Police forces across England and Wales will receive a vital funding boost of up to £1.1bn for 2025-26. Here in Llanelli, Dyfed Powys Police will have an extra £8.9m to keep our local streets and communities safer.
Total funding for policing in England and Wales will be up to £19.6bn with money to kickstart the recruitment of 13,000 more neighbourhood police officers across the UK doubled to £200m. There will be a £140m increase for counter-terrorism policing, £50m for Violence Reduction Units on knife crime and £30m to tackle serious organised crime and county lines.
After 14 years of Tory chaos, Labour is committed to restoring neighbourhood policing and delivering the people’s priorities of halving both knife crime and violence against women and girls within a decade, cracking down on antisocial behaviour and increasing public confidence in policing.
Violence against women and girls
This government has set out an unprecedented ambition to halve violence against women and girls within a decade. Previous governments have treated violence against women and girls as an inevitability instead of the national emergency it is.
We have already taken steps to transform the response to these heinous crimes – including announcing Raneem’s Law, which will see domestic abuse specialists in 999 control rooms and the long-overdue roll-out of the pilot for new Domestic Abuse Protection Orders. We have also announced new measures to tackle spiking, stalking and other crimes which disproportionately impact women and girls. For the first time we have a truly cross-government approach, from prevention work in schools, to the relentless pursuit of perpetrators, right through to sustained support for survivors.
Knife crime
Halving knife crime over the next decade is a key part of our Safer Streets Mission, and we are taking action to tackle the scourge of serious violence on our streets.
In September, the Prime Minister launched a coalition on knife crime, bringing together campaign groups, families of people who have lost their lives, young people who have been impacted and community leaders.
We have banned zombie-style knives and machetes and are going further by banning ninja swords too. The Home Secretary recently announced we will bring forward new standards for age verification to stop weapons ending up in the hands of under-18s and social media execs who fail to remove illegal knife crime content from their platforms will face fines.
Prevention is also at the centre of our plans to tackle knife crime and we will also introduce a new offence of criminal exploitation of children, to go after gangs luring young people into violence and crime.
Antisocial behaviour and retail crime
This Labour government will crack down on those causing havoc on our high streets by introducing Respect Orders, ensuring persistent adult offenders are banned from public areas where they are causing harm.
Antisocial behaviour involving off-road bikes, motorbikes and e-scooters causes untold misery and we will make it easier for the police to seize dangerous and deafening off-road vehicles being used for antisocial purposes.
In opposition, I campaigned alongside USDAW trade union and the Co-Op, calling for government to legislate for assaults against retail workers and I am glad that this will now happen, combined with scrapping the Tories’ £200 limit for “low value” thefts to ensure no offenders get away with impunity.
Under the Tories, neighbourhood policing was slashed and more than half of the public now say they never see a bobby on the beat. The number of police officers deployed to neighbourhood policing roles were cut, PCSOs more than halved and special constables down more than two-thirds.
Neighbourhood policing has always been the cornerstone of our policing tradition. Working closely with local communities is the only way forward if we are to reduce crime, rebuild confidence and give law abiding, hard-working families the safer future they so rightly deserve.