Police Presence on High Streets

Debate between Iain Duncan Smith and Gill Furniss

Thursday 5th June 2025 Westminster Hall

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)]

It is a privilege to be here with you in the Chair, Ms Furniss. I congratulate the hon. Member for Birmingham Erdington (Paulette Hamilton) on securing the debate. Some people might look at this debate and think that this is not really the most important thing in life, but our constituents want to be able to go down their shopping streets without the fear of any threats. They want to shop calmly without seeing the shelves stripped of goods, being threatened and watching shop- keepers pinned against walls. What they want is policing, which is their right.

With the time limit there will not be enough time to cover everything. Police numbers are always the issue, but we should look at what took place in New York at one particular point. The key rule is not just more police, but more effective police. It is the effectiveness that I want to dwell on. Even when we have the police numbers, effectiveness is often not the priority. I have had a series of issues over the high streets in my constituency. One is in the Broadway in Woodford and the other one is in Station Road. A key element in a lot of these shopping areas is the position of the larger shops such as Boots, the Co-op or Tesco—the shops that bring people on to local shopping streets to get things. But then people go off to the smaller shops, so it is important for trade to get the balance right.

The problem is that there are gangs now on the street sending people in—they walk in; they do not run. I have seen them strip between £3,000, £5,000 and £10,000 of goods off the shelves in Boots, or the Co-op. They go into all the big shops and they are photographed, but we discovered the other day that the shops had given up on sending that data to the police. As a result, the police said they did not think that this was a priority area because they did not get a full record of the crime. If the shops do not go to the police, the police do not record the crime and do not put police on the street. Without police on the street, crime increases and the likelihood of it being reported gets less and less. That is not down to the small shops, because they are the ones that bear the brunt of the violence. It is the big shops and the chains.

We held a meeting the other day with three or four of the big shops in Station Road. When I say “big”, they are small, local versions of Amazon and other shops, such as Boots and so on. We discovered that not one of them was bothering to record any of the crime or to get it to the police. When we spoke to the police, they said, “We have had no record of this.” That is not to say they do not know that crime is taking place—they do—but the reality is they work on the statistics. We asked the shops, “Why are you not reporting the crime?”, and a manager said, “We are not rewarded for it by the big shops. The truth at the end of it all is that we do not see any return.”

We have now instigated a system where we have set up a WhatsApp group for shopkeepers on the street so they can report the crime in the small shops. They say they will report the crime, provided the police actually react to it, come on to the street and make arrests. There is a third element to this. The police often get disenchanted about it, because when they arrest these people and take them away, they get released pretty quickly as there is no space for their case—they are often back on the streets the same day as they were arrested. The issue is more effective policing. We asked them to go on to the street in civilian clothes, because the offenders just move around when the police are there in uniform. The police did that and they made a series of arrests, which sent a shockwave through the gangs.

The point that I will end with is that there is a huge amount to be done, but antisocial behaviour—of which shoplifting is a critical component—is arguably the most dangerous element on our streets. As the hon. Member for Birmingham Erdington said, if we lose control of that, drug dealing and gangs take over. Shoplifting should be the priority. Make our streets safe and there is fair chance we will be able to catch the big criminals later on.

[Gill Furniss (in the Chair)]

I will be putting in a formal four-minute limit, which means that Members will be cut off after four minutes. Can Members try to get their speeches in within that time, so we can ensure everyone gets to speak?