Police Presence on High Streets

Olly Glover Excerpts

Thursday 5th June 2025 Westminster Hall

[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.