A Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill, part of the King’s Speech made by King Charles III at the state opening of Parliament, will see the forming of a Border Security Command.
This was among the first announcements by the Home Secretary Yvette Cooper after Labour’s general election victory of July 4. More on this link; and in the August print edition of Professional Security Magazine.
A Crime and Policing Bill will include Respect Orders, ‘to tackle persistent adult offenders’ according to background notes by the Government. Also proposed are ‘fast-track’ Public Spaces Protection Orders (PSPOs) that will, the notes state, ‘make it quicker and easier to clamp down on rapid escalations in street drinking’, and new powers ‘to tackle the dangerous and anti-social use of off-road bikes’.
On retail crime, proposed are a specific offence of assaulting a shop worker (as already law in Scotland) and ‘stronger measures to tackle low level shoplifting’. As for violence against women and girls (VAWG) Labour promises more vaguely a ‘stronger, specialist response’. As background, the Government says that crime against retail is increasing; and that violence against women and girls is ‘high-harm and high-volume’, while the criminal justice response to VAWG offences is described as ‘poor’.
More generally the Government complains that confidence in policing is falling; and that criminals are going unpunished. “Since March 2015, the percentage of crime recorded that lead to someone being charged has dropped from 15.5 per cent to 6.2 per cent, meaning that in 2023 over two million crime investigations were closed with no suspect identified.”
Comments
Richard Hyde, Senior Researcher at the think-tank the Social Market Foundation said: โWhile a number of the provisions in the Crime and Policing Bill are likely to be seen by many as welcome tweaks to existing laws and accelerating useful trends that will increase efficiencies for example, especially against local criminality, the overall impact on crime is likely to be small as it does not, on the face of it, look like it will contain provisions to deal with the biggest volume crime affecting people in England and Wales, namely fraud. It is a crime that brings misery to millions of people each year with a significant international dimension. The law enforcement record against fraud is poor and the Bill does not appear to propose any changes to the orientation and organisation of the law enforcement response nor the kinds of overhauls to the workforce or long-term resourcing that need to put in place if law enforcement is to have the capacity and capabilities to make a big positive impact on fraud.โ
Chris Brook-Carter, chief executive of the charity Retail Trust, called the legislation a big step in the right direction for supporting the wellbeing of retail sector workers. He said: “Almost half of retail workers have told the Retail Trust they now feel unsafe at work, with 90 per cent experiencing physical or verbal abuse and more than one in three shouted at, spat on, threatened or hit every week.
โWe simply canโt allow this level of lawlessness in the countryโs shops and streets to continue. There needs to be stronger warnings that this behaviour is completely unacceptable and real shifts in how incidents are handled and so, if the legislation is to prove truly effective, the police will also have to be properly resourced so they can take the appropriate action in arresting and prosecuting offenders.
โCurrently, a quarter of workers tell us they donโt report abusive customers; because they donโt think it will make a difference, they have been put off by previously unhelpful responses from the police or because there just arenโt the right policies, training or support in place. Therefore retailers also have an important role to play in ensuring staff have the right support and feel able to report abuse. This includes implementing the right security measures and reporting procedures, offering training for handling difficult situations, and ensuring a culture where staff feel their concerns will always be heard and acted upon.โ
For the charity’s findings about a rise in retail crime last year, visit the Retail Trust website.
And commenting before the King’s Speech, Paddy Lillis, general secretary of the shop workers’ trade union Usdaw complained that Toriesโ ‘dither and delay’ on retail crime had left thousands of shop workers needlessly suffering physical and mental injury. He said: “We look forward to Labour delivering a much-needed protection of shop workersโ law; ending the indefensible ยฃ200 threshold for prosecuting shoplifters, which has effectively become an open invitation to retail criminals; and funding more uniformed officers patrolling shopping areas along with town centre banning orders for repeat offenders.”
Photo by Mark Rowe; police van parked in front of Cable Street mural, London E1.
