Police Presence on High Streets

Neil Coyle Excerpts

Thursday 5th June 2025 Westminster Hall

[Paulette Hamilton]

The hon. Member makes an absolutely brilliant point and hits the nail on the head. Funding is key and if it is not given, we cannot get the same results. We cannot get the same results if we do not have the resources to achieve them.

We worked with Birmingham city council, the Erdington business improvement district, trading standards and local businesses to remove graffiti, clean shutters and restore pride to our high street. I extend especial thanks to Caroline Anson Earp, the community safety partnership manager, for her incredible work on our high street. Today, traders report fewer thefts, shoppers feel safer and the buzz of community life has returned. Traders who once feared for their safety say that the difference is night and day.

As Operation Fearless takes its proven model to the next struggling community, a new era begins for Erdington High Street. Thanks to our new dedicated high street team, six officers and a sergeant maintain visible patrols. We are not just preserving progress; we are securing lasting change.

[Neil Coyle (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. Did Operation Fearless include the use of live facial recognition, which the Metropolitan police used in Southwark recently to catch a previously convicted sex offender who was in breach of a court order and wandering around Denmark Hill with a six-year-old? He is now safely back in jail. Does she, like me, welcome the extension of the use of live facial recognition?

[Paulette Hamilton]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point and I absolutely agree with the use of facial recognition where we can get it. In Erdington, we did not have facial recognition, but I do think that it is a good thing.

We cannot stop here; although Labour’s pledge of 13,000 more police officers is welcome, we must go further. Every high street deserves a named and contactable police officer, so that communities know who is fighting for them. We need to be bolder to establish partnerships with councils, communities, schools, youth services and those who serve them, because policing alone will not fix systemic failure.

I also pay tribute to our retail workers, such as the heroes of the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers’ Freedom From Fear campaign, who fought abuse for 20 years. These workers, who are often women and often young, should not have had to endure threats just for doing their job. Operation Fearless has shown that with the right resources, we can protect them.

The lesson of Operation Fearless is clear: when we invest, listen and act, change happens. But this is not just Erdington’s fight. From Bristol to Bolton, high streets are crying out for the same type of hope. Erdington’s story proves that change is possible. Let us be clear that this issue is not just about one high street. It is about every community fighting for safety and pride; it is about recognising that policing must be visible, proactive and rooted in partnership; and it is about whether we believe every community deserves safety, dignity and a future. I believe they do.

To the Minister I say, let us build on the success of actions like Operation Fearless. Let us make sure the 13,000 new officers actually reach the frontline and that every high street has a named, contactable officer. Let us fund real partnerships, not just patrols. Let us stand firmly with retail workers and let us never forget that safe high streets are the foundation of strong communities.

I end with the words of a shopkeeper in Erdington:

“For the first time in years, I feel hopeful.”

That hope, that belief in better, is what we must deliver for every high street in Britain.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ben Obese-Jecty (Huntingdon) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Furniss.

I have never seen so many police officers in Huntingdon high street as were on patrol the afternoon that the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary came to my constituency to announce the neighbourhood policing plan. Due to the police allocation formula, Cambridgeshire’s entire allocation of the 13,000 officers is just 30 new warranted officers over the remaining four years of this Parliament. Across eight constituencies, that is fewer than four officers each—one officer per constituency per year.

Presumably, the starting state for the 13,000 is the number of police officers in 2023, when the pledge was made. That was 141,760. In the year to March 2023, we recruited 16,300 officers; in the year to March 2024, we recruited 9,479 officers, a fluctuation of nearly 7,000. What are the intra-year recruitment figures, and how will recruitment targets fluctuate with natural churn?

In March, the Home Secretary stated to me that the redeployment of 3,000 officers from other duties would involve

“redeploying existing police officers and backfilling by recruiting other officers to take their posts.”—[Official Report, 10 March 2025; Vol. 763, c. 678.]

The Home Secretary does not have operational control of police officers, so when will she outline how that will work in practice? Which police forces will be forced to redeploy officers, and how many will each need to redeploy? What other services will suffer while new officers are recruited to take the place of more experienced officers?

In April, the Metropolitan police announced swingeing cuts as a result of pressures from the Chancellor’s Budget. The Royal Parks police is being disbanded, as are officers in schools; the dogs unit is being slashed by 7% and the mounted branch by 25%; the MO7 taskforce, which tackles moped and e-bike robbers as well as gang-related crime, is being reduced by 55%; and cold case investigations are to be cut by 11%. The Met is also cutting 20% of the flying squad and potentially removing its firearms capability.

Even after a £1 billion cash injection by the Mayor of London, the Met still has a £260 million shortfall and will cut 1,700 officers, staff and police community support officers. In December, Sir Mark Rowley suggested that it might have to cut 2,300 officers. The Mayor claims that his cash injection has saved 935 of those roles, so presumably the remaining 1,350-odd are frontline officers.

Last Friday, six police chiefs went over the head of the Home Secretary and appealed directly to the Prime Minister. They stated:

“A settlement that fails to address our inflation and pay pressures flat would entail stark choices about which crimes we no longer prioritise. The policing and NCA workforce would also shrink each year.”

[Neil Coyle]

I will start with a cheeky one: does the hon. Gentleman welcome the recruitment of PC Coyle to Durham constabulary? One of the new recruits under this Government is a family member—my brother— of whom I am very proud. Does he also welcome the combined £300 million of support from central Government and the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, to the Met to try to address some of the challenges he is outlining?

[Ben Obese-Jecty]

I absolutely welcome that additional funding, but the point that I would most like to make— I have made it previously—is that the police allocation formula, which determines how much funding each of our police forces receives, is grossly unfair. Constituencies like mine in Cambridgeshire do not receive a fair allocation of the overall pot. I will press the Policing Minister: as she well knows, because we have had a lot of conversations about this, I encourage her to revise that next year.

[Neil Coyle]

This Government inherited that formula from the Conservative Government. Does the hon. Gentleman think it is a bit naive to suggest that there is a fair balance in policing responsibilities when the capital’s police force runs counter-terrorism operations for the whole country?

[Ben Obese-Jecty]

I believe that it is remunerated budgetarily in order to cover that.

[Neil Coyle]

Not enough.

[Ben Obese-Jecty]

But, I agree, not enough, and the police allocation formula would do well to look at policing as a whole so that every constituency gets its fair share of police funding. As we all know, the population has grown, and the police allocation formula is from 2014. I met the last Government when I was still a candidate to ask them to review the formula, and I press the new Government to do the same.

[Neil Coyle]

How did that go?

[Ben Obese-Jecty]

They did as much work on it as the hon. Gentleman’s Government have.

That reduction in police strength comes before we consider the fact that the numbers that the Home Secretary based her calculations on were completely wrong in the first place, as the Government announced, very quietly, on 19 March. Of the 43 forces in England and Wales, 29 advised that their published combined neighbourhood officer and PCSO numbers should be revised down. That resulted in an overall downwards revision of 2,611 compared with the figures published last year. In total, that, plus the 1,350 from the Met and the 7,000 annual fluctuation, means that the 13,000 figure looks a lot more like 24,000. Can the Minister outline why the baseline figure of 13,000 has not been revised since it was first announced in February 2023—even to account for the shortfall caused by miscounting?

The general public deserve to have police that are resourced to protect the communities they serve. My constituents deserve to have their fair share of police officers, not a token amount based on a police allocation formula that is years out of date.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jas Athwal (Ilford South) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Furniss. I thank My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Erdington (Paulette Hamilton) for securing this important debate.

The saying goes, “Money isn’t everything,” but it is when you have not got it, and in London, the Metropolitan police certainly has not got it. Having been forced to make £1.2 billion-worth of cuts over the last 14 years, the Metropolitan police has been stripped to its bones. We look forward, hopefully, to better days.

Police presence is about more than simply putting more uniformed officers on our streets or reopening police stations closed by years of Conservative budget cuts. It is about having officers on our streets that people can trust—officers that women and girls can trust to believe them and support them when they need it; officers that all communities can trust and will not unfairly target or profile some. It is about trusting that officers generally understand the neighbourhoods they serve. We need the right kind of police presence on our streets—one that is locally rooted, competent and visibly engaged. We need a force that understands the area, knows the crime hotspots and earns the trust of every resident, regardless of gender, race or background.

As council leader, I knew we could not accept the status quo that Conservative cuts were delivering. We needed to act locally to maintain meaningful police engagement with residents. In Redbridge, we implemented innovative enforcement and engagement hubs across the borough, including one mobile enforcement hub. Those low-cost alternatives to traditional stations are vital access points for our communities. They provide a place for residents to speak to officers, share concerns and build relationships, and, in turn, for officers to learn directly from the people they serve.

[Neil Coyle]

Does my hon. Friend share my concern that Southwark borough senior officers have closed the Seven Islands base and moved the local safer neighbourhood team to Borough station, which is, by their own account, more than 25 minutes’ drive away, in contradiction of the Metropolitan police’s 2017 public access strategy?

[Jas Athwal]

Absolutely. In Redbridge, we had to turn that around. The right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) will certainly agree with me, because we put a police hub in his constituency, which saved 4.5 full-time police officers’ time over the course of a year. We also introduced specific engagements, such as police walk and talks, which offer devoted time for officers to engage with those most underserved by police. Even amid devastating cuts, we showed that meaningful police presence is possible and necessary to keep our communities safe.

I welcome the Government’s steps to restoring meaningful police presence, including the £204 million in additional funding to the Metropolitan police laid out in the police grant report and the £22.8 million allocated for neighbourhood policing in the police funding settlement. However, reversing over a decade of damage is not simple. It requires more than just money. It requires bold reform that makes our police truly accountable and genuinely connected to our communities.

As we look ahead to the spending review, I urge the Government to not merely sustain, but substantially increase funding for the Metropolitan police. Police presence is not about visibility; it is about trust. It is about residents recognising their local officers and having the confidence that when they speak up about crime or harassment, they will be heard, believed and protected.

[Olly Glover (Didcot and Wantage) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Furniss—for the first time, in my case. I pay sincere and warm tribute to the hon. Member for Birmingham Erdington (Paulette Hamilton) for her passionate speech and her huge dedication to the great work that has gone on in her constituency to tackle crime and antisocial behaviour on our high streets. In particular, she highlighted the great work done by local police officers on Operation Fearless, in conjunction with the local community. A key theme we have heard in this debate is the critical importance of not just looking to the police to sort these issues out, but working in partnership with retailers, communities and all people affected by crime.

We heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Wimbledon (Mr Kohler) about his young constituent Jack, who represents that extremely important demographic of young people affected by crime, who will be left fearful for the future if we do not get a grip of it. The hon. Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford (Daniel Francis) rightly alluded to the underlying economic causes of crime. Perhaps this is a good opportunity for us to remember the words of a former Labour Prime Minister about being tough on not just crime, but the causes of crime. It is important that we take note of those underlying social and economic causes.

The right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) mentioned the experience of New York. Some would argue that Rudy Giuliani has gone in a somewhat different direction since the height of his powers in the 1990s. In those days his “broken windows” theory of crime held that, as a number of Members have alluded to, if we do not tackle graffiti and other supposedly low-level manifestations of crime, we open the door—or indeed the broken window—for far more serious types of crime. That underlines another key theme we have heard: the role of prevention and taking preventive steps, rather than hoping to deal with the symptoms and consequences.

The hon. Member for Bournemouth West (Jessica Toale) also talked about the role of prevention and the importance of community services. She talked about the role of seasonality in crime, which is clearly important in many constituencies with major events, with summer traffic, or sometimes with worse weather leading to less crime because people are outdoors less. It is important that we recognise the trends in the data on what causes crime and what levels of intervention are needed.

The key theme discussed by nearly all Members was police numbers and funding. That includes the hon. Members for Kettering (Rosie Wrighting), for Luton South and South Bedfordshire (Rachel Hopkins), for Hampstead and Highgate (Tulip Siddiq), for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Danny Beales), for Wolverhampton North East (Mrs Brackenridge), for Ilford South (Jas Athwal) and for Cannock Chase (Josh Newbury). In that regard, we heard a lot of criticism of the previous Conservative Government.

However, we also heard some important points from the hon. Member for Huntingdon (Ben Obese-Jecty) and the hon. Member for Bournemouth West about the regionality of the police funding formula. We often face the key question of how to take account of different regional funding requirements in this country, so it would be interesting to see what the Minister has to say about that. We also heard about the impact of antisocial behaviour and crime on people, its economic impact on retailers and it impact on their mental health and feelings of safety and security in their role. All that contributes to the wider sense of our high streets being in decline; if people do not feel that they are safe places, they will not go and shop there. We must be careful not to end up in vicious circle.

We heard from hon. Members about the importance of having named and contactable police offers. It is not just about having visible police officers in the streets; it is important, as the hon. Member for Ilford South said with particular eloquence, that those police officers are embedded within their community and really understand its diversity and differing requirements. Many hon. Members paid tribute to the shop owners affected by crime and the police officers who work so hard to try to keep our streets safe. It is important that we support them, both with more resources and with public displays of support.

Many of the same issues are manifested in my Oxfordshire constituency of Didcot and Wantage, where communities are concerned about increased antisocial behaviour in the town centres of Wallingford, Wantage and Didcot—particularly increased pickpocketing and shoplifting. Last year, reports of antisocial behaviour at a local event in Didcot meant that the police had to authorise a section 34 dispersal order, empowering officers to issue section 35 orders to remove individuals suspected of being involved in antisocial behaviour. Of course such events are not representative of our high street, but the fact that they are becoming more of a concern to people means that we must take action.

I have met business owners on Didcot Broadway—an older part of my town, from before the town of Didcot and large retail centres arose—who feel that the combination of antisocial behaviour and larger retail developments are placing their businesses at risk. That problem is shared by the Orchard centre, the large shopping centre in Didcot, where there is also widespread concern about antisocial behaviour and that there is not enough for young people to do.

I have also heard high street businesses complain about drug dealing, street drinking and bicycle theft. As we heard in this debate, ambitions on law and order are good—but ambitious plans need to be supported by ambitious funding. Many hon. Members have paid tribute to the early work that the Government have done on this, and we look forward to hearing more from the Minister.

Everyone deserves to feel safe in their own home and when walking down their streets; that is important not just for their safety, but for their feelings of economic confidence, so that we can address the decline in our high streets. The previous Conservative Government failed to keep our communities safe from crime, and unnecessary cuts left our police forces overstretched, under-resourced and unable to focus on the crimes that affect our communities most.

Every day, 6,000 cases are closed by the police across England and Wales without a suspect even being identified, according to Home Office figures. Meanwhile, just 6% of crimes reported to the police result in a suspect being charged. Three in four burglaries and car thefts also go unsolved, and the Conservatives slashed the number of police community support officers by more than 4,500 since 2015. The Government must continue their efforts to restore the proper community policing that local people deserve.

To do that, we must get more police officers out on the streets, embedded in and understanding their communities. We Liberal Democrats feel that that could partly be funded by scrapping the expensive police and crime commissioner experiment and investing those savings in frontline policing instead, including addressing the dramatic cuts to PCSO numbers.

At the same time, we would free up existing officers’ time to focus on local policing by creating a new national online crime agency that would take over issues such as online fraud and abuse, leaving more time for local forces to tackle burglaries and other neighbourhood crimes. As we have heard, prevention and early intervention are key, not just visible crime.

[Neil Coyle]

Can the hon. Gentleman clarify whether the Lib Dem position has changed since they introduced police and crime commissioners? Did he describe the cuts in officers as unnecessary, and is he putting on record an apology from the Liberal Democrats for cutting police officers in constituencies such as mine, where we still have fewer police officers in 2025 than we did in 2010, thanks to the coalition Government that the Liberal Democrats were fully embedded in?

[Olly Glover]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention—[Interruption.] Well, I will answer in good time. Of course it would not be a debate in this place without him having a pop at the Liberal Democrats in Government. As he will appreciate from the many councils where Labour is in coalition with the Liberal Democrats and other parties, when a party does not win a majority, it has to work in partnership with others. I would also remind him to have a read of his own party’s 2010 manifesto, which proposed cuts just as harsh as the Conservatives’.

But let us look to the future, not the past. In terms of retail crime, there are significant concerns over the increase in shoplifting. Official statistics from the crime survey for England and Wales showed more than half a million shoplifting offences recorded by police forces in the year ending 2024, an 18% increase on the previous year and the highest figure since current recording practices began.

Surveys of retailers indicate a high prevalence of shoplifting and violence towards shop workers, as we have heard, and there have been concerns about how the police respond to shoplifting. For example, the 2025 British Retail Consortium’s Retail Crime survey found that 61% of retailers considered the police response to incidents of retail crime to be poor or very poor. Retailers said that their lack of confidence in the police response to reports of shoplifting contributed to their decision not to report some incidents.

As we have heard, antisocial behaviour can encompass a wide range of actions that cause nuisance and harm to others, such as vandalism, noise nuisance, threatening behaviour, use of off-road bikes, drug use and harassment. The 2024 crime survey for England and Wales suggested that 36% of people had experienced or witnessed antisocial behaviour, and around 1 million incidents are reported to the police each year. However, YouGov research suggests that there is significant under-reporting, with 57% of victims or witnesses not reporting ASB at all. The Victims’ Commissioner has long raised concerns that the police and other agencies are not able to respond effectively to such reports or to provide support to victims.

In conclusion, while we all agree that money and police resources are important, they will only get us so far. We also need prevention and early intervention, intelligence, partnerships and community action.