Crime and Policing Bill

Rebecca Smith Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 10th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Chris Philp]

The Metropolitan police, as a whole, does in fact have record officer numbers, but it could have had about an extra 1,500 officers had its police and crime commissioner, Sadiq Khan, bothered to recruit them. In fact, Sadiq Khan was the only police and crime commissioner in the country to miss his recruitment target.

[Rebecca Smith (South West Devon) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that the record of Conservative police and crime commissioners is unlike that of some police and crime commissioners representing other parties in this House? In Devon and Cornwall, Alison Hernandez has overseen the reopening of 14 police front desks. Perhaps police and crime commissioners representing other parties might like to take lessons from that.

[Chris Philp]

My hon. Friend is quite right. Conservative police and crime commissioners do tend to have much better track records on keeping police stations open and delivering lower crime figures.

I want to ask the Home Secretary some questions, and maybe the Policing Minister will respond to them at the end of the debate. Some measures that were in the previous Government’s Criminal Justice Bill have disappeared from this Government’s Bill, and I would be genuinely interested to hear the Government’s thinking on them.

One area that is conspicuously missing from this Bill is the measures on nuisance begging. The previous Government intended to repeal the Vagrancy Act 1824 using a statutory instrument once new replacement measures—contained in the old Bill—were on the statute books. I see that the new Bill, tabled by this Government, does not contain those nuisance begging measures.

Could the Policing Minister, either by intervening now, or in her winding-up speech, tell the House what the Government’s plans are around repealing the 1824 Act—or not—and around nuisance begging? Of course, were they to repeal that Act using a statutory instrument without introducing any new measures, there would be a lacuna in the criminal law. I am sure the whole House would appreciate an update.

Secondly, the previous Government’s Criminal Justice Bill contained a measure to compel perpetrators who had just been convicted of a criminal offence to appear in the dock for sentencing, with a power to use reasonable force to do so. There had been some distressing cases in which someone who had been convicted then refused to appear in the dock to face justice. That measure, as far as I can see, is not in the new Bill, and I would appreciate knowing the Government’s thinking on that.

The third omission I have noticed so far relates to the new offence of assaulting an emergency worker—also announced by the previous Government, I might add. The criminal behaviour order for people who assault a shop worker is welcome, but the previous Bill, as announced, contained a measure that said if someone repeatedly assaulted a retail worker—I think it was three times or more—they would be subject to electronic monitoring: a tag. I do not see that particular provision in this Bill. Again, I would be interested in the Policing Minister’s views on that.

I turn now to a matter that the Home Secretary made a great deal of in her speech, which is the change made in 2014 around shop theft involving goods worth £200 or less. Listening to the Home Secretary and Government communications around this matter, one might think it had ceased to be a criminal offence in 2014. That is, of course, not the case. Shoplifting goods of any value, including under £200, was and always has been a criminal offence, subject to section 1 of the Theft Act 1968.