Town Centre Safety

Jerome Mayhew Excerpts

Tuesday 5th December 2023 Commons Chamber

[Jerome Mayhew (Broadland) (Con)]

I am grateful to the Opposition for calling this debate, because it spans the interests of every party, although apparently not the Liberal Democrats or the Scottish National party. For those who are taking part in this debate, keeping our town centres safe is enormously important. That includes all sorts of concerns, stretching from public disorder not only to more serious violence on the streets and low-grade antisocial behaviour, which can be an absolute scourge in our communities, but—this is particularly important for this debate—to shoplifting and violence associated with it.

That takes me to the meat of the motion that Labour has put forward for our consideration today. Its primary suggestion is that we need a new offence to deal specifically with violence against shopworkers. Presumably the argument behind that is that the offence against shopworkers is so different from other workers or other people on the high street that the tariff associated with that offence will be in some way different.

I listened carefully to what the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Alex Norris) said in his opening remarks, but it left me confused, because as he is well aware, we already have section 156 of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022, which deals specifically with assaults on those providing a public service. I think it is common ground among us all that that includes shopworkers. Under the terms of section 156, which I will not read out—I will spare the House that—an assault against a shopworker is considered an aggravating factor. That leads us to the tariff.

Labour’s position appears to be—I would welcome further clarification on this, perhaps in the wind-ups—that there is something so peculiar about a shopworker receiving violence that the aggravating factors cannot be taken into account adequately under section 156. I do not understand what aggravating factors cannot be associated with the section 156 consideration. Surely the best person to decide the correct tariff is always the judiciary. That is the judge, who has all the evidence in front of them, assisted by legislation that clarifies in their mind what is and is not an aggravating factor according to the views of Parliament, and assisted by the sentencing guidelines. That is the right forum to decide the tariff for this kind of offence.

If we start going down to individual offences, so that we have a specific offence for shop workers, what about bus drivers? They are public servants who are exposed to the public. It is clearly outrageous when bus drivers are assaulted by the public in the course of their duties, which they are. What about that offence is less serious and requires a different tariff from those of shop workers? That is the logic of this motion from Labour. My concern is that by going for an eye-catching initiative—my suspicion is that this motion has been tabled to get a headline—Labour is doing an enormous disservice to the criminal justice system, when we need to empower our courts to assess the gravity of offences and let the judiciary, assisted by the sentencing guidelines, come to the right tariff .

I note in passing that Labour voted against Third Reading of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022. In my submission, we already have sensible legislation that deals with aggravating features for people serving the public, which those on the Government Benches voted for and Labour voted against. It begs the question: why was the measure so bad then and why is it so good now?

The second part of Labour’s plan is the roll-out of something called a town centre policing plan. Perhaps Opposition Members failed to notice that on 23 October, the Government launched their own retail crime action plan. There are striking similarities, because our plan changes the priorities of the police and requires them to prioritise attendance at shoplifting, particularly shoplifting with violence, shoplifting where a suspect has been detained and shoplifting where it is necessary for the police to attend to secure evidence. Those are exactly the kind of things that we want the police to attend, to reinforce the public’s faith in the argument that every crime needs to be investigated and brought to justice. As my hon. Friend the Minister mentioned from the Front Bench in her opening remarks, no crime is too small to be investigated. The plan also prioritises hotspot patrols by the police, and it sets up Pegasus, which is the specialist policing team to deal with organised crime using shoplifting gangs as a mechanism to drive revenue. It is important that that is dealt with, too, and I am glad that the retail crime action plan tackles that.

Labour appears to be announcing or, rather, re-announcing what is already Government policy. That leads me to the third part of its plan, which is to announce 13,000 extra police and PCSOs to be used in town centres. I mention in passing that the comfortable majority of that number is PCSOs, not police officers. That appears to be dressing up a £360 million investment and ignoring the £3.6 billion investment that the Government have already put into the police, generating 20,000 extra police officers in the past three years. [Interruption.] From a sedentary position, the hon. Member for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones) says that we cut them. I can tell her that we have 1,897 police officers serving in Norfolk right now—more than ever before. That is an increase of 269 officers, which is driving down crime and increasing the capture of criminals in Norfolk, particularly in Broadland.

I wonder whether we should have confidence in Labour’s plans. It is either re-announcing Government plans or going for an eye-catching initiative, rather than looking for serious changes to the legislation. Let us look at Labour’s action in practice. Recorded crime is 34% higher in areas with Labour police and crime commissioners than in Conservative areas. The lived experience of all our constituents is that when Labour is in charge, crime is much higher, yet the Conservative record is that non-fraud crime has fallen since 2010. There has been a 50% fall in reported crimes, but let us look at the gold standard, which is the crime survey of England and Wales. By March 2023, our constituents’ experience of crime had dropped by 15% since before covid, and by a whopping 54% since 2010. That is even higher than the reported crime reduction.

Finally, I had a conversation with a seasoned senior officer in Norfolk, who said, “When I started out, if we had had the crime numbers that we have now, I’d have bitten your arm off.” Crime has fallen under the Conservative Government, and we should recognise that in this debate.