Yvette Cooper MP: We urgently need police back on the beat

Yvette Cooper MP writes: On the funding, Yorkshire has had the worst deal of all. Far more of the so-called Government “levelling up” funds have gone to the South East. Knottingley’s bid for Government funds was rejected. But Rishi Sunak’s constituency in Richmondshire was one of very few to get Government money in Yorkshire. That’s not fair and shows how the Conservatives have got their priorities completely upside down.

Nor does the Government seem to get that if you don’t tackle crime and antisocial behaviour, you can’t boost communities or local economies.

If shops get vandalised or broken into, or if there aren’t enough police on the beat, then town centres are undermined.

In Wakefield and the Five Towns we’ve lost dozens of officers and PCSOs from neighbourhood teams compared to ten years ago. One of our former neighbourhood police officers told me that when he was working in the Five Towns they had four times as many officers working in our neighbourhood teams. Across the country there are 6,000 fewer neighbourhood police officers and 8,500 fewer PCSOs than there were just seven years ago.

Across the country nine out of ten people say they rarely see police on patrol now. Town centres have been particularly heavily hit as a result. Vandalism and criminal damage affecting town centres have gone up 30% in the last year alone, with many towns seeing a disgraceful increase in abuse against shopworkers, shoplifting and antisocial behaviour.

We urgently need police back on the beat. That’s why Labour has set out plans to deliver in Government an extra 13,000 neighbourhood police and PCSOs. Alongside local councillors I’m also pressing for more neighbourhood patrols in our local town centres.

And we need new action to tackle antisocial behaviour and stronger enforcement. When Ministers abolished Labour’s programmes to tackle antisocial behaviour, they replaced them with much weaker policies.

I want to see new stronger enforcement powers on repeat adult offenders who ignore the warnings from the police and courts. Mindless, dangerous vandalism and intimidation that makes people’s lives a misery has to stop. Nearly a quarter of criminal damage and arson offenders reoffend. And we need proper prevention linked to drug and alcohol treatment, CCTV and new youth mentors working with young people too.

We also need positive support for local shops and businesses to keep them going through the cost of living crisis. I’m appalled that major companies like M&S are ending up withdrawing from local town centres like ours in Castleford, in order to focus on out of town shopping with big car parks. High street shops don’t have a level playing field, especially with online giants who don’t pay business rates or worry about shoplifters.

That’s why I’ve been calling for business rates to be scrapped for town centre shops with the online giants made to pay their fair share. We’ve got great local shops and businesses but they need a fair deal and proper support from the Government.

Catherine Cawood from Happy Valley may be a fictional character. But I’ve met many neighbourhood police who have that same commitment to their local community, who pick up the things others miss to catch criminals and prevent antisocial behaviour. We need more of them.