‘More police in your town, cracking down on anti-social behaviour’ was among the promises made by Labour Party leader Sir Keir Starmer at yesterday’s launch of the party’s manifesto.
The document complains that powers to combat ‘shoplifting have been weakened’, and proposes ‘Respect Orders’, descried as ‘powers to ban persistent adult offenders from town centres, which will stamp out issues such as public drinking and drug use. Fly-tippers and vandals will also be forced to clean up the mess they have created,’ the manifesto states.
It goes on: “With shoplifting soaring, retail workers increasingly find themselves in harm’s way. Labour will scrap the effective immunity for some shoplifting introduced by the Conservatives and create a new specific offence for assaults on shop workers that will protect them from threats and violence.” (As background, such a law is in place in Scotland, and the retail trade union Usdaw recently called for such a law for Northern Ireland.)
The ‘take back our streets‘ part of the manifesto is largely in terms of the police, such as promising to ‘restore neighbourhood policing with thousands of extra officers’. As for violence against women and girls (VAWG), the manifesto states that stalking has not been treated with the seriousness it deserves. More generally it says that government under Labour would ‘no longer tolerate the violence against women and girls that stains our society’, and it promises to ‘tackle the epidemic of serious violence’.
Labour also says that it will introduce a new offence of criminal exploitation of children, ‘to go after the gangs who are luring young people into violence and crime’. On fraud (the number one crime in the UK by volume of offences) a ‘new expanded fraud strategy’ is promised, ‘to tackle the full range of threats, including online, public sector and serious fraud. We will work with technology companies to stop their platforms being exploited by fraudsters’.
On policing, the manifesto proposes a ‘new Neighbourhood Policing Guarantee’; and ‘mandatory professional standards on vetting, checks and misconduct’. As for how it’s going to be paid for, Labour speaks of a ‘new Police Efficiency and Collaboration programme for England and Wales’, to ‘set nation-wide standards for procurement and establish shared services and specialist functions to drive down costs’, besides cutting ‘bureaucracy’.
Acknowledging the shortage in the police of specialist crime-solvers, the manifesto proposes a direct entry scheme for detectives, ‘to boost investigation skills’. The document also makes promises on prisons (‘increasingly dangerous, plagued by drug use and violent disorder’) and the probation service (suggesting ‘a more joined-up approach to reduce reoffending’).
Comments
The think-tank the Social Market Foundation commented that on criminal justice the Labour manifesto was not vastly different from the Conservatives‘, launched earlier this week.
Paddy Lillis, Usdaw general secretary, said that the union fully endorsed the Labour manifesto and was urging its members to vote Labour on July 4. He said: “The Government’s dither and delay on retail crime has left thousands of shop workers needlessly suffering physical and mental injury. In stark contrast, Labour is committed to deliver a much-needed protection of shop workers’ law; end the perverse £200 threshold for prosecuting shoplifters, which has effectively become an open invitation to retail criminals; and provide more uniformed officers patrolling shopping areas along with town centre banning orders for repeat offenders.”
Visit https://labour.org.uk/change/take-back-our-streets/.
Photo by Mark Rowe: Lewes Prison wall, Sussex, June morning.
