New crime Bill will help ‘take back control of town centres’ – Home Secretary

New plans to tackle crime will “help take back control of town centres”, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has said.

The Government’s new Crime and Policing Bill will be introduced to Parliament on Tuesday with a range of measures from tackling knife crime to anti-social behaviour.

This includes giving police officers new powers to search a place where stolen items have been electronically located.

Ms Cooper told Nick Ferrari on LBC: “This legislation is about giving police and communities power to take back control of town centres against the shoplifting, the street theft, the anti-social behaviour that can blight too many town centres and neighbourhoods, tackling off-road bikes.

“But also measures to tackle the most serious violence that we face – making it harder for children to get hold of knives and lethal weapons, stronger measures on stalking and spiking to tackle violence against women and girls, and protection for our children against criminal and sexual exploitation.

“So a whole series of things that we are doing because we believe in safer streets.”

Among the plans, police would no longer need a warrant to search a property for a stolen phone.

Officers would gain new powers to act in the “golden hour” of investigations to search a place where stolen items have been electronically located, such as through a phone-tracking app, wifi access or Bluetooth.

Ministers believe it would mean police could take faster action to recover stolen goods by getting approval from an inspector or higher ranking officer instead of getting a warrant from a court.

Ms Cooper announced the new powers after towns and cities reported seeing street theft “shoot up” over several years, and said it is “extremely frustrating” for victims to see where their phones are but nothing is done.

The Government has said the measures in the Crime and Policing Bill will be supported by the recruitment of 13,000 extra neighbourhood policing roles.

Ms Cooper acknowledged that police funding is “tight” but pointed to a funding increase of up to £1.1 billion for forces for next year and said neighbourhood policing will increase overall.

“The work that we’ve done with police forces is clear that, overall, neighbourhood policing will be increasing next year as a result of the funding,” she told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

Asked about the plans potentially resulting in more prisoners in jails which are struggling with capacity issues, the Home Secretary conceded that some new crime measures increase sentencing powers, but said others would be preventative.

She told Today: “There are some of the measures that we think, also, by taking early prevention action actually can help prevent crimes escalating and can prevent prison sentences.

“There are others where there will be stronger areas around the community measures – for example, tagging or curfews.”

She added: “There are some measures where we are explicitly increasing sentencing powers – for example, for child grooming.”

Under the Bill, it will also be made illegal to climb on specific war memorials, with a list of 25 locations classed as Historic England category one sites, including the Arch of Remembrance in Leicester, naval war memorials in Plymouth and Portsmouth, and the Cenotaph in London.

The Home Secretary will have the power to add more sites for extra protection in England and Wales.

Police could also ban people from wearing face coverings to conceal their identity at designated protests.

The Government has already announced a raft of anti-knife crime measures, collectively known as Ronan’s Law, to tackle knife sales, including making retailers report to police any bulk or suspicious sales, and increasing to two years the jail sentence for selling weapons to children, or illegal blades such as zombie knives.

There will also be new respect orders to ban people responsible for repeated anti-social behaviour from town centres, as well as new criminal offences over spiking, and to stop registered sex offenders who continue to pose a threat from changing their name.

Instead, sex offenders will only be able to change their name on official documents such as passports, or aliases or names online, if officers monitoring them agree to it.

Shadow environment secretary Victoria Atkins said on Tuesday that she is pleased Labour is “cutting and pasting” Conservative ideas in its new Crime and Policing Bill.

She told Sky News: “Of the 35 specific measures in this Bill, 21 of them either appeared in our previous Criminal Justice Bill just before the election or we have announced, so of course we will support those measures.

But she said she is “deeply concerned” that new measures to remove the summary only offence of shoplifting of products below £200 would have significant long-term effects on crown courts, as “victims of rape will find it even harder and longer to get their day in court”.

Restaurant and retail bosses have also written to the Home Secretary warning that the Bill “stops short” of protecting delivery riders under plans to create a new offence of threatening or assaulting a shop worker in their place of work, and are calling for the offence to include couriers on journeys to and from customers.

Ministers have also announced plans to introduce a new offence punishable with up to five years in prison for anyone caught with electronic devices used in 40% of car thefts.

The Bill is expected to pass through Parliament by the end of the year.

John Hayward-Cripps, chief executive of Neighbourhood Watch, said: “The focus on addressing and reducing the epidemic of anti-social behaviour, theft and shoplifting that we all witness in our town centres and communities will play an important role in increasing feelings of confidence in the police, and feeling safer in our local communities.”