Phil Brickell
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Town and City Centre Safety
Phil Brickell Excerpts(1 day, 19 hours ago)
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Phil Brickell (Bolton West) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dowd. Let me start by thanking Westhoughton South councillor John McHugh for his campaigning for measures to tackle antisocial behaviour in Westhoughton, to give residents and firms the confidence they need to go about their business. John has worked extensively with me and with Greater Manchester police, and many of his efforts are not publicly commended but they should be.
Our town centres are the hearts of our communities, which is why I welcome the Government’s new Pride in Place funding for Bolton West. But regeneration, whether in Bolton or Blackrod, Horwich or Westhoughton, will only succeed if we resolutely confront one of the biggest threats to our town centres—high street economic crime. In towns across this country, cash-intensive businesses are being used to launder criminal money, evade tax and undercut legitimate traders. These acts are not victimless. They are predatory. They enable organised crime and drug dealing, drain the public finances, and drive honest businesses out. That is why the Government’s safer streets mission must include tackling economic crime. If there is one thing I know after tackling bribery and corruption for more than a decade, it is that if we want safer streets, we must follow the money.
It is not just an issue of putting more police officers on the streets. Having met officers from Greater Manchester police’s economic crime unit, it is clear to me that any lasting efforts to address and increase safety in our towns must also rely on provision for specialist financial investigators within the police, to go after the same criminal actors who feed off our high streets, carrying out their business in plain sight. I welcome the Government’s decision in the latest Budget to establish a high street criminality taskforce, but for it to work, high street economic crime must be treated as a systemic national threat, with regeneration funding aligned to enforcement. That has to include stronger licensing and registration in high-risk sectors and tougher action against phoenix companies and against serial non-payment of tax and business rates. We can look to what the Dutch have done with their Bibob Act, which has set the way on tackling high street money laundering and been very effective over the years. We also need to see far better data sharing between different trading standards teams, His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, Companies House, the police, and local authorities.