As part of a series of articles about how the Labour Government is doing, in terms of crime prevention, Mark Rowe looks at the flagship Crime and Policing Bill, and in particular the five-hour debate on it by members of Parliament, before the Bill went for line by line scrutiny in committee.
As the last to speak, Home Office minister Dame Diana Johnson called the Bill ‘wide-ranging and ambitious’; the ungenerous might call it a ragbag, as it includes (to quote from the opening speaker, the Home Secretary Yvette Cooper) antisocial behaviour, shoplifting and street theft, stalking, spiking of drinks, online and child sexual abuse, the buying of knives online, and the recruiting of children into crime by gangs. Such is the nature of catch-all crime and policing bills, a bewildering mix of the important and specific; the equivalent under the Tony Blair government, that became law as the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, included the end of the death penalty for treason and piracy.
Litmus test
The bill is a litmus test for what new ideas Labour has to offer, going beyond the cliches – Yvette Cooper duly closed with two (‘the bill safer streets mission is at the heart of our plan for change’). On that reckoning, Sir Keir Starmer’s government has less to offer than did Tony Blair’s. That 1998 Act opened with antisocial behaviour orders (ASBOs). While mocked at the time, ASBOs like the Act’s requirement that local government do something about crime, addressed one of the central truths in crime prevention; that police since at least the 1960s (due to ever-rising property crime) have stated that they cannot beat crime themselves. That the amount of crime is greater than public resources implies a further truth; that unless taxes are to rise by more than the public wants, some, maybe most, volume crime has to be taken out of the criminal justice system of arrest, charge, court appearances and prison and treated in less expensive ways. Hence ASBOs have stood the test of time, even if they have new names – criminal behaviour orders now, and as proposed by Labour in 2024, ‘respect orders’.
Duty
The Bill, as Yvette Cooper said, will ‘create a new duty to report child sexual abuse, backed up by criminal sanctions for those who seek to cover up abuse by preventing or deterring someone from carrying out the duty’.
On change
Yvette Cooper later in the debate made plain her appetite for change – to be exact, change for the better, to reduce crime: “Decade after decade, we have uttered warm words in the House, but too little has changed. It is imperative that we take action, not just through the Bill but across the board.” Yet as a London Labour MP, Andy Slaughter pointed out, ‘the criminal justice system is in a bad way’; he mentioned the full prisons and backlog of crown court cases. We might add; what then is the point of tweaking, or adding laws?!
Early on in the debate, Yvette Cooper acknowledged the everyday crime: ‘I and many others will have heard the same story too many times—shop owners who say that thieves have become increasingly brazen; crime driven by organised gangs; elderly shoppers who say that they do not go into town any more because they do not feel safe’. On shop theft, one of the July 2024 intake of Labour MPs, Jo White, said: ‘I have seen food stolen before my eyes.’ In reply to her, Yvette Cooper said ‘we will introduce a specific offence of assaulting a retail worker, sending the message loud and clear that these disgraceful crimes must not be tolerated, because everyone has a right to feel safe at work’. This showed the tendency for a government of any political colour to address a crime with a law; and yet, the prisons are full and the crown courts have an unprecedented backlog; probation is in a state; what goes unaddressed is: what’s the point of arresting more, or any, thieves, if that drops them onto the start of a criminal justice conveyor belt that isn’t working?
Passing legislation is not a substitute for genuine and sophisticated police and criminal justice reform, as the Conservative MP Nick Timothy said during the debate; and who was one of only two MPs (our of ‘about 57’ backbenchers, according to Dame Diana Johnson) to even mention fraud (to repeat; the biggest volume crime). Little, unglamorous parts of the Bill may make a tangible difference (for the better), such as the provision to cap court costs for enforcement agencies, welcomed by the other MP to mention fraud, Phil Brickell (Bolton, Labour), who, significantly, pointed to his ‘almost 15 years tackling economic crime’ before he was one of the July 2024 intake. He put it to his own Government: “Economic crime costs us around £300 billion every year, yet less than one per cent of police resources are dedicated to tackling it, so why not make the criminals pay?”
Labour MPs, understandably, queued up to welcome the Bill, and to shoe-horn a mention of their constituencies into their remarks. Each and every day it’s going mad. Shoplifters roam the streets from six in the morning every day. We are losing more than £500. Our safety is on the line. On crime against retail, an east London MP Calvin Bailey quoted an unnamed supermarket worker in Leytonstone: “Each and every day it’s going mad. Shoplifters roam the streets from six in the morning every day. We are losing more than £500. Our safety is on the line.” He aired the fear that people would come to regard crime against retail as normal, just as others (speaking in Parliament and outside) say the same about scams over the phone, and knife-carrying and violence.
For the Conservatives, Matt Vickers welcomed the Bill as ‘a step forward’ and for containing ‘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.’ As he added, ‘about two thirds of the measures in the Bill are copied straight from the previous Government’. On retail, he made the point that ‘it is untrue to say that theft under £200 was ever decriminalised’; as, to leave the debate, the Home Office acknowledges; it states that the threshold of £200 was a ‘perceived immunity granted to shop theft of goods to the value of £200 or less’.
Winding up the debate, the Home Office minister Dame Diana Johnson mentioned that ‘broader police reforms’ will be in a White Paper later in the spring.
