Town Centre Safety

Jim McMahon Excerpts

Tuesday 5th December 2023 Commons Chamber

[Laura Farris]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that intervention. I accept without reservation that there is considerable courage and selflessness in being a first responder whose job and duty is to run towards danger when everybody else is running away from it.

Let me begin with the simplest facts. Since 2010, neighbourhood crime—the crimes that undermine the fabric of communities and make people feel unsafe in their homes and on their local streets—has fallen. The crime survey for England and Wales, which the Office for National Statistics described as

“the best estimate of long-term trends in crimes against the household population”,

shows that since 2010 overall crime levels are down by more than 50%. Violent crimes as a whole, which include crimes that involve any form of offensive weapon, are down by 52%. Theft overall, which includes domestic burglary and the theft of a vehicle—some of the most invasive thefts that go directly to a person’s sense of personal security—has almost halved since we came into office. Domestic burglary currently stands at its lowest ever level.

[Jim McMahon (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does the Minister accept that the workplace is a personal place for those who work there? The Co-op Group has reported that in the year to date some 300,000 incidents of abuse and violence have taken place in shops up and down the country. Employees who are just there to sell to the public in their community are the victims of abuse and, in some cases, violence, but the police do not even turn up to 76% of reports, so how can people feel safe going to work?

[Laura Farris]

I will come specifically to shop workers. I have no difference of opinion with the Opposition on the points about the role of shop workers and some of the issues that affect them personally, and I reassure the hon. Gentleman that I will come to that.

There are today more police officers in England and Wales than at any other point in our nation’s history—

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[Laura Farris]

The hon. Gentleman asks a fair question, and I will have to get back to him on that. I know that the number in my part of the Thames Valley is quite low, but that may not extend to Reading. He deserves an answer on that, and I will get one to him.

The Government have also ensured that the police have the resources they need. This year they received record funding of above £17.2 billion. That is an extra £550 million for frontline policing compared with last year. I gently remind those on the Opposition Benches that they voted against our police funding settlements every single year between 2016 and 2019.

I want to draw our attention down to community level and make a few observations. We have had a commitment from the National Police Chiefs’ Council—it was announced in August, as the hon. Member for Nottingham North will recall—that the police will follow up on all reasonable lines of inquiry and that there is no offence too small. That commitment is intended to offer huge reassurance to the public. It was also this Government who introduced the safer streets fund, which has been in receipt of £120 million already, for 270 projects covering all 43 police forces in England and Wales, and which is complemented by the StreetSafe app.

All that kind of thing can seem quite microscopic, as though it only affects individual streets or individual parks, reporting a broken light or a dark and dangerous corner of a popular area for jogging. The point is that people can report the area and action will be taken, and all that contributes to improving the fabric of communities up and down the United Kingdom.

I want to spend a moment on retail crime, which I will deal with in two parts: first I will cover shoplifting itself, and then I will move on to assault on retail workers. I take issue, very respectfully, with the suggestion that somehow the Government are being complacent in shoplifting. The Government are clear that we expect the police to take a zero-tolerance approach to shoplifting and violence towards shop workers. I want to disabuse anyone of the notion that somehow we have decriminalised shoplifting offences below £200.

I gently draw the shadow Minister’s attention to the following. In 2020, the National Business Crime Centre surveyed police forces in England and Wales, asking whether they had a policy of not responding to shoplifting if the goods were worth less than £200. Not one force in England and Wales said that it had such a policy. He will know as well as I do that the National Police Chiefs’ Council recently produced a retail crime action plan, which included a commitment to prioritise police attendance at the scene where violence had been used against shop staff.

[Jim McMahon]

I accept the explanation that it is not a written policy, but how does the Minister explain that in 76% of the 300,000 sample cases, the police did not turn up?

[Laura Farris]

It is difficult for me to identify every single complaint and whether somebody has attended, but one thing I think is relevant is that the increase in shoplifting that we have regrettably seen over the past 12 months has been met by a corresponding and equivalent increase in the volume of charges for shoplifting offences. Charges are up by 29% in the past 12 months. I gently draw the hon. Gentleman’s attention to that.

I want to talk specifically about offences against retail workers. I invite the hon. Member for Nottingham North to answer this point when he closes—it is not put in an aggressive way, because I recognise the role that retail workers perform and it is completely unacceptable that they should be subject to violence in the line of their duties, but it is already unlawful to commit an act of assault. It is criminalised under the Criminal Justice Act 1988 and the Offences against the Person Act 1861.

The hon. Gentleman knows, because we have already had this discussion, that there is a statutory obligation to treat the fact that an individual is a retail worker as an aggravating factor. He has identified the fact that the trade unions support a new law, but I say very respectfully that the judges do not, the Crown Prosecution Service does not and the police forces I have spoken to do not. The practitioners in this area of the law do not support a new law. Even though he has made that point, he has not identified any case where he considers there to have been a miscarriage of justice because the laws were not sufficient to offer protection. It is not enough simply to assert that we need new laws without setting out clearly why the existing statutory protection does not succeed.

Let me now turn to the issue of antisocial behaviour—it is not minor or trivial, and I make no bones about that. It is probably the principal crime that all MPs hear about, irrespective of the constituencies we represent. I want to reassure the hon. Gentleman that we have taken a range of legislative and non-legislative action. A new antisocial behaviour action plan was introduced earlier this year, backed by £160 million of funding to ensure that our commitments have real teeth. He will be aware of the hotspot patrolling pilot that has been conducted across 10 police forces and is about to be rolled out on a national basis because of its success.

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[Jim McMahon (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab/Co-op)]

The reason why we are all in the Chamber for this debate is that we understand the importance and significance of our town centres and high streets. They are our community, they are our economy, and in large part they are the heritage of our place—that is why we hold them so dear. Every town centre is different, unique in its character; even within constituencies, we recognise that. I see it myself in Oldham, Chadderton and Royton: each has its own identity, its own place in history, and its own role in the community.

Over the past decade or more, though, we have not just seen the usual changes that take place over a lifetime. Town centres have always had to change: they had to change when the rise of the shopping centre changed the traditional long high street, when the retail parks opened and when online retail took off. They have always adapted and changed, but now it feels like a combination of factors are undermining the potential of our town centres to thrive and have a place in the future, and some of them come at the direct behest of the Government. If we accept that our town centres are important for our community, our economy and our heritage, those are the things that will be affected if we do not take action.

Let us list some of the changes that will be familiar to every single community—almost nowhere in the country is protected from these changes. Banks, including banks that were bailed out by the taxpayer and are owned by the state, are closing high street branches. In the past 10 years, nearly 8,000 branches have closed, which of course affects local jobs, but also reduces the footfall in town centres and high streets. In some cases, if people cannot go to the bank, they do not have a reason to go into town at lunchtime. There are some exceptions—Nationwide, a mutual, has made a commitment to ensure that its branch network is maintained—but we do not see the same commitment from many high street operators. That is undermining our town centres.

[Sir Gavin Williamson (South Staffordshire) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman is making a very important and valuable point. The development of banking hubs in some towns, such as in Stone following the loss of Lloyds bank, will have a big impact. Does he agree that banking hubs should be rolled out across many more towns in his constituency and mine?

[Jim McMahon]

I do agree with that—in fact, it is Labour party policy to create those banking hubs—but we should not have got into this position to begin with. It should have been required by law that the last bank in town has a community responsibility. There is not a single bank in Royton or Chadderton district centre; we would have to build a hub from scratch, because when the Lloyds and Halifax closed in the respective towns, the Government took no action to say, “Hang on. We have already lost five, six or seven banks. We need to make sure at least one remains, so that there is consumer choice.” There will be a lot of making-up to do when the election comes; it will be done, but I am afraid we will be starting from a very low point. However, I accept the right hon. Gentleman’s generous point about the importance of those banks.

We have had 9,000 shops close in the last decade, affecting 125,000 jobs in their communities: 41% of those were clothing shops, 19% sold household goods and 10% were convenience stores. Thinking about convenience stores, whether it be the local Co-op, Tesco Express or Morrisons, where will the cash machine be after the bank closes? The bank closes, the post office closes and the convenience store closes, and there is no cash machine for people to take out money from the bank, leading to financial isolation in many places.

Pubs are the beating heart or the anchor of many communities, and the place where people can get together to tackle loneliness and isolation. Particularly in industrial towns such as mine, the buildings of significance on the high street—where the heritage is really brought out and we get the character of the place—are the church, the pub and the town hall. In many places, those big assets are under threat. Some 13,600 pubs have closed in the last 10 years—the numbers are down 22%.

If we look at the public sector, in my town of Oldham—a town of a quarter of a million people—thousands of jobs are being taken away from the town centre. Those are people who do not go out to lunch to buy a sandwich and do not support local retail. More than that, it removes a sense of identity and of belonging in a place, and it has an impact on how safe people feel there. The Government have not just closed our county court and our magistrates court, but caused the closure of so many police stations that there is not a single custody cell in our town. Even if somebody was arrested for violence against a shop worker, they would be taken out of town to be processed. The chief superintendent in my town says that that has a material impact on the decisions officers take about arrests being made and people being taken to custody, because they cannot afford to take a whole day out from the frontline on the beat for that. It is having a material impact.

[Jess Phillips]

My hon. Friend talks about the time that takes up for police officers. I was sat recently with my ill father for 24 hours in A&E—not just a TV programme—and I noticed that there were three shift changes of police officers to sit with somebody who was also waiting for 24 hours in A&E, so the crushing of public services elsewhere is detrimental for our police forces.

[Jim McMahon]

We do see that, as I will come on to say a bit later. In Oldham town centre, we have a lot of conversions from offices, pubs and retail to houses in multiple occupation. A lot of complaints are caused by that concentration of high-demand social problems, but there is not the back support that used to be there for drug and alcohol abuse, domestic violence and on-street offences. In the end, the police are the only number people call because they are the only ones who might turn out. The point about attendance at A&E is absolutely right. In many places, the police are not just upholding the law, but trying to keep society together because all else has given way.

We see these problems much more broadly, even beyond the public sector and in local government. Our HMRC office has closed and the Department for Work and Pensions office has closed, taking hundreds or thousands of staff away from the town centre. We are also seeing cuts to arts and culture: local theatres have closed and local community organisations have withdrawn services away from towns.

More than that, in the face of such decline, local authorities have been disempowered in dealing with what follows. We have seen offices that used to provide footfall and jobs for the local community being converted, with no consideration of the capacity and infrastructure of the local community, to substandard accommodation—we call them guinea pig hutches because they are so small, and they do not provide the right living standards—or to HMOs in which people have shared accommodation. The Government’s housing benefit changes in relation to financial provision for under-21s are adding to that social problem. The market has been completely changed, so when we walk down a high street, what used to be a pub, a bank or a shop is completely blank. We can walk from door to door without seeing a single shopfront because they have been converted to that type of residential use, with all the issues that brings.

Another issue is ownership. The Government could bring in a register of beneficial ownership so that we know who owns our high streets. The trouble many local authorities have is that a building can be empty and boarded up for decades or generations, attracting antisocial behaviour, but they are not able to take any action because they cannot find out who the owner is. If the owner is registered at that address, but they are not there, how on earth does the local authority find out who owns it? Many owners are offshore or around the world. The Government could make that change, but they choose not to do so.

On taxation, how odd is it that with business rates, someone is taxed before they can take a penny through the till? They are taxed to open the shop door. They can take not a single penny through the till during a trading day, and they will pay to exist. There is no other form of taxation that charges people to exist; it is usually charged on the income they receive or the profits they make. That is not the case with business rates, and that is having a material impact on the survival of shops.

On transport and accessibility, how many bus routes have been cut so people cannot get into town? Especially in rural and coastal communities where the service is not as frequent, when it gets cut, how on earth do people get anywhere near their town centre?

On crime and antisocial behaviour, many MPs in the Chamber will have attended their local high street and town centre for Small Business Saturday, when we of course celebrate independent retailers, and they will have heard the same story that I have heard from Maggie Hughes, who owns a clothing shop called Zutti in Oldham. It is a staple of our community: it has been there for 40 years, and everybody knows and loves Maggie and the staff who work there. She is also the vice-chair of the town centre board. She said that she is fearful for the street and the way it is declining, because of antisocial behaviour and crime. For the first time ever, I had to wait to be buzzed in before I went through the door because, for her own safety and that of the shop workers, she has had to put a security lock on the door. That is not right.

It is not right that people go to work fearful for themselves and for their staff, let alone for their stock. Most retailers accept that, to a degree, they are going to get some marginal loss of stock, as they call it. However, they do not at all accept that the staff who are there to work—by the way, many of the employees in retail jobs in town centres are female—are vulnerable not just to theft, but to people turning violent if they are challenged. Even more than that, if when they are challenged they are detained, staff can call the police, but the police do not even turn up in the majority of cases.

We can see how all this is adding to the perfect storm, which is why the Co-operative party, USDAW, the Labour party and Co-operative Retail Services are demanding a change in the law to protect shop workers. It is not enough for this to be an aggravating factor; it has to be a stand-alone offence. This Parliament makes laws that we expect shop workers to uphold—on cigarette sales, on alcohol, on knives, on fireworks—and they deserve the protection of this Parliament in protecting our communities, so no more words; let us see action on that front.

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[Chris Philp]

I am not sure what that has to do with the devastation that the last Labour Government wreaked on the economy, with the biggest recession for a generation and unemployment at twice the level it is today. I am surprised that the hon. Member wants to talk about the last Labour Government’s appalling economic record.

Let me return to crime and policing, or you will tick me off for being out of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. I acknowledged a moment ago that there are some areas where we need to do better, and shoplifting and antisocial behaviour are two of those, as Members on both sides of the House have said.

Let me start with shoplifting. Across the western world, including in the US, Germany and France, in the past year or two we have seen a considerable increase in shoplifting, and the same has happened in the United Kingdom. While the 29% increase in prosecutions for shoplifting in the past year is welcome, we clearly need to do more. That is why the Government set out a retail crime action plan to do more in this area, as my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling (Tom Randall) said in his excellent speech. That was published just a few weeks ago. It includes a commitment by the police to attend shoplifting incidents where that is necessary to secure evidence, where there has been an assault, or where a suspect has been detained, for example, by store security staff.

It is not acceptable, frankly, that the Co-op has discovered that in about three quarters of cases where its staff have detained an offender, the police did not attend. I have said directly to the police that that is not acceptable, and they have responded with the commitment they have made in the recent action plan. I expect better, and the police have committed to delivering better.

[Jim McMahon]

rose—

[Chris Philp]

I promised to give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling, but I will then give way to the hon. Member.

[Chris Philp]

My hon. Friend has a much better memory than some Opposition Members.

[Jim McMahon]

If we accept that there was nothing the Government could do about the near quarter of a million cases—the Minister has used the Co-operative Group’s figure himself—where a police officer did not turn up when somebody had been apprehended, is he now saying that, from today, a police officer will turn up to every single call from a Co-op store?

[Chris Philp]

Chief Constable Amanda Blakeman, who is the National Police Chiefs’ Council lead on this issue, has committed in the retail crime action plan, which I urge the hon. Member to read, that where an offender has been detained, the police will prioritise attendance. I expect all of us in Parliament, and police and crime commissioners, to hold the police to account in delivering that commitment. The police have also committed to identify and target prolific offenders, and to always follow reasonable lines of inquiry in relation to all crimes, not just shoplifting. That includes, for example, always retrieving CCTV or mobile phone footage and running it through the police national database to seek a facial recognition match to identify offenders.

The technology has improved enormously, even in the last six to 12 months. The artificial intelligence that drives it means that images that appear to be blurred or partially obscured, which a year or two ago could not be matched, now can be matched. Always running images from Ring doorbells, mobile phone pictures, dashcam footage and CCTV footage through the police national database will lead to very many more offenders—shoplifters, but also others—being caught. I have asked all 43 police forces across England and Wales to double the use of retrospective facial recognition in the coming year, to make sure that more offenders are caught.

Time is pressing, so let me move on to antisocial behaviour, which a number of Members on both sides of the House rightly identified as a challenge in town centres. My hon. Friends the Members for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis) and for Stoke-on-Trent South (Jack Brereton) both made, in their very different ways, powerful speeches on this topic, as did my hon. Friends the Members for Ipswich (Tom Hunt) and for Broadland (Jerome Mayhew) and others on both sides. Antisocial behaviour is a scourge. It leaves people feeling uneasy when they visit their town centres, and I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich that we need a zero-tolerance approach.

In the last five or six months, we have trialled antisocial behaviour hotspot patrols in a number of police force areas, and they have been extremely successful. In the areas where they have been run—they have been fully funded with extra money, by the way—they have reduced antisocial behaviour by something like 20% to 30%. Staffordshire is one of the counties that has been trialling the patrols, along with Lancashire and Essex. Because the approach has been so successful, we will roll it out across the whole country from April next year. It will be fully funded and that will pay for something like 30,000 hours a year of hotspot patrolling in each police force area, to address the issue of people feeling unsafe or uneasy in town centres. My hon. Friends the Members for Ipswich, for Stoke-on-Trent North and for Stoke-on-Trent South mentioned that in their excellent speeches. It is coming soon; in fact, it is coming as soon as April.

I have set out the actions being taken on retail crime and on ASB, and I have set out the fact that crime is falling and that we have record police numbers, so let me come to the electioneering we heard from the Opposition. The hon. Members for Luton South (Rachel Hopkins) and for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) called for an election in what was an extraordinary display of overconfidence, so let us have a look at what Labour delivers in government.

The last Labour Government delivered fewer police officers than we now have. They delivered double the levels of crime that we now have. In London, where there is a Labour police and crime commissioner, Sadiq Khan failed to recruit 1,089 officers, despite being given money by the Government, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Nickie Aiken) pointed out. He could have recruited them—the money was there—but he failed to do so. Knife crime under Sadiq Khan has gone up, and he was told off by the Office for National Statistics for misleading the public—let us be generous and say that it was unintentional—by claiming that knife crime had fallen on his watch. In the west midlands, where there is a Labour police and crime commissioner, they are looking at closing police stations.

Finally, let us look at the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022. Just a year ago, the Labour party voted against that Bill. Labour Members voted against increasing the sentences for people assaulting emergency workers. They voted against making assaulting a shop worker a statutory aggravating factor. They voted against measures to clamp down on disruptive protests. They voted against making whole-life orders for premeditated child murder mandatory. In fact, in the Bill Committee Labour even voted against keeping rapists in prison for longer, having introduced release at the halfway point in 2003.

We have seen Labour’s record in government and its record in London and the west midlands, and we have seen Labour Members voting against strong legislative measures. The Government have delivered record police numbers and falling crime. We have got a plan on antisocial behaviour and on shoplifting. I commend that to the House.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House condemns the Government’s failure to tackle town centre crime; is concerned that shoplifting has reached record levels, with a 25% rise over the past year and 1,000 offences per day, while the detection rate for shoplifters has fallen; believes that immediate action must be taken to stop the increasing number of unacceptable incidents of violence and abuse faced by shop workers; notes that the number of neighbourhood police officers and police community support officers has been reduced by 10,000 since 2015; and calls on the Government to back Labour’s community policing guarantee, which includes scrapping the £200 limit on crown court prosecutions for shoplifting in the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014, creating a new specific offence of violence against shop workers, rolling out town centre policing plans and putting 13,000 extra police and community support officers back in town centres to crack down on antisocial behaviour.