Oral Answers to Questions

Rosena Allin-Khan Excerpts

Monday 13th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Bobby Dean (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)]

2. What steps she is taking to improve the effectiveness of community policing.

[Dr Rosena Allin-Khan (Tooting) (Lab)]

11. What discussions she has had with the Metropolitan police on the effectiveness of community policing.

[Perran Moon (Camborne and Redruth) (Lab)]

17. What recent progress her Department has made on improving neighbourhood policing.

--- Later in debate ---

[Yvette Cooper]

The hon. Member is right to talk about the deep frustration felt in communities, including local businesses and town centres, about not just the absence of neighbourhood policing, which we need to turn around, but the weakening of powers over the past 14 years on things such as shoplifting. That is why we are introducing new respect orders and strengthening powers on shoplifting and assaults on shop workers.

[Dr Allin-Khan]

We all know that well-resourced neighbourhood policing, with bobbies on the beat working in the community, is central not just to solving crime but to preventing it. We saw some great results in Tooting just last year, with a special operation resulting in a 70% cut in crime. Fourteen years of Tory government have decimated our local police teams, despite our brilliant London Mayor pulling out all the stops to bolster the numbers. Will the Secretary of State pledge that our local communities will have properly resourced policing teams under the new Labour Government?

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend is right about the importance of having neighbourhood policing teams working in communities with local residents and businesses, knowing the kinds of crimes and challenges that that area faces. That is why we are determined not just to get neighbourhood police back on the beat, with funding in place to do so, but to ensure that, as part of a neighbourhood policing guarantee, the officers are not abstracted to deal with other things.