Crime and Policing Bill

Matt Vickers Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 10th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Matt Vickers (Stockton West) (Con)]

I take this opportunity to thank our brave, hard-working police officers, PCSOs, police staff and volunteers for the huge sacrifices they make to keep our streets safe. I thank all hon. Members across the House for their considered and concise contributions.

The Bill covers a wide array of offences, and we all welcome that. Tackling criminality means equipping the police and enforcement agencies with the powers that they need to lock up dangerous perpetrators to make our streets safer. The Bill contains meaningful and impactful provisions, particularly in relation to knife crime, car theft, retail crime, the sharing of intimate images, child sexual abuse, drug testing and cuckooing among many others.

It is generous of the Government to hold the previous Conservative Government’s work in such high esteem: in fact, about two thirds of the measures in the Bill are copied straight from the previous Government. As was said—I think on several occasions—it is a copy-and-paste job that even the Chancellor would blush over. I thank my right hon. Friends the Members for Braintree (Mr Cleverly) and for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith), alongside many other past and current Members of the House, for their significant work in ensuring that those offences are included in the scope of the Bill. That work will ultimately have a positive impact on the lives of all our constituents. Time does not allow me to talk through all the measures in the Bill [Hon. Members: “Oh.”] I know that hon. Members are disappointed, but I will focus on a few important provisions.

First, let me turn to retail crime. As hon. Members across this House may know, having served as the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on the future of retail and as a former Woolies worker—no one ever questions whether I am old enough—I have been very involved in the campaign to protect our retail workers. I have joined the likes of the hon. Member for Nottingham North and Kimberley (Alex Norris), Paul Gerrard from the Co-op, Helen Dickinson and the team at the British Retail Consortium, the Association of Convenience Stores, USDAW, numerous retailers and others who have worked to deliver more protection for our retail workers.

Back in 2021—during my slightly rebellious phase—I tabled an amendment that helped us to make an assault on a person providing a service to the public a statutory aggravating offence. More recently in April 2024, alongside a suite of measures designed to tackle retail crime, we saw the last Government agree to the creation of a stand-alone offence of assaulting a retail worker. I am glad that that will be taken up by the incumbent Government and hope that it will have a real impact and improve the lives of these important key workers in high streets and stores across the country.

I have two concerns, however, about the Bill regarding retail crime. First, the previous Government’s plans had proposed to make it mandatory for the courts to impose at least a curfew requirement, an exclusion requirement or an electronic monitoring requirement on repeat offenders convicted of shoplifting or the new offence of assaulting a retail worker and sentenced to a community order or a suspended sentence. That had been welcomed by retailers, but the Bill does not include any provisions to this effect. I urge the Government to look again at this, to ensure that we are doing all we can to protect retail workers and avoid what appears to be the watering down of potential protections.

Secondly, on the plans to remove the £200 threshold for shoplifting, while the rhetoric sounds positive, it is untrue to say that theft under £200 was ever decriminalised. In fact, the Government’s own impact assessment tells us that 90% of charges for shoplifting relate to property worth less than £200. There is a fear that measures will lead to further delays to justice being done while not leading to tougher or longer sentences. Victims of retail crime deserve swift justice, not year-long delays while perpetrators continue to offend.

I turn now to further legislative steps that I hope Members across the House will find difficult to oppose. One hugely important measure is the introduction of a statutory aggravating factor, requiring sentencing courts to treat grooming behaviour as an aggravating factor when considering the seriousness of child sexual offences. The Opposition believe that the Government should go further and establish a national statutory inquiry, but it is right that they have brought forward this measure from the Criminal Justice Bill. It recognises the severity of the offence and ensures that third parties involved in the heinous practices of these rape gangs face justice and punishment. We must take every step possible to protect the most vulnerable and ensure that stronger laws are in place so that the terrible crimes of the past cannot be repeated.

Another key measure in the Bill, contained in clauses 96 to 100, expands the ability to conduct drug tests upon arrest. The expansion of the drug testing on arrival programme, introduced by the previous Conservative Government, has already demonstrated the sheer number of individuals found to be under the influence of substances when arrested. Between March 2022 and September 2024, police forces reported a total of 154,295 tests to the Home Office. Of these, 86,207, or 56%, were positive for cocaine, opiates or both. It is therefore right that we expand the drug testing programme to cover as wide a range of class B and C drugs as possible, allowing the police to access the information they need to manage offenders appropriately within the criminal justice system.

I also welcome the efforts to tackle off-road bikes. Having seen their impact on my constituents, I hope that during the passage of the Bill we might consider going even further, maybe even considering suggestions made by Government Back Benchers. We must use this opportunity to ensure that the police have the powers they need, and to examine where further powers are required to ensure that the law truly serves the victims of crime and provides a level of openness and transparency for our police forces so that people can have confidence in our justice system.

Additionally, we should all want to see the police doing what they do best: on the beat, preventing and investigating crime. Their time should not be wasted on matters that the public do not consider a priority. Time and again, we see reports of police officers being sent to respond to incidents that are not criminal in nature while serious offences on our streets go unchallenged. The measures in this Bill to tackle antisocial behaviour signal an understanding that removing crime from our streets must be a priority. However, we must consider whether more can be done legislatively to ensure that police time is used effectively.

I must stress that all the well-meaning measures contained in the Bill are meaningless without a well-funded police force. Forces are—[Interruption.] Forces—some led by Labour police and crime commissioners—are raising legitimate concerns about the level of funding they will receive from the Government. Any reduction in police numbers undermines every element of this Bill, weakening the police’s ability to tackle crime across the country. The head of the Metropolitan police has raised his concerns about potential job losses in our capital city—a city where 30% of England and Wales’s knife crime occurs.

I should note at this point that it is very welcome to see the Government reintroducing many of the measures on tackling knife crime put forward in the Criminal Justice Bill by the previous Conservative Government, including a power to retain and destroy bladed articles on private property and to increase the maximum penalty for the sale of dangerous weapons to under-18s. Given that the financial pressures faced by police forces amount to an estimated £118 million shortfall, there is a real concern that the Government’s actions will contribute to a decline in police numbers. The Government’s police funding increase masks the Chancellor’s national insurance hike on our police forces and their failure to build police pay awards into the baseline.

Moving forward, we will have ample opportunities as a House to scrutinise the legislation and consider potential improvements. Reading the impact assessments and economic notes accompanying the Bill reveals uncertainty about the effects of its various measures. Notably, there is a lack of clarity regarding the number of individuals expected to be imprisoned for certain offences, with significant variation in the estimates provided. The Government must back our police over the criminals and demonstrate the political will to do so. They must provide police with the resources and robust powers they need to keep officers on the beat, deliver swift justice for victims and, in turn, make our streets safer. This Bill is a step forward. Across the House, we all need to support our police officers to tackle the heinous crimes—

[Neil Coyle]

Will the shadow Minister give way?

[Matt Vickers]

Go for it.

[Hon. Members]

Hooray!

[Neil Coyle]

Thank you. On swift justice, will the Opposition Front Bench bring forward amendments regarding the shadow Home Secretary’s position on citizen’s arrest? How many amendments can we expect to see about how the police should respond to citizen’s arrests?

[Matt Vickers]

What the shadow Home Secretary was doing in office was putting more police on the country’s streets than ever before—149,679 police officers. We hope the Government will maintain that as we move forward, but there are lots of question marks around that.

We all need to support our police officers to tackle the heinous crimes that we have heard about in the debate. I hope the Government remain open to considering measures proposed by Opposition and Government Members who are committed to robustly tackling the very behaviours that this legislation seeks to prevent.