Town and City Centre Safety

Sarah Jones Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd February 2026 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Policing and Crime (Sarah Jones)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dowd. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Derby South (Baggy Shanker) for his brilliant speech. Apart from anything else, I want to visit the Hairy Dog and see all the wonderful things that are happening in my hon. Friend’s patch. I thank him for telling the story of his very strong community and its resilience in the face of the challenges we all want to overcome.

I want to praise the Members of Parliament who have come to this debate to represent their constituents. We are all reading, with increasing fury, about the behaviours of the former ambassador to the United States, and it is the MPs in this debate who represent the very best of what politics is about. We are in this job because we want to make our streets safer and our communities better, and to bring pride to the people we represent, and that is what Members have done in this debate. The snake oil salesmen, like those from the Reform party, who go on television and tell us we are a crime-ridden nation do not come to these debates to have these discussions. I am afraid they do not have the answers. The MPs who are present to speak up for their constituents and to demand answers, to demand better and to demand more bring out the best of what politics is for and what we are all in this business for.

I also want to speak in praise of our police. I recently met the first responders from the Huntingdon attack. Such bravery is quite extraordinary, and we ask that of our police every day. They go out and face danger, and we should always thank them.

The hon. Members for Sutton and Cheam (Luke Taylor) and for Stockton West (Matt Vickers) seem to forget that as Opposition spokespeople they represent their party and the nation. They spoke mostly about Sutton and Stockport rather than actual national policies. I ask them to think about what their parties have done in previous years. I will take no lessons whatever from the Conservative party, which slashed 20,000 police and then, in a rush to bring them back, put them behind desks. For example, around the country we now have 250 warranted police officers who are working in human resources. We will put police back where they belong: on our streets.

I will give Members a couple of good updates before I tackle some of the challenges we must overcome. First, the knife crime statistics that came out last week show that since this Government came to power knife crime is down 8%. We have taken 60,000 knives off the street, knife murders are down 27% and hospital admissions are down 11%. The Government will not shy away from doing everything we can to tackle serious violence and knife crime. Violence is not inevitable; we will not accept it and we will keep bearing down on it. I thank all those who have played their part in tackling that epidemic.

As so many Members have eloquently said, we know that the epidemic of everyday crime in our communities drives a sense of a lack of safety. I can tell Members that there are now 2,400 more officers in our neighbourhoods than there were when we came to power. There will be 3,000 more by March, and there will be 13,000 more by the end of the Parliament. Our communities are calling out for officers to be in our neighbourhoods tackling crime and doing the things we ask them to do, rather than being burdened by bureaucracy, which we will take away through new technology in our police reforms. Officers and PCSOs are the people who will help us to tackle the epidemic of everyday crime.

Members asked me to respond on many issues, but sadly I do not have the time. It would be remiss of me not to point out to the hon. Member for Bromley and Biggin Hill (Peter Fortune) that London will have 420 extra neighbourhood officers on its streets by March, and has received a £180 million increase in its budget this year.

Many Members talked about retail crime, and we are making changes in the Crime and Policing Bill that will help on that. Through our big summer of action, and the winter of action we have just completed, we have seen real results when there is good working among retailers, police and the charitable organisations that help with, for example, drug addiction, which is a driver of retail crime. My area has seen a substantial reduction in retail crime thanks to the persistent offender approach, whereby we go after those people. Some 80% of retail crime is committed by 20% of offenders, and most of them have a drug addiction of some kind. We have to join the dots and make sure that we give people the treatment they need and that they face up to the crimes they have committed.

Some Members talked about organised crime, and violence reduction units were also mentioned. I am proud to say that we are funding violence reduction units this year to increase their effectiveness. They do an absolutely brilliant job. We of course have to tackle the issues that lie behind the crime and not just the crime itself.

Members talked about what was happening in their constituencies. My hon. Friend the Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale (Lizzi Collinge) talked about the street wardens in Morecambe. Street wardens are an interesting model, as we have seen over the winter.

My hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) talked about taxi licensing. I have seen some good work with taxi marshals who help to identify unlicensed taxi drivers and to protect and support women and young girls, who do not feel as safe as we want them to when they are out in our communities.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West (Phil Brickell) talked about economic crime, which we have talked about previously, and he was absolutely right. Many Members talked about the increase in the number of vape shops or other shops that we know are actually laundering money. I know the police are dealing with that—I have been on a raid with them to tackle it—but my hon. Friend is right that more needs to be done.

Members will forgive me for not having looked once at my prepared speech. [Laughter.] The Government are doing many things that are designed to crack down on crime, but I want to end my speech in time for my hon. Friend the Member for Derby South to respond.

I had the honour of meeting the family of Danny, who was murdered in my hon. Friend’s constituency. He wanted me to meet the family, and I did. We all know the horror that crime can cause in our constituencies, whether that is everyday crime or the most horrific crime. The Government will not rest until we have tackled the issues that our constituents put us here to tackle. I thank everyone for taking part in the debate.