This week I backed measures before Parliament to help take back our streets and town centres, restore respect for law and order, and give the police and local communities the support and tools they need to tackle crime.
Labour’s Crime and Policing Bill represents the biggest package of measures on crime and policing for decades, with 50 new laws to cut crime and make our streets safer.
It includes:
Tackling antisocial behaviour
• Giving the police and others stronger powers to tackle antisocial behaviour by introducing Respect Orders.
• Removing the need for police to issue a warning before seizing vehicles, such as off-road bikes, being used antisocially.
• Strengthening the use of existing antisocial behaviour powers.
Tackling violence against women and girls
• Creating new offences criminalising the taking or recording of intimate images or videos without consent or a reasonable belief in consent.
• Creating a new offence covering spiking.
• Giving victims of stalking the right to know the identity of their perpetrator, alongside strengthening Stalking Protection Orders whilst issuing guidance to agencies on combatting stalking.
Tougher action on knife crime
• Creating a power to seize, retain and destroy bladed articles found on private property.
• Increasing the maximum penalty for sale of dangerous weapons to under-18s.
• Creating a new criminal offence of possessing a bladed article with the intent to cause harm.
Protecting retail workers
• Introducing a new offence of assaulting a retail worker, giving workers in shops up and down the country the protection they need.
• Removing the legislation which makes shop theft of and below £200 a summary-only offence, sending a clear message that any level of shop theft will be taken seriously.
Protecting vulnerable children and adults
• Introducing a new offence of child criminal exploitation, alongside a civil preventative order designed to stop the abhorrent exploitation of children by criminals.
• Making cuckooing a specific offence, protecting the most vulnerable people whose homes are used by others to commit criminal activity.
• Extending the current offence of exposure and creating a new child abduction offence.
Tackling child sexual abuse, including implementing recommendations from the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse
• Banning AI-models optimised to produce child sexual abuse material, and extend existing law criminalising ‘paedophile manuals’ to include material instructing how to use AI to generate child sexual abuse material.
• Criminalising moderators and administrators of websites that host child sexual abuse material.
• Granting Border Force officers the power to search the digital devices of individuals arriving in the UK for child sexual abuse material.
• Introducing a new duty in England for adults working in relevant activities to report instances of child sexual abuse.
• Introducing a new statutory aggravating factor covering grooming behaviour.
New powers to tackle serious crime
• Banning the possession or distribution of electronic devices used in vehicle theft.
• Strengthening the ability to apply corporate criminal liability to the makeup of modern corporations.
Strengthening the supervision of offenders in the community
• Reforming the ability of the police to manage registered sex offenders, including restricting their ability to change their name where there is a risk of sexual harm.
• Giving probation officers the power to polygraph test more serious offenders who have committed sexual or terrorism-motivated crimes.
New public order and safety powers
• Banning the possession of fireworks, flares and other pyrotechnics at protests.
• Criminalising the climbing of specified war memorials, making it clear that such disrespectful behaviour is unacceptable.
• Banning the use of face coverings to conceal a person’s identity at protests designated by the police.
Tackling fraud and economic crime
• Prohibiting possession and supply of “SIM farms” with no legitimate purpose.
• Reforming of the confiscation powers used to strip convicted criminals of their proceeds of crime.
• Introducing cost protections for law enforcement agencies to protect them from the risk of adverse costs when investigating kleptocrats and high-net worth individuals and corporations.
Giving police the powers they need
• Create a new targeted power for the police to enter premises to search for and seize electronically tracked stolen goods, ranging from mobile phones to stolen vehicles and agricultural machinery.
• Expansion of the lawful purposes by which law enforcement agencies can access the DVLA driver licence records.
Tougher action on drugs
• Expanding police powers to drug test more suspects on arrest, helping direct more drug users into treatment and away from illegal drugs.
Enhancing public confidence in policing
• Reforming the Independent Officer of Police Conduct’s (IOPC) investigative processes and giving chief officers of police the right to appeal the result of misconduct boards to the Police Appeals Tribunal.
• Putting of the IOPC’s victims’ right of review on a statutory footing.
Update counter-terrorism powers
• Implementing recommendations of the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, such as introducing youth diversion orders to divert young people away from terrorism related activity.