Sarah Jones
MP for Croydon West · Labour · United Kingdom
“It might go to a port or pass through three or four different forces, but because of the nature of the 43 police forces, the system is not joined up. Our reform programme will help with those kinds of serious, specialist crime.”
“I should touch on the funding that we have put in place following the awful attacks that we have seen in recent times and an absolutely dismal story of antisemitism and violence to which we as a Government have had to respond.”
“For example, if a car enters Russia there are no checks on who owns it and whether it is stolen or not, so basically as soon as that car gets to Russia, off it goes. Some vehicles are sent into warzones, such as Ukraine, via nearby countries, and the more high-end vehicles are sold on to be used in other countries in the normal way.”
“A whole body of work is therefore being undertaken, and the annual “State of extremism” report will be published. Several Members talked about universities, which are incredibly important, and referred to a powerful report that I have also read. Members quoted some absolutely shocking statistics.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Allin-Khan. I thank the hon. Member for Eastleigh (Liz Jarvis) for securing the debate. I start by thanking the National Police Chiefs’ Council lead in this area, Assistant Chief Constable Sarah Grahame, and her colleague Oli Fisher, who lead the work nationally on our response to vehi…”
“Neighbourhood policing is an important part of the picture, but we need to address large criminal gangs nationally. Some bodies are doing really good work in this area.”
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“As the hon. Gentleman knows, the inquiry is entirely independent, so it is not for us to say where it should lead. I know that the inquiry will shortly announce the first tranche of areas that it will go to, so he will be able to see the that soon.”
“My hon. Friend can be reassured that this inquiry has all the powers it needs to go, without fear or favour, to find the answers we all seek. This issue is too important for us not to have ensured that, so we absolutely have. I know that the Minister for Safeguarding will be in contact with her counterparts in the Scottish Government to make sure we are joined up in in our approach.”
“As the hon. Lady says, we have quashed convictions for people under 18 who were tried for prostitution—a very important part of this picture—and Louise Casey is suggesting that we go further. At the moment, victims can come in and apply, and I think she wants a more proactive response, so we are working on more proactive guidance for victims.”
“As I have said, the inquiry is independent of the Government, as is right and proper. I suggest he speaks to Anne Longfield, who is leading this work, or her panel. When they make their announcement, I am sure people will say, “Well, what about other areas?” I am sure they will be working through that and dealing with the priorities as they see them, and I am sure they would welcome input from my hon. Friend.”
“I am sure he has uncovered the most grievous harm and talked to victims of it, and we want to make sure that they see the Government are acting in the most appropriate way.”
“First, I reassure the hon. Gentleman that we are not waiting three years until the inquiry’s report to act. We are already doing a lot of work, as I have outlined—such as Operation Beaconport to reopen cases—and we are using the legislative process to do what we need with data collection and ending the statutory rape definition. We are doing a whole raft of work, and we of course have our wider piece of work on violence against women and girls, with our ambition to halve it in 10 years. I hope the hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Rupert Lowe) is talking to Anne Longfield, who is chairing the independent inquiry and will take all information from all places. I hope he is feeding his information to her, and that if he has criminal evidence he is passing that to the police.”
“I could not agree more with my hon. Friend. We all have a duty to try to use language in a way that does not incite hatred and division. Of course, there are very strong feelings around this area in particular, because the crimes are so heinous and there was so much that was wrong about the way that the state, in all its forms, responded to those crimes. I understand the anger, but I urge all hon. Members to be careful with their language. We have all seen, in real life, the impact of what we are seeing online. That can be very scary and very dangerous, so I urge everybody to treat this issue with the respect it deserves.”
“I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question. On ethnicity, we will legislate in the police reform Bill, which will come before Parliament shortly, to ensure ethnicity is recorded in the way that I think everyone in this House wants. He will know that we have increased very substantially the number of foreign national offenders being deported. Since the previous Government, there has been a big increase. That is quite right, and we will continue with that. We will continue to do the work across all our Departments to make sure that people are acting in the way that they should. There is a whole raft of work under way across multiple Departments to make sure of that.”
“When people mention, for example, kids hanging about outside the illegal shops and doing things that we think they should not be doing, the police will be there to tackle those problems. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Halesowen again for securing this debate, and I thank all Members—”
“At the moment, every time there is a new issue, we have to set up a structure to tackle it at national level. The national police service will be there to do that. It will bring together the National Crime Agency, counter-terrorism and all the other national organisations. We know that some of this money laundering is driving terrorism, for example, and at the moment two different bodies are tackling that. Bringing it all together and having co-ordination at the centre will help. At the bedrock of our policing policy, we have the commitment to 13,000 more neighbourhood officers on our streets. That will make a significant difference in how people feel about their high streets and in the criminal activity that we are able to tackle.”
“For obvious reasons, I cannot say when they will be, but Operation Machinize has worked effectively; when all the agencies work together, there is a much more effective outcome. All Members made useful suggestions: more support for trading standards; looking at licensing and more powers for local authorities; data sharing—that is an important suggestion, which I certainly agree with—a place for direct reporting into trading standards, which is an interesting one; and more powers to tackle landlords as well as the organised crime. The Home Office’s policing reform programme will, I hope, help us tackle these kinds of issues much more effectively. Setting up a national police service could tackle this co-ordinated, serious organised crime in a much better way.”
“I am also on the committee, along with all the Departments that Members would expect to be there. There was a push for the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to do work in this space; I know that it is looking at that, and I will certainly talk to it more about that. I will say that all the suggestions that have been made today were mentioned in that first ministerial meeting; we talked about all the same issues. I know we need to go further and faster and we need to push forward, but there was nothing surprising in the suggestions that hon. Members made; these are very sensible things that we are looking at and want to take forward. There will be big national pushes under Operation Machinize.”
“The closure powers—the closure notice extension to 72 hours and, looking ahead, the longer, 12-month closure—are important, and I am glad that Members have welcomed them. I was very interested in what Members had to say about the Netherlands. As Policing Minister, I do not really get to go on trips, but maybe there should be a Netherlands trip with the campaign group to see what is being done there. In the absence of such a trip, I will certainly read more about how that regime is working. That is a really important point: we should look to other countries and understand what they are doing. We are open to all of the many good suggestions that Members have made. There is a ministerial group chaired by the new Security Minister; she would have been here, but she could not be, as she is introducing legislation today.”
“We have the new high street organised crime unit in the Home Office, as well as the £30 million that has been allocated, in part, to fund the National Crime Agency, and £6 million of which is going to trading standards. Many Members have talked about how the ability of trading standards to respond to today’s challenges has been completely wiped out, so that money will help them. Some £1.5 million has been allocated to immigration enforcement, just to add to all the other work that is happening in immigration—my hon. Friend the Member for Halesowen asked about the connections, which of course exist; just today, there was an immigration raid in my constituency—and £1.5 million is going from that pot to HMRC so that it can do some work on this issue. Members talked about Companies House; there is more work to be done there, for sure.”
“Also, there were lots of cameras in the back of the shop, but they were not there to protect the shop itself; they were to keep an eye on the people working there—these are nasty criminal gangs that want to ensure that the people they employ are not stealing from them. The young lad who was in the shop when we did the raid had nothing to do with the ownership; apparently, the owner was away. As has been mentioned, understanding who owns some of these properties is a complicated and difficult challenge. I am very well aware of the problem that we are trying to fix. I am very grateful to the many Members who pointed to the important work that the Government have introduced—I do not want to diminish it by saying that we of course need to go further.”
“Friends the Members for Leigh and Atherton (Jo Platt) and for Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes (Melanie Onn) showed leadership in painting us a very good picture of the problems we see nationally. We know there is this increase in shops—I see it on my high street, as everybody does—but people are not in them, so how are they making money? What is going on in that space? As other Members will have done, I recently joined the raid of a shop in London, which was a big joint operation between trading standards, local authorities and the police, and some of the things I learned were very uncomfortable to hear. For example, an increasing number of builders are being employed by these shop owners to build hidden cupboards so that people can hide their illegal activities.”
“Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jen Craft): we have not only to tackle the criminality, but to establish what we want to do with our town centres. As has been mentioned, there is some innovation across the country where town centres are growing, which is great. The Government are very aware that we have to understand and appreciate the fact that the town centre of the future will be different, and we need to change laws and do what we can to encourage a new high street. A wider high street strategy is being pulled together at the moment; every Government Department that could possibly be relevant is coming together and asking, “What more can we do to ensure that our high streets can thrive for the businesses we want to see on them, rather than this illicit activity?” The activity itself has been very well described, and my hon.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this morning, Mr Dowd. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Halesowen (Alex Ballinger) for securing this excellent debate. The message I take away from it is, “You’ve done some stuff that we think is good, but we need to do a lot more.” This issue is undoubtedly one that we will all be judged on when we next stand before the electorate. As I have in Croydon, every Member in this place will have experience of a high street that they grew up going to that they know will never again be as they remember it. We also know that we need to tell a new story for our high streets. As shops have closed for all the reasons that Members have outlined, illicit activity has stepped in. It is important to start with the point made by my hon.”
“Yes, of course. Forgive me; I should have responded to that earlier. The hon. Member also made the point about illicit trade across all our nations, and we need to work together to tackle that as well. I will end just as I began, by saying that we will be judged on this when we next stand before—”
“Yes, of course. There are several areas for MHCLG to look at, and I know that it is already looking at what more powers we can have to close down the shops and stop them opening in the first place, as well as over the clustering of shops. We need to look at all those issues. I thank everybody again. I very much get the message that we have started a good piece of work, but there is a lot more to do.”
“Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney), ranges from those very extreme cases to the abuse that people get every day. I remember talking to shop workers at my local Co-op about the abuse they faced. Someone said, “Well, it’s just part of the job.” No, it is not. It needs to stop and we need to make sure we are doing all the right things.”
“Friend the Member for Burton and Uttoxeter (Jacob Collier) were really important and spoke to the nub of the problem. The hon. Member for Strangford said that people feel that the system has abandoned them, and that is right. The Opposition spokesperson, the hon. Member for Weald of Kent (Katie Lam), also spoke about the way in which people who live by the rules feel that everybody else seems to be getting away with not living by the rules. That has wider consequences for our society than just the problem of retail crime and the abuse of shop workers. My hon. Friend the Member for Burton and Uttoxeter spoke of a very serious case in which somebody was doused with liquid and then threatened with being set on fire. That is horrific. The abuse that shop workers receive, which was mentioned by the spokesperson for the Lib Dems, the hon.”
“Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp), who was the Policing Minister at the time. He argued that there was no need for these measures, because abuse of a shop worker is an aggravating factor, and that the evidence did not support their introduction. That argument was wrong, and I am really pleased that we have passed this law. It was the right thing to do for a number of reasons. First, as my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly said throughout his speech, we need to make sure we are implementing the legislation and seeing results, and that we use it now that we have it. It sends a powerful message that we in this place see and understand this behaviour, and that we will not tolerate it any more. It is important that we say that loud and clear. The speeches made by the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and my hon.”
“Thank you, Mrs Hobhouse. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. Members might be pleased to know that I probably will not take all the time available to me—perhaps I will give them a few minutes of their life back to do something else. I want to start by saying what an important debate this is. My hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly (Chris Evans) is absolutely right to bring the issue of the abuse of shop workers to this place. It is enormously important, and many Members of Parliament have campaigned for many years for the legislation that we have just passed, alongside the incredible work of the Co-op, USDAW and others. When I was shadow Policing Minister, I remember introducing a similar amendment to Government legislation and debating it with the right hon.”
“With the number of police in our communities going up; with the new rule that all thefts under £200 have to be investigated; with the new tech, IT and AI that can help us read across all these different systems; with the law in place; with the police giving a strong message that we want to see people punished for abusing shop workers; and with the work that we are beginning to do on prolific offenders, hopefully we will increasingly see results. The fundamental point that my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly and everybody here has made is that we cannot accept this as normal behaviour—it is not. We will not tolerate it, and we will keep working until we tackle it.”
“However, if the legislation makes a marked difference, which we hope it will, of course we will need to look at whether the provision should apply elsewhere. I have met representatives from banks, and I have had conversations about the particular challenges they have. They face the problem of abuse—I do not want to deny that—but the frequent protests they are increasingly experiencing are a slightly different issue, and one that we are talking to them about to try to support them through.”
“He also asked how we would measure progress. We will measure what happens with the absolute numbers and the reporting of these issues, and whether people are reporting—whether that is through USDAW or our links in the retail sector. We will measure it through the crime statistics and what is happening as a result. My hon. Friend also asked, importantly, why the provision is defined as being just about shop workers and why we did not make it wider to include transport workers or people who work in banks, for example. We deliberately kept it narrow to avoid any ambiguity in the courts. I know people disagree with that, but we just have to agree to disagree; that is what we have done in the legislation.”
“Some areas do that already, and people have been doing it increasingly, but there are things that we can put in place to help us really target that prolific cohort, whether that is providing the support they need to get into treatment or more interventions to make sure they cannot do what they want to. My hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Danny Beales) said that we should be doing more to use things like orders to stop people coming into a community, or tagging. I think we need to be using all of those more, and we are designing a programme of work to do exactly that. My hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly asked if I would meet USDAW, and I am always very happy to do that. I have done so many times, but it is probably timely that I meet it again now that the Crime and Policing Act has been passed.”
“There are lots of quite good systems that different parts of the country are using to more easily record shop theft and upload imagery and CCTV. We want to design AI that can read across all of those so that the police can easily see and bring together who the prolific offenders are. There was talk of prolific offenders in this debate, and it is true that a small cohort of people are responsible for a large amount of retail crime and abuse against shop workers. They are often people with very complex needs—they will have an addiction; they will be drug addicts or alcoholics—and we in the Home Office are designing a programme to target those prolific offenders.”
“Our measure is not about exact numbers—we want 13,000 more police in our communities, and we want outcomes. That is what we are driving towards. There are other things that we can do and that we are doing in this space that will also make a difference, and we will keep striving to do more. The hon. Member for Weald of Kent talked about technology, databases and wanting to cut bureaucracy for our police. I 100% agree with that. Last week, we launched PoliceAI with £75 million of funding to use AI to take away some of the nonsense bureaucracy that our police have to do. I have given it two first tasks in relation to outward-facing technology: one is to tackle tool theft and the other is to tackle retail crime.”
“Lots of others are doing interesting things, whether that is having live facial recognition; designing out the ability for people to get behind the shop counter and steal some of the alcohol that might be there; having cameras on shop workers; or having security people. All those things are undoubtedly making a difference, and so is the ability of our police to respond. We have been clear with our wonderful police that we want them in our neighbourhoods tackling this type of crime. We have already seen over 3,000 more police in our neighbourhoods, and we have committed to having 13,000. The Liberal Democrat spokesperson talked about police numbers. The previous Government cut 20,000 police and then recruited 20,000 police, but they put 12,000 of them behind desks.”
“I know that members of the public will say, “Well, that’s just statistics; that’s not my experience,” and it will take us a while to make people feel safer and tackle the huge problem that we still have. I want to reassure Members that—my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly asked about this—because of the policing interventions that we have done and because of what a lot of shops have done, we are beginning to turn the tide on shop theft. That is important. A lot of the larger retailers admittedly have more funds to do this, but the Co-operative Group, for example, has done incredible things to design out crime in its shops, and it has seen the biggest fall compared with other retailers.”
“The hon. Member is right that Victim Support and other organisations give really important support to people in such situations. Across different Departments, we all have a role to play in trying to stop this abuse and the retail crime that goes alongside so much of it. I will go into that in more detail. First, I will set out the statistics on shop theft, which drives a lot of the abuse that we see and is often perpetrated by prolific offenders. In the year before we came to power, there was a 30% rise in shop theft, and in the past year there has been a 1% fall. A 1% fall does not sound great, but when we compare it with a 30% rise, it shows that we are completely turning the tide.”
“I thank and congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly on his powerful speech and on securing this really good debate. He should be assured that the Government are on the side of people who just want to do their job, and who should not be abused while they are doing that job. That is not acceptable, and we will keep doing what we can.”
“There is a wider question about social media and how it sometimes drives these kinds of behaviours. People are almost goading each other to do more extreme activities—I have heard about that in a number of areas. This week, I was told about a new trend that I find utterly extraordinary: people are breaking into houses, filming someone asleep, and then leaving and putting that on social media. That is horrific. They do not take anything or do anything, but they are basically competing with each other to do that. Clearly, we are having a national debate, and the Government have taken action, about the issue of under-16s, but there is a much bigger debate still to have about social media and how it is driving these kinds of behaviours. Having said that I would be brief, I seem not to have been as brief as I expected.”
“Gentleman will join me in welcoming. Question put and agreed to. Resolved, That this House has considered Government support for West Midlands Police.”
“On the one hand we do investigations to stop the criminals, and on the other hand we try to safeguard the kids being coerced into carrying drugs across county lines. I know the hon. Gentleman will expect the Government to provide the support for the police that he rightly demands, but taken together, we have by some measure put extra money into funding the West Midlands police this year. Over and above that, we are using the resources we have to target the serious crime that we know is a problem in the west midlands, as in other parts of the country. I am focused on outcomes, rather than on the number of officers—although we are bringing a lot more officers into the neighbourhoods—and there are some quite good crime outcomes in the west midlands, not least the reduction in knife crime, which I hope the hon.”
“The serious violence programmes that we fund amount to £5 million for West Midlands police. The knife crime concentrations fund, which is the continuation of the funding that the hon. Gentleman mentioned, is a targeted fund aimed at tackling the very serious epidemic of knife crime that we know we must tackle in the communities where knife crime happens. There is a significant challenge in the west midlands, as there is in other parts of the country, and £2.8 million from the knife crime concentrations fund is going to the West Midlands police to enable targeted policing. There is also £5.4 million from the county lines programme, which enables us to join up across forces to understand the patterns of the lines that people are being coerced into running.”
“The 3,000 additional police officers and police and community support officers in our communities will begin to make a difference, but I am not for one minute suggesting that is enough. Our ambition is to have 13,000 extra police in our neighbourhoods by the end of this Parliament. I hope that the hon. Gentleman and other hon. Members will hold us to account on that ambition. Achieving it will be no easy feat, but we believe that it will transform how we do policing at local level because the police will be visible locally, able to gather intelligence about problems that are emerging, and able to tackle the epidemic of everyday crime. Like other parts of the country, the west midlands has particular challenges, which we are responding to with the funding we provide.”
“I hope he appreciates that we cannot transform the numbers overnight, given the picture that he painted, and hope that he will be pleased that our priority is to make sure that we have more police in our neighbourhoods. Since last year there are, I think, 309 more full-time officers in west midlands neighbourhoods than there were before. There has been a small overall increase in the number of police officers but a bigger increase in the number of officers who are in our communities, where we believe they should be. Through the funding formula and direct money from Government, we are trying to incentivise more neighbourhood police. That is what our populations want, so that is where we are putting our resources.”
“Member for Birmingham Perry Barr (Ayoub Khan) talked about accountability in policing—through a new structure for inspection and performance assessment, so that we have our eyes wide open to the challenges in each force area and we have the levers to improve performance where needed. He talked about his local police force. To reassure him on a few issues, he and I, and all hon. Members in this Chamber, would agree that we must ensure that our local police have the resources they need. This year, West Midlands police has £883 million in funding, which is a significant increase of £36.9 million on last year. The hon. Gentleman quoted police numbers going back to 2010.”
“We must establish local policing areas that are enabled to drive down crime, as the public rightly expect them to do. We will also have a regional structure that brings together some of the more sophisticated elements of our criminal investigations and has the manpower to do such investigations. At the top, we will have a national police service that brings together counter-terrorism, serious organised crime and many other functions of policing, so that it can set the standard for what policing should be. Alongside that, we will make policing more accountable —the hon.”
“They cannot work as effectively as they want to because they do not have the necessary infrastructure or systems around them. Everything is complicated by layers of bureaucracy because databases are so out of date. I want to help our police officers and to be held accountable by our communities to improve policing. I am delighted that we have the support of most elements of policing for our police reform agenda, including the senior police to whom we speak every day. All the different organisations involved in policing agree that the structure is not right and we need to change it, so we are bringing in legislation soon to do that. At the heart of everything we do is a commitment to improving the local policing offer. Above all else, we have to fulfil that commitment.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Desmond, and a pleasure to talk about policing, which is one of the most important aspects of any Government’s function—it is certainly the priority of this Government. When we came to power in 2024, we committed to reform policing because at the moment it is not fit for purpose. Our constituents feel, rightly, that they need a proper response to the epidemic of everyday crime in our communities. They know, and the police tell us, that we need to be better equipped to tackle the serious organised crime and sophisticated online crime increasing at regional, national and global levels. The police, who are some of the most brilliant people in our country and do an incredible job, tell us that the technology they have is creaking at the seams.”
“There were several large-scale events in London on 16 May, the Unite the Kingdom rally being one of them. I had several briefings with the Met, who took a robust approach to the Unite the Kingdom rally, and I was in the control room on 16 May to see the operation for myself.”
“The Metropolitan Police Service maintained public order and kept Londoners safe on a day when there was an unprecedented number of large-scale events. Some 43 arrests were made at the Unite the Kingdom rally and the Nakba 78: March for Palestine. In advance, 11 foreign nationals were prevented from entering the UK to speak at the event and were prevented by the Met from broadcasting to the event. Of course I understand the concerns that my hon. Friend’s constituent raises, but the Metropolitan police, with their 4,000 officers on that day, did a very good job.”
“This Government are committed to tackling all forms of hate crime, including anti-Muslim hostility. We are actively seeking to ensure the safety and protection of all individuals and communities. The UK has a proud tradition of racial and religious tolerance within the law, and this Government are absolutely committed to building the strong and integrated society that we all want to see.”
“My hon. Friend’s story about her constituent will not be the only one we hear about. I notice that Reform UK is quick to slam into the television stations as soon as something occurs, but its Members do not then come to this place to debate it in the normal way. Members of this House and those beyond have a critical role to play in building the strong and integrated society that we all want to see, one that is not fuelled by hatred and division.”
“As with all new technology, decisions about procuring and using AI are a matter for operationally independent chief constables. The Home Office is supporting the police to adopt AI rapidly and responsibly, with £115 million of investment over the next three years. That includes investing in the national centre for AI, which will help the police make informed decisions.”
“I can assure the hon. Gentleman that Palantir is not buying the job. In the Home Office we have very robust processes, which were followed in full. The current licence management system is approaching the end of its life, and it is very important that we have a good one to maintain safety. There was an open and competitive process, run by the Police Digital Service and BlueLight Commercial, which do these things on behalf of policing. The hon. Gentleman is right that the contract is yet to be signed, but Palantir is the preferred supplier and all the right processes were followed.”