By Jessica Frank-Keyes
Labour is pledging to put more police on the streets in a bid to tackle rising street crime, which they say has gone up under the Tories.
Shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper said her party is planning to get police officers into every community after a “decade of dereliction on law and order” under the Tories.
Sir Keir Starmer’s party has previously pledged to put 13,000 neighbourhood police and PCSOs back on the beat across the country, with guaranteed neighbourhood patrols.
Cooper said: “We will get police back out in the community with the powers they need, not just stuck behind desks dealing with bureaucracy.”
Labour claims street crime has risen on the Prime Minister’s watch, with snatch thefts of mobile phones almost doubling from 30,000 to 58,000.
They also say pickpocketing, robberies, knife crime and antisocial behaviour have increased, while enforcement action and arrests have plummeted.
“On Rishi Sunak’s watch, 90 per cent of crimes are going unsolved and knife-wielding muggers, phone thieves and pickpockets can get away with menacing our town centres and neighbourhoods,” Cooper said.
“Ministers have done nothing to tackle the new organised crime wave that is hitting local shops and streets. That is the Tory legacy on law and order, and our communities are paying the price.”
Cooper says she will commit to running a “hands-on Home Office” and draw lessons from the last Labour government’s action on policing and street crime, but with a modern focus on new technology and data analysis.
Chris Philp MP, policing minister, said: “This policy isn’t worth the paper it’s written on. This is the same party that fought to keep violent murders and sexual offenders in Britain by stopping deportation flights and trying to take tasers off our police.
“Only 3,000 of their proposed new officers would be full-time officers with the power of arrest and 3,000 of them are officers this government has already recruited; contrast that with the Conservatives who have recruited record police numbers with 20,000 more since 2019.
“The choice is clear in this election, stick with the bold action and clear plan under Rishi Sunak and the Conservatives that has driven crime down by 54 per cent since 2010, or go back to square one with Labour.”
