“Everything feels broken” after 13 years of Conservative government, the shadow home secretary has said as she pledged to clamp down on shoplifting and crimes affecting local businesses.
Yvette Cooper was visiting Buxton, in the High Peak constituency in Derbyshire, speaking to business owners, residents and police community support officers (PCSOs) in the town centre about the impact of shoplifting, which Labour claims has risen by 22% in the borough.
Ms Cooper said Labour would scrap the “ridiculous” £200 rule – which the party claims means shoplifting of items worth less than £200 is rarely investigated – and would put 13,000 more neighbourhood police and PCSOs in Britain’s communities and high streets if elected.
She said: “Shoplifting here in Buxton has gone up, it’s gone up across High Peak by over 20%, and that means that town centres feel less safe.
“Labour is campaigning to put more police and PCSOs back in our town centres, and also to tackle shoplifting, to get rid of the ridiculous £200 rule, which means that the police are not really able to go after shoplifting even when it’s organised gangs that are causing huge problems.
“We need action to make sure our town centres can be kept safe.”
Shoplifting rose by 25% in the 12 months to June, according to police data for England and Wales released last week, as part of a rise in crimes against businesses.
The visit came days after the launch on Monday of Project Pegasus, a new national police intelligence unit aiming to tackle organised shoplifting gangs.
Police also made renewed commitments to attend the scene of shoplifting incidents where there is violence or security staff have stopped a suspect.
Ms Cooper was joined on her visit by the party’s parliamentary candidate for High Peak, Jon Pearce, and its candidate for Derbyshire police and crime commissioner, Nicolle Ndiweni.
While meeting the owners of the Buxton Trading Post in Spring Gardens, Ms Cooper was told by one customer, who said she was a lifelong Labour supporter, that she wanted to see more from the party on policy as she feared Labour “will only get in because the Tories are so bad”.
Labour has also pledged to ban repeat offenders from town centres, to create a new offence of assaulting retail workers, and to introduce new powers to stop public drinking and drug use, while also promising residents and business owners a say in how their communities are policed.
When asked how a Labour government planned to hire 13,000 new officers, Ms Cooper said: “We set out plans for 13,000 more neighbourhood police and PCSOs across the country, especially our town centres where we really need people to be able to feel safe.
“We set out a police efficiency programme based on the work of the Police Foundation. They’ve identified about £700 million of savings.
“We’ve been more cautious than that and said £360 million of savings that can go back into putting neighbourhood police back on that beat, back into our towns and back into our communities to help people feel safe.”
“We are campaigning to get Labour MPs elected, and I think that’s really important because we need a Labour government.
“Frankly, it just feels like everything is broken now after 13 years of the Conservatives, it feels like in so many areas things have gone backwards.
“You don’t see the police on the beat in the same way anymore. We’ve got huge, long waiting lists for NHS appointments.
“We need to turn this around after 13 years of huge damage by the Tories. I think people want a fresh start, and that’s what Labour’s setting out.”
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