Suella Braverman is Home Secretary, and the Member of Parliament for Fareham.
“England and Wales are arguably safer then they have ever been.” Those are not my words. But the words of Andy Cooke, His Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Constabulary, published in his annual State of Policing report last month.
And why is he able to say that? Because since the mid-1990s the Crime survey of England and Wales shows a consistent, long-term reduction in all crime, excluding fraud and computer misuse (only counted since 2016).
So that means all crime is down 52 per cent since we came into office in 2010.
Domestic burglary is down 51 per cent in that time. That’s 468,000 fewer burglaries last year. Violent crime is down 41 per cent. Neighbourhood crime by 51 per cent.
And we now have an extra 20,000 police officers after meeting the Government pledge from 2019. We have kept that historic promise – and there are now more officers in England and Wales than ever before.
Despite these facts, our confidence in policing could be much better. There is a sense that police are not focused on the priorities of the British people.
If your car is stolen, often all you get is a crime reference number. Our officers regularly don’t investigate thefts. There is a perception of a distinct lack of public service and proper justice outcomes.
My job as Home Secretary is to ensure that those better crime outcomes I’ve talked about, which are in no small part down to the hard work of the police, become the public’s everyday experience.
That’s why we have given officers additional resources to tackle anti-social behaviour which can blight communities. We’ve emboldened their use of stop and search to take knives and drugs off our streets.
We have a new taskforce of officers to tackle the scourge of grooming gangs, which has devastated communities and seen the exploitation of our young girls. In our neighbourhoods, we now expect officers to be more visible and respond faster to emergency calls.
Following my challenge last year for every domestic burglary to be attended by an officer, all forces have now agreed to meet this pledge.
This is fundamental for police to get back to basics, and what I describe as common-sense policing. I am working every day to ensure this is the everyday reality for people across the country who, in desperate times, need to call on the police.
To assist the police in these tasks, my colleague Chris Philp and I have taken a big pair of scissors to the red tape that bedevilled their work.
The way crimes are recorded is overly complex, so I’ve asked Home Office staff to reduce the rulebook from 350 pages to around 50. Alongside other measures to simplify paperwork, we could save 443,000 hours of police time a year, meaning they will have more time to get out on the beat and catch criminals.
How officers spend their time matters. I have sent a crystal-clear message to chief constables to focus relentlessly on cutting crime. There is no room for politically-correct distractions.
I want criminal justice from our officers, not social justice. They should not be policing gender-critical views on social media. Nor should they be taking the knee. Just Stop Oil protesters should be arrested, not handed cups of tea or invited for a dance.
ConservativeHome readers may have been as disturbed as I was by the use of Orwellian-sounding non-crime hate incidents. In Wakefield we saw the police involved when a pupil was accused of accidentally scuffing a Koran.
This has to stop. We don’t have blasphemy laws in this country.
I’ve made changes to non-crime hate incidents to protect freedom of speech, and ensure in a new code of practice that personal data may only be recorded in a non-crime hate incident if the event is clearly motivated by intentional hostility, and where there is a real risk of significant harm.
Meanwhile the Public Order Act, which we passed in May, gives the police additional powers to take on those selfish protestors who go beyond legitimate free speech and cause misery and chaos.
It is my job to champion the police, and I am both energised and reassured when I speak to coppers, so many of whom do truly heroic work.
But is also my job, alongside Police and Crime Commissioners, to hold them to account. And trust has been lost.
The fact is that far too many officers have fallen short of the required standards – some of them disastrously so. Serving police officers have abused their powers in committing some of the foulest crimes possible.
Baroness Casey’s devastating review of our largest force, the Metropolitan Police, found deep-seated cultural issues including a lack of focus on core areas of policing such as public protection.
The Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley, is quite rightly making the restoration of public confidence in policing his top priority. We must support him.
Anyone who is not fit to wear the uniform must never do so in any force, and anyone who is shown to have transgressed must be driven out of the police and face justice. Forces are tackling weaknesses in vetting procedures, and the Home Office is reviewing the dismissals process so we can speed up the eviction of unfit officers.
But I want to end, once again, on an optimistic note. The finest police officers are the best among us. Dedicated officers habitually carry out acts of bravery every day they go to work.
We also have outstanding examples of police leadership across the country such as Chief Constable Stephen Watson at Greater Manchester, or Lee Freeman at Humberside, who have had great success by getting the basics right and embracing old-fashioned policing principles.
We need more of that, and this excellence must come as standard. That means police getting the basics right, and embracing common-sense policing.
Suella Braverman is Home Secretary, and the Member of Parliament for Fareham.
“England and Wales are arguably safer then they have ever been.” Those are not my words. But the words of Andy Cooke, His Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Constabulary, published in his annual State of Policing report last month.
And why is he able to say that? Because since the mid-1990s the Crime survey of England and Wales shows a consistent, long-term reduction in all crime, excluding fraud and computer misuse (only counted since 2016).
So that means all crime is down 52 per cent since we came into office in 2010.
Domestic burglary is down 51 per cent in that time. That’s 468,000 fewer burglaries last year. Violent crime is down 41 per cent. Neighbourhood crime by 51 per cent.
And we now have an extra 20,000 police officers after meeting the Government pledge from 2019. We have kept that historic promise – and there are now more officers in England and Wales than ever before.
Despite these facts, our confidence in policing could be much better. There is a sense that police are not focused on the priorities of the British people.
If your car is stolen, often all you get is a crime reference number. Our officers regularly don’t investigate thefts. There is a perception of a distinct lack of public service and proper justice outcomes.
My job as Home Secretary is to ensure that those better crime outcomes I’ve talked about, which are in no small part down to the hard work of the police, become the public’s everyday experience.
That’s why we have given officers additional resources to tackle anti-social behaviour which can blight communities. We’ve emboldened their use of stop and search to take knives and drugs off our streets.
We have a new taskforce of officers to tackle the scourge of grooming gangs, which has devastated communities and seen the exploitation of our young girls. In our neighbourhoods, we now expect officers to be more visible and respond faster to emergency calls.
Following my challenge last year for every domestic burglary to be attended by an officer, all forces have now agreed to meet this pledge.
This is fundamental for police to get back to basics, and what I describe as common-sense policing. I am working every day to ensure this is the everyday reality for people across the country who, in desperate times, need to call on the police.
To assist the police in these tasks, my colleague Chris Philp and I have taken a big pair of scissors to the red tape that bedevilled their work.
The way crimes are recorded is overly complex, so I’ve asked Home Office staff to reduce the rulebook from 350 pages to around 50. Alongside other measures to simplify paperwork, we could save 443,000 hours of police time a year, meaning they will have more time to get out on the beat and catch criminals.
How officers spend their time matters. I have sent a crystal-clear message to chief constables to focus relentlessly on cutting crime. There is no room for politically-correct distractions.
I want criminal justice from our officers, not social justice. They should not be policing gender-critical views on social media. Nor should they be taking the knee. Just Stop Oil protesters should be arrested, not handed cups of tea or invited for a dance.
ConservativeHome readers may have been as disturbed as I was by the use of Orwellian-sounding non-crime hate incidents. In Wakefield we saw the police involved when a pupil was accused of accidentally scuffing a Koran.
This has to stop. We don’t have blasphemy laws in this country.
I’ve made changes to non-crime hate incidents to protect freedom of speech, and ensure in a new code of practice that personal data may only be recorded in a non-crime hate incident if the event is clearly motivated by intentional hostility, and where there is a real risk of significant harm.
Meanwhile the Public Order Act, which we passed in May, gives the police additional powers to take on those selfish protestors who go beyond legitimate free speech and cause misery and chaos.
It is my job to champion the police, and I am both energised and reassured when I speak to coppers, so many of whom do truly heroic work.
But is also my job, alongside Police and Crime Commissioners, to hold them to account. And trust has been lost.
The fact is that far too many officers have fallen short of the required standards – some of them disastrously so. Serving police officers have abused their powers in committing some of the foulest crimes possible.
Baroness Casey’s devastating review of our largest force, the Metropolitan Police, found deep-seated cultural issues including a lack of focus on core areas of policing such as public protection.
The Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley, is quite rightly making the restoration of public confidence in policing his top priority. We must support him.
Anyone who is not fit to wear the uniform must never do so in any force, and anyone who is shown to have transgressed must be driven out of the police and face justice. Forces are tackling weaknesses in vetting procedures, and the Home Office is reviewing the dismissals process so we can speed up the eviction of unfit officers.
But I want to end, once again, on an optimistic note. The finest police officers are the best among us. Dedicated officers habitually carry out acts of bravery every day they go to work.
We also have outstanding examples of police leadership across the country such as Chief Constable Stephen Watson at Greater Manchester, or Lee Freeman at Humberside, who have had great success by getting the basics right and embracing old-fashioned policing principles.
We need more of that, and this excellence must come as standard. That means police getting the basics right, and embracing common-sense policing.