government, there were six police and community support officers for every single ward in Ealing Southall, but the Conservatives cut £1 billion from policing in London, so we are lucky to have a couple of local officers per ward. They are not dedicated to the area, like they used to be—they get pulled to Brent, Harrow or central London. Under the previous Labour Government, the police also had stronger powers; the Conservatives actually reduced police powers. Labour has already started the work to bring back neighbourhood policing and to recruit 13,000 new officers, with £320 million of extra funding for police in London. We will ensure that police officers get back out on the streets, instead of doing admin work like they were doing under the previous Government.

This Bill will give those new officers the tough powers they need to tackle antisocial behaviour and crime, with 50 new laws to make our streets safer. Our new respect orders will mean that the police can stop street drinkers from congregating at Hanwell clock tower and stop drug dealers from coming into west Ealing and Southall. If people break respect orders, the police will now be able to arrest them immediately and take them to court, where they can face up to two years in prison. The police will be able to drug test more people on arrest, and respect orders will require that drinkers and drug users access rehab services to break the cycle of dependency.

The Bill will also give police the power to search a property without a warrant where they have evidence that there is a stolen electronic device inside. I had my own phone stolen a while back; I could see on the internet that it was in east London, but the police could not do anything about it. This law will now mean that police can use “find my phone” apps to go after phone thieves and get stolen property back.

I am delighted that as part of this Bill, the Secretary of State will issue statutory guidance to local councils to help to ensure a more consistent approach to fly-tipping. Ealing Council is the No. 1 borough in the country when it comes to issuing fixed-penalty notices against fly-tippers, but it needs help to do more. Under the Conservatives, fly-tipping was allowed to spiral and was seen as a low-level crime, but it blights communities. I know that this Labour Government are looking at further steps we can take to punish fly-tippers and to reduce waste in the first place.

After 14 years of the Conservatives leaving local people in Ealing Southall to put up with open drug taking, street drinking and snatch thefts, Labour is giving the police back the power and the resources to take the tough action needed to make our streets safe again.

Crime and Policing Bill

Deirdre Costigan Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 17th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Lizzi Collinge (Morecambe and Lunesdale) (Lab)]

It is worth being absolutely clear about what new clause 1 would and would not do. It would simply remove the threat of prosecution for women who end their own pregnancy: it would not change the abortion time limit, which remains. The rules around telemedicine remain. The requirement for two doctors to sign off remains.

In recent years there has been what I consider to be a worrying rise in the number of people being investigated, prosecuted and even imprisoned under the law. These prosecutions are deeply distressing and, in most cases, entirely disproportionate. It is far more common for a woman to miscarry or to miscalculate the stage of her pregnancy than to wilfully break the law.

To fully address the question from my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Mr Perkins), I do not think it is right, in the context of what is actually happening in investigations and prosecutions, that any woman should be prosecuted. The harm caused by the number of investigations and prosecutions where it is absolutely not justified outweighs that.

[Deirdre Costigan (Ealing Southall) (Lab)]

A constituent came to see me yesterday and explained that when she was 16 she was coerced into a forced marriage by her family. She had not been allowed to have any sex education, so when she became pregnant she did not even realise. It was only when her mum noticed that she managed to access a legal abortion, but she told me that she could have been in a situation in which she would have had to get out of that marriage in order to have a late abortion. Does my hon. Friend think it would be in the public interest to go after women such as my constituent who were in forced marriages? Is that helpful?

[Lizzi Collinge]

I absolutely think it is not helpful to go against those women. New clause 1 would retain the criminal prosecution of men who force women to have an abortion, or indeed anyone who coerces a woman into having an abortion. One in eight known pregnancies end in miscarriage, yet we have seen women subjected to invasive investigations, delayed medical care and lengthy legal processes because they have had an abortion or a stillbirth.

Many colleagues have already spoken about the intense distress that legal proceedings inflict, whatever the circumstances. In the case of Nicola Packer, it took four years to clear her name. During that time, the scrutiny she faced was entirely dehumanising, with completely irrelevant matters treated as evidence of wrongdoing. For every woman who ends up in court, many more endure police investigations, often including phone seizures, home searches and even, in some cases, having children removed from their care. All that not only is distressing and disproportionate for those women, but makes abortion less safe. If women are scared of being criminalised, they will not be honest with their midwives, GPs or partner. Abortion is healthcare, and healthcare relies on honest conversations between care providers and patients.

I will rebut a bit of the misinformation that says that new clause 1 would allow abusive partners or others to avoid prosecution. That is simply not true. NC1 applies only to the woman who ends her own pregnancy. Healthcare professionals who act outside the law, and partners and other family members who use violence or coercion would still be criminalised, just as they are now, and quite rightly so.

The amount of misinformation about abortion is distressing—I have seen it within and without this Chamber. What are the facts? Some 88% of abortions happen before nine weeks. As a woman who has lost two very-much wanted pregnancies at about that stage, I am very aware of what that actually means physically, and of what stage the foetus is at then. Abortions after 20 weeks make up just 0.1% of all cases, and those are due to serious medical reasons. Women are not ending their pregnancies because of convenience.

NC1 would not change what is happening with abortion care, but it would protect women from being dragged through these brutal investigations, which are completely inappropriate in the majority of cases anyway. Women are extremely unlikely to try to provoke their own abortion outside the time limits. A criminal sanction for that, or a distressing and intrusive investigation, is entirely disproportionate. It is not in the public interest to subject these women to these investigations.

I will finish with this: women who have abortions, women who have miscarriages and women who have children are not distinct sets of women. Many of us will experience at least two of those things, if not all three. Let us stop making false distinctions and trying to pit groups of women against each other, and let us stop brutally criminalising women—many of them very vulnerable women—in the way that the current law does, because it serves no purpose. Today, we can end that.