Town Centre Safety
Debate between Alexander Stafford and Laura Farris(5 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Laura Farris
It is difficult for me to identify every single complaint and whether somebody has attended, but one thing I think is relevant is that the increase in shoplifting that we have regrettably seen over the past 12 months has been met by a corresponding and equivalent increase in the volume of charges for shoplifting offences. Charges are up by 29% in the past 12 months. I gently draw the hon. Gentleman’s attention to that.
I want to talk specifically about offences against retail workers. I invite the hon. Member for Nottingham North to answer this point when he closes—it is not put in an aggressive way, because I recognise the role that retail workers perform and it is completely unacceptable that they should be subject to violence in the line of their duties, but it is already unlawful to commit an act of assault. It is criminalised under the Criminal Justice Act 1988 and the Offences against the Person Act 1861.
The hon. Gentleman knows, because we have already had this discussion, that there is a statutory obligation to treat the fact that an individual is a retail worker as an aggravating factor. He has identified the fact that the trade unions support a new law, but I say very respectfully that the judges do not, the Crown Prosecution Service does not and the police forces I have spoken to do not. The practitioners in this area of the law do not support a new law. Even though he has made that point, he has not identified any case where he considers there to have been a miscarriage of justice because the laws were not sufficient to offer protection. It is not enough simply to assert that we need new laws without setting out clearly why the existing statutory protection does not succeed.
Let me now turn to the issue of antisocial behaviour—it is not minor or trivial, and I make no bones about that. It is probably the principal crime that all MPs hear about, irrespective of the constituencies we represent. I want to reassure the hon. Gentleman that we have taken a range of legislative and non-legislative action. A new antisocial behaviour action plan was introduced earlier this year, backed by £160 million of funding to ensure that our commitments have real teeth. He will be aware of the hotspot patrolling pilot that has been conducted across 10 police forces and is about to be rolled out on a national basis because of its success.
Alexander Stafford (Rother Valley) (Con)
I thank the Minister for the £2.4 million given to South Yorkshire Police for antisocial behaviour hotspots, including in Maltby and Dinnington, areas in my constituency that are plagued by antisocial behaviour. When I met the police and the police and crime commissioner, they said that that money is making a real difference to getting boots on the ground and on patrols. I thank the Minister for the extra funds to clamp down on antisocial behaviour in Rother Valley.
Laura Farris
It is very heartening to hear that those funds are making a real difference in my hon. Friend’s constituency.
I also draw the shadow Minister’s attention to some of the new teeth, if I may call them that, in the Criminal Justice Bill. He will be aware that we have lowered the minimum age at which a community protection notice can be ordered to 10 years old. That is not just to achieve consistency with other aspects of criminal justice, but because we recognise that in reality quite a lot of antisocial behaviour is committed by those in the age 10 to 16 bracket. That is a common complaint that many in this House will be familiar with.
We have extended police powers to implement a public spaces protection order. I mention that simply because I could not differentiate between that and the respect order that the hon. Gentleman was describing, but it gives the police greater powers for a rapid response. We have also expanded the minimum exclusion period by 50%, from 48 hours to 72 hours, to give authorities more powers to implement dispersal arrangements.
Moving on to our Criminal Justice Bill, I think I noted the shadow Minister’s qualified agreement with at least some of its contents, and certainly those on the Opposition Benches did not vote against it on Second Reading. We respectfully say that the Bill takes the fight to the criminals, introducing new powers to enter premises and seize stolen goods—the example given repeatedly during the debate was of stolen mobile phones, the everyday theft that people endure. It contains new powers on knife crime to seize, retain and destroy a bladed article found on private property, without evidence that it has been used in conjunction with a criminal offence, but where there is a reasonable belief that it may be, and new laws on possession of a knife with intent.
I would add one or two other measures that are just as important to community safety. This Bill, for the first time, recognises coercive control as the cancer of a crime that it is, by putting those convicted of a serious offence in that regard under the multi-agency public protection arrangements and then putting them on the violent and sex offender register.
The hon. Member for Nottingham North was critical of the Criminal Justice Bill, but he neglected to say anything about the Sentencing Bill, which has its Second Reading tomorrow. That Bill will put some of the worst offenders away for longer, so some of the men who maraud on our streets to carry out the most grotesque offences against women—we all know their names—can anticipate a whole-life order without the possibility of parole, even if theirs was a one-off offence. Rapists, who under the last Labour Government served just 50% of their sentence behind bars under section 44 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003, can now look forward to spending the entirety of their sentence in custody without the possibility of parole.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Alexander Stafford and Laura Farris(11 months, 1 week ago)
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Alexander Stafford (Rother Valley) (Con)
Laura Farris (Newbury) (Con)
The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Jeremy Hunt)
I have set out our national ambition to be the world’s next silicon valley. We are making good progress; last year we were ranked the world’s third largest technology market after the United States and China.