Writing for The Mirror, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper says the Tories wrote off ‘low-level’ crimes and let anti-social behaviour spiral – leaving people feeling scared on their own streets
It is time to take back our town centres from antisocial behaviour, thugs and thieves.
Too often the crimes they commit are dismissed as low-level. But if it’s your phone that’s been snatched, your shop that’s just been raided, or your town centre that’s been taken over by thugs, it doesn’t feel low-level at all.
These are the offences and antisocial behaviour that make people stay away from their shopping precincts or feel scared on their own streets, and there is nothing low-level about that. But for too long, the Tories wrote off those types of crimes and let them run rife.
Just like they ignored the rising crisis of young people carrying knives, and the epidemic of violence against women and girls. As I travelled the country in the run up to the last election, time and again I heard the same thing from people I met.
That they didn’t see the police on the streets any more, that respect for law and order had dropped, and that if they reported a crime, no one would come and nothing would be done. And when I met the victims of the worst crimes – the mothers of innocent teenagers killed with knives, and the families of young women murdered in their own homes – there was the constant question: why did no-one do anything to prevent their loss?
Over the last eight months as Home Secretary, I have been determined to get police back on the streets, to rebuild confidence in communities and town centres, and to tackle the most serious violence on our streets – restoring trust and reducing serious harm. That is why the Labour Government’s Plan for Change has committed to putting 13,000 additional police officers, PCSOs and special constables into neighbourhood policing roles.
And we have set a historic and unprecedented mission not just for Government but for the whole country of halving knife crime and violence against women and girls over the next decade. Now we have the chance to take further practical steps towards those goals, through the Crime and Policing Bill we are introducing to Parliament today.
Our new Respect Orders will place tough curbs on persistent offenders, including banning them from town centres and making wider use of ankle tags. Where stolen phones have been tracked, we will give the police special warrantless powers of entry to the premises so they can move fast before the phones are moved on again.
A specific offence of assaulting a retail worker will be introduced and we will end the Tories’ ludicrous £200 limit which means so much shop theft has been ignored. We will crack down on the online sale and delivery of knives, with more stringent age checks and tougher penalties for anyone who sells deadly weapons to children.
There will be stronger measures to protect women from stalking and spiking, to stop sex offenders changing their names, and impose tougher sentences on dangerous predators who groom children. And we will create new offences of cuckooing and child criminal sexual exploitation to tackle the vile drug gangs who take over people’s homes and turn children into their dealers.
It is an ambitious and wide-ranging Bill, but the central message running through every measure is the same one we gave to people out on the election trail last summer. We will work with the police and communities to make our streets feel safer again. We will never write off the crimes that make people scared to go out. Our local town centres belong to us, not the local thieves and thugs, and it’s time to take them back.
The British people elected this Government to deliver change – and that is what we are working every day to deliver. That means making sure our country is secure and every one of us feels safe. Because if people fear for their safety, then they cannot thrive.
But with the foundation of security, we can build a better, fairer Britain.
