Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Yvette Cooper and Yuan Yang

Monday 2nd June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Yuan Yang (Earley and Woodley) (Lab)]

14. What steps her Department is taking to improve neighbourhood policing.

[The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Yvette Cooper)]

We are providing £200 million across England and Wales this financial year to increase neighbourhood policing. As part of our neighbourhood policing guarantee, every community will have named, contactable officers dedicated to addressing local issues. Alongside that, during the course of this year we will have 3,000 additional officers and police community support officers working in neighbourhoods teams. I am pleased to tell my hon. Friend the Member for Bracknell (Peter Swallow) that, for Thames Valley police, that will include an extra 68 police officers on the streets this year.

--- Later in debate ---

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend is right to welcome the additional neighbourhood police in Thurrock. She will know that that is part of 74 additional neighbourhood police officers across Essex just this year, as a result of our neighbourhood policing guarantee, and we will go beyond that. She is right, too, that local police who know what the problems are in Thurrock and across Essex are crucial to tackling local crime.

[Yuan Yang]

Across neighbourhoods in my Earley and Woodley constituency I have seen too many incidents of electric bikes and electric scooters being ridden dangerously, including on pavements. Residents have told me of collisions in areas such as Woodley Precinct and Kennet Island. I have been raising the issue with Thames Valley police, and I am very glad to hear the Home Secretary’s announcement of 68 neighbourhood officers across our region, but what more can she and the Home Office do to support the work of the police in cracking down on dangerous riders?

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend is right: we need to make sure that Thames Valley has the 68 additional neighbourhood police just this year and give them the powers they need. That is why we are strengthening the Crime and Policing Bill both on dangerous cycling and dangerous riding, and giving the police stronger powers to take e-scooters and off-road bikes literally off the roads.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Yvette Cooper and Yuan Yang

Monday 13th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Yuan Yang (Earley and Woodley) (Lab)]

22. What steps her Department is taking to help tackle knife crime.

[The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Yvette Cooper)]

We remember those who have lost their lives to knife crime, including 17-year-old Thomas Taylor, killed in Bedford, and 14-year-old Kelyan Bokassa, killed in Woolwich just last week. Kelyan’s mother said:

“I tried to prevent it. I’ve tried so many, so many times.”

No mother should live with that grief or feel that level of fear for her teenage son. That is why this Government have set up the coalition to tackle knife crime, which involves families, alongside taking new action on serious violence.

--- Later in debate ---

[Yuan Yang]

My constituents in Whitley had their Christmas disrupted by an alarming threat of knife crime. We have seen too many tragedies of this kind in Reading over the last few years, so I wholeheartedly welcome the Government’s mission to halve knife crime. I have applied for my Earley and Woodley constituency to be a trial location for the new respect orders. Will the Home Secretary meet me and my constituents to discuss how we can tackle the root problems that cause people, particularly young people, to carry knives?

[Yvette Cooper]

The Policing Minister and I will happily talk further to my hon. Friend. She is right that we need to prevent young people from obtaining and carrying knives in the first place, as well as making sure there is swift intervention. We are also taking action, working with police forces across the country, to tackle knife-enabled robbery, which is one of the areas that has seen the biggest increases in recent years.