Crime and Policing Bill

Luke Evans Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 10th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend is right. The Bill introduces stronger action on retail crime. I thank the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers, the Co-op, the British Retail Consortium, the Association of Convenience Stores and more for their determined campaigning over many years to protect shop workers. They are the staff who kept their shops open and kept our local communities going through the pandemic, but in recent years they have had to face a truly disgraceful escalation in threats, abuse and violence. Our party has campaigned on this measure for very many years. Through the Bill, we will introduce a specific offence of assaulting a retail worker, sending the message loud and clear that these disgraceful crimes must not be tolerated, because everyone has a right to feel safe at work.

[Dr Luke Evans (Hinckley and Bosworth) (Con)]

The Home Secretary has talked about neighbourhoods and communities, but I have not heard her talk about the rural communities that I represent, and the rural crime force. What will the Bill deliver for them? I am very lucky to be in Leicestershire, where we have a rural crime team, which saw crime drop by 24% in its last report, but machinery being taken has a massive impact. Can she talk me through any measures that are being brought forward that will benefit my community?

[Yvette Cooper]

The hon. Member is exactly right to draw attention to that. Our rural communities see different kinds and patterns of crime, but it is very often driven by organised gangs who think that rural communities will be a soft touch. We have sometimes seen that with GPS machinery for factories; we believe that stronger action is needed there. The Minister for Policing, Fire and Crime Prevention is working with the National Police Chiefs’ Council on a new rural crime strategy. I know that she would be happy to follow up on any specific issues that the hon. Gentleman wants to raise.

Too often, crimes are dismissed as low level, even though they leave residents in a living nightmare and corrode community life, so here are the things that this Labour Government’s Crime and Policing Bill will change. We are introducing new respect orders that the police and courts can use to ban repeat offenders from town centres, or to put new requirements on repeat perpetrators in order to prevent them causing havoc in the community—for example, requirements to take up drug or alcohol treatment.

Currently, the police cannot immediately seize bikes or vehicles that are being used in a dangerous, intimidating or antisocial way. They give a warning and have to hope that they catch the same person again, but that means that there can be two, three, four or endless strikes against the person, and the bike will still be on the road. Frankly, one strike should be enough. Under the Bill, if the police find somebody using a bike or a vehicle in a dangerous or antisocial way, they can seize it straightaway and get that dangerous, damaging bike off the road.

We will give the police stronger powers to tackle the rising amount of snatch theft. We will all know constituents, friends or family members who have had their phone stolen, and who could track it, maybe through Find My iPhone or a similar service, but when they told the police where their phone was, nothing was done. We will give the police new powers, so that where they have electronic evidence from tracking technology on the location of stolen goods, they can enter and search premises without waiting for warrants to be put in place. Ministers are also working with tech companies and the police to pursue stronger action on designing out and disincentivising phone theft, so that we can go after the criminal gangs making people’s lives a misery by stealing phones on the street.

We will take stronger action on shoplifting. Some 10 years ago, the Conservative Government introduced a new £200 rule, categorising shop theft below that amount as low value. That sent the signal, which has shaped the police response ever since, that such crime should not be taken seriously. It became a Tory shoplifters’ charter—a signal to thieves and gangs across the country that they could operate with impunity, wandering from shop to shop and stealing away because nothing would be done. That kind of crime spreads. It creates a sense of lawlessness, and huge anger and frustration among the law-abiding majority, who see criminals getting away with it and respect for the law hollowed out. This Government will finally end the damaging £200 rule.