Sarah Jones MP: speeches

Speeches

• 17 Jun 2026 · Abuse of Customer-facing Workers · Hansard source

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  The hon. Member is right that Victim Support and other organisations give really important support to people in such situations. Across different Departments, we all have a role to play in trying to stop this abuse and the retail crime that goes alongside so much of it. I will go into that in more detail. First, I will set out the statistics on shop theft, which drives a lot of the abuse that we see and is often perpetrated by prolific offenders. In the year before we came to power, there was a 30% rise in shop theft, and in the past year there has been a 1% fall. A 1% fall does not sound great, but when we compare it with a 30% rise, it shows that we are completely turning the tide. I know that members of the public will say, “Well, that’s just statistics; that’s not my experience,” and it will take us a while to make people feel safer and tackle the huge problem that we still have. I want to reassure Members that—my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly asked about this—because of the policing interventions that we have done and because of what a lot of shops have done, we are beginning to turn the tide on shop theft. That is important. A lot of the larger retailers admittedly have more funds to do this, but the Co-operative Group, for example, has done incredible things to design out crime in its shops, and it has seen the biggest fall compared with other retailers. Lots of others are doing interesting things, whether that is having live facial recognition; designing out the ability for people to get behind the shop counter and steal some of the alcohol that might be there; having cameras on shop workers; or having security people. All those things are undoubtedly making a difference, and so is the ability of our police to respond. We have been clear with our wonderful police that we want them in our neighbourhoods tackling this type of crime. We have already seen over 3,000 more police in our neighbourhoods, and we have committed to having 13,000. The Liberal Democrat spokesperson talked about police numbers. The previous Government cut 20,000 police and then recruited 20,000 police, but they put 12,000 of them behind desks. Our measure is not about exact numbers—we want 13,000 more police in our communities, and we want outcomes. That is what we are driving towards. There are other things that we can do and that we are doing in this space that will also make a difference, and we will keep striving to do more. The hon. Member for Weald of Kent talked about technology, databases and wanting to cut bureaucracy for our police. I 100% agree with that. Last week, we launched PoliceAI with £75 million of funding to use AI to take away some of the nonsense bureaucracy that our police have to do. I have given it two first tasks in relation to outward-facing technology: one is to tackle tool theft and the other is to tackle retail crime. There are lots of quite good systems that different parts of the country are using to more easily record shop theft and upload imagery and CCTV. We want to design AI that can read across all of those so that the police can easily see and bring together who the prolific offenders are. There was talk of prolific offenders in this debate, and it is true that a small cohort of people are responsible for a large amount of retail crime and abuse against shop workers. They are often people with very complex needs—they will have an addiction; they will be drug addicts or alcoholics—and we in the Home Office are designing a programme to target those prolific offenders. Some areas do that already, and people have been doing it increasingly, but there are things that we can put in place to help us really target that prolific cohort, whether that is providing the support they need to get into treatment or more interventions to make sure they cannot do what they want to. My hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Danny Beales) said that we should be doing more to use things like orders to stop people coming into a community, or tagging. I think we need to be using all of those more, and we are designing a programme of work to do exactly that. My hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly asked if I would meet USDAW, and I am always very happy to do that. I have done so many times, but it is probably timely that I meet it again now that the Crime and Policing Act has been passed. He also asked how we would measure progress. We will measure what happens with the absolute numbers and the reporting of these issues, and whether people are reporting—whether that is through USDAW or our links in the retail sector. We will measure it through the crime statistics and what is happening as a result. My hon. Friend also asked, importantly, why the provision is defined as being just about shop workers and why we did not make it wider to include transport workers or people who work in banks, for example. We deliberately kept it narrow to avoid any ambiguity in the courts. I know people disagree with that, but we just have to agree to disagree; that is what we have done in the legislation. However, if the legislation makes a marked difference, which we hope it will, of course we will need to look at whether the provision should apply elsewhere. I have met representatives from banks, and I have had conversations about the particular challenges they have. They face the problem of abuse—I do not want to deny that—but the frequent protests they are increasingly experiencing are a slightly different issue, and one that we are talking to them about to try to support them through. With the number of police in our communities going up; with the new rule that all thefts under £200 have to be investigated; with the new tech, IT and AI that can help us read across all these different systems; with the law in place; with the police giving a strong message that we want to see people punished for abusing shop workers; and with the work that we are beginning to do on prolific offenders, hopefully we will increasingly see results. The fundamental point that my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly and everybody here has made is that we cannot accept this as normal behaviour—it is not. We will not tolerate it, and we will keep working until we tackle it.

• 8 Jun 2026 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  Around half of vehicle crime involves manipulation of signals from remote devices. Through the Crime and Policing Act 2026, we have criminalised the possession, importation, making, adapting and supplying of the electronic devices used to commit vehicle theft, which will make a real difference in my hon. Friend’s constituency.

• 8 Jun 2026 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  I am working closely with the Department for Transport on the challenges with e-scooters and the use of e-bikes, which I know many Members across the House will have. Making sure that we have more neighbourhood police in our communities is the absolute core of the issue, and that is what the Government are delivering.

• 20 Apr 2026 · Crime and Policing Bill · Hansard source

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  I will give way in one moment. If someone is caught using a vehicle to fly-tip, we can, as a result of this legislation, add up to nine points to their licence, which is surely a really powerful disincentive against fly-tipping. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman would like to explain why he did not bring this in, when he was in government.

• 14 Apr 2026 · Crime and Policing Bill · Hansard source

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  The rise is much slower and the charge rate has gone up by 21%. Clearly, action is more important than numbers, and this Government are taking action. That is why, for example, the shoplifting charge rate has increased by 21%. Many Members have spoken about fly-tipping. I absolutely accept the strength of feeling on fly-tipping. I think it is repulsive, and most of our communities are affected by it. Whether it is the large fly-tipping in our rural communities that is driven by serious organised crime or the everyday fly-tipping that we see in our cities, we need to do more to tackle it. The Government have published the waste crime action plan, which will make a substantial difference to how we approach waste crime, including the Government paying for the removal of the most egregious sites. In parts of the country we have seen reports in the press of huge waste sites. We are also committed to forcing fly-tippers to clean up their mess. Under this Bill, people who use their vehicle to fly-tip will potentially get nine points on their licence. That goes further than what the Opposition had previously suggested. So we are acting, as we should. We did not agree with the Lords amendment that proposed that local authorities should have to clear all sites, including private sites, because of the very significant costs that would be required to undertake that. We do not think that can be put on to local authorities just like that. But I assure hon. Members across the House that we are taking significant action on fly-tipping and we will continue to do so.

• 14 Apr 2026 · Crime and Policing Bill · Hansard source

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  I completely understand my hon. Friend’s point, which we have discussed before. As he knows, the announcement that the amendment would be made was given by the Home Secretary after the Heaton Park attack and the protest that followed. It has not come from nowhere; it has been debated and suggested by policing colleagues for some time. The Government’s view was that this Bill is a vehicle we could use to introduce this legislation, and that we should take the opportunity to do so. I know that he disagrees with that decision, but we made it because we feel this is a necessary step, given the situation in which we find ourselves. I want to be really clear again about what the amendment does and does not do. Marches can only be banned in very, very specific circumstances, as happened with the al-Quds march recently—the first time a march had been banned since 2012. The amendment will make no difference to that whatsoever. It will make no difference to what march can and cannot be banned. An assembly cannot be banned at all, as there is no legislative basis for that, so again, the amendment will make no difference at all. It already is the case, and it has been since 1986 when the Public Order Act was introduced, that the police can consider cumulative disruption when they look at imposing conditions on a protest. A condition could be the time that the protest is allowed to take place, the route that the protest can go down or the number of people allowed on that protest. Since 1986, the police have had the ability to consider cumulative disruption when they look at whether they should impose conditions. The amendment means that they have to look at and consider the impact of cumulative disruption when they look at imposing conditions.

• 5 Jan 2026 · Community Policing · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend makes a good point. It was not just public confidence in policing that fell under the last Government but how the police felt they were treated, which affects retention. One aspect of the White Paper process and police reform is looking at how we train police, how we treat them and how we give them the support they need to do the job they want to do, rather than the bureaucracy that blights a lot of their time. My hon. Friend makes a good point, and we are working closely with the police bodies to ensure that we get this right.

• 25 Nov 2025 · Bike Theft: Loughborough · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon, Mr Stringer, and to take part in this debate. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough (Dr Sandher) on securing this debate and on leading the charge in Parliament for more action for his constituents on bike theft. He was right when he said that if cars were being stolen to the same degree that bikes are, there would be more of an outcry. It is right that he and other Members raise this issue, because it is deeply personal to many of our constituents. There is not just the inconvenience, the cost and the burden of having a bike stolen, but the fear of further crime and the feeling that someone will have about their community and their safety within it when it appears that people can get away with such crimes without any consequence. I want to support my hon. Friend’s campaign and to help where I can. As always in such debates, it is a shame that we cannot have a dual debate with multiple Ministers saying what they are doing, because I know that my colleagues in the Department for Transport, for example, would be keen to explain how they are looking at cycling and bike theft. We are working with them and other Government Departments. I will set out some of the things that we are doing in the Home Office, however, which I hope my hon. Friend will support and which I hope will help in the fight against knife theft—sorry, bike theft. I will set out our approach to crime and policing. For too long, what is often seen as lower-level crime has been accepted and not pursued in the way that we would want it to be. I have many conversations with policing colleagues—I was having some today about knife crime, hence my mis-speak just now—and there are really interesting connections between what is perceived as lower-level crime and more significant organised crime. The more that our police gather intelligence about where there are connections and where thefts are more systematic and linked with serious organised crime, the better our policing will be. The first principle is that no crime is too small. Across the piece, whether it is retail crime or bike theft, we and our communities expect the police to investigate and to do what they can. People do not always expect there to be an outcome to such investigations, but they want crimes to be investigated. They want the evidence to be used where it can be, and they want to understand and to be kept informed about what is happening with their case. The second principle is that policing is best done locally. We can prevent crime if we create a climate where it is very clear that there is policing in our neighbourhoods and on our streets that will not tolerate theft. My hon. Friend talked about different types of bike theft. In some cases, kids might steal a bike and then discard it when they have had their fun, as they see it. Others are stealing to order for a higher value and have more links to criminal networks. We need to tackle those things differently, but the principle of having police in our communities who are policing our streets, being vigilant, understanding what is going on and building up an intelligence picture of their local community is key. That is why we will make sure that there are 3,000 extra police on our streets by next April, and why we are spending £200 million on top of the multibillion-pound settlement for our police forces. Leicestershire police has plans to grow its neighbourhood team by 56 full-time equivalent officers in this financial year. That physical presence—being where the crime takes place—will make a real difference. We are also looking at the data. In fact, we are doing lots of work to map the areas of significant crime and where the risks are, and we are making sure that the police intervene where we need them to. My hon. Friend talked about working with the local authority and there are things that we can do. We can improve street lighting and CCTV, and we can design our streets with better technology that helps us to catch criminals. My hon. Friend mentioned the new powers that we are introducing, and I will touch on two of them. The first concerns the way that criminals override locking systems to steal vehicles, including motorbikes and cars. We know that that electronic compromise is now the predominant method of vehicle theft, so in the Crime and Policing Bill we are introducing a ban on having any of these electronic devices. At the moment, if someone uses them to steal something, it is a crime, but just having them is not. However, there is no reason to have these devices other than to steal things, so we will be changing the law to criminalise the possession, importation, making, adapting, supplying or offering to supply an electronic device that can be used to steal a vehicle. The second thing we are going to do will make a real difference. Indeed, I was on a visit with Thames Valley police last week, and we spoke about the difference this change will make in tackling bike theft. Officers should be able to enter and search premises where they reasonably believe that stolen items, such as GPS-tracked bikes, are located. At the moment they need to get a warrant before they can go in, but we know that that takes time, and by the time they have done that the bike might have been moved on. Where GPS tracking shows that an item is behind closed doors, we will facilitate the swift seizure of what we know to be stolen property, and the police will be able to go in and get it without needing a warrant. That will be a valuable tool for tackling bike theft. What happens to those bikes after they have been stolen is also really important and we need to tackle that piece of the pie as well. Ministers in other Departments are looking at using the Online Safety Act 2023; I am very interested to see how that plays out. There are now duties on social media and tech companies to prevent the advertising of stolen goods. If people are selling bikes online that turn out to be stolen, there is a duty on social media companies not to allow that. It is relatively early days to see how the Online Safety Act will play out, but we should all be monitoring how it works to prevent the sale of stolen goods online. That applies not just to bikes, but more widely; I was in a retail crime meeting earlier where we talked about how items from shops more generally are sold and how we tackle that in the online space. My hon. Friend talked about the campaign that his local police have done, which sounds as though it was very successful, using drone teams and the road policing unit, with everybody working together. In the few weeks that I have been in this role, my experience has been that when the police put their mind to tackling a problem, they are supremely good at doing it. The problem is that our police struggle with resourcing and huge bureaucracy, so they do not have enough time to do the things that we want them to do—but once they decide that something is a priority, they get results really successfully. That operational policing response is really important. That example from my hon. Friend’s local area also speaks to the need to ensure that our police have new technology. For 14 years, there has been a lack of investment in policing; through those years of austerity, we lost not just police officers, but any investment in new infrastructure. We know that drones can be revolutionary in policing, but we need to ensure that the police are funded in the right way to buy the kit that they need, so we will be bringing out a police reform White Paper, building on our decision already to save £100 million through the police and crime commissioner model. We will shortly introduce a police reform Bill, which I hope will enable our police officers to do what we want them to be doing—focusing on physical crime in their communities and spending less time on bureaucracy, using AI and other new technology that can free them up to do other things. A central policing function will deal with some of the crime that is best tackled at a national level, so that the police can deal with issues such as bike theft in a targeted way. Using that intelligence-led approach with policing locally is important. Some good work is shared through a couple of national bodies that come together to look at some of these issues. For example, the motorcycle crime reduction group brings together Government and representatives from all the different sectors—manufacturing, insurance, the police, the security industry and rider interest groups—to reduce theft. That is a useful place to spread best practice. The national vehicle crime working group, which is led by the National Police Chiefs’ Council and their vehicle crime lead, brings together vehicle crime specialists to look at emerging trends in response to this kind of crime and to talk about good practice and strategies to dismantle the wider criminal groups that are responsible for that level of crime. Across the piece, I reiterate that bike theft is a significant crime. We should take it seriously, treat our communities with the respect that they deserve and expect better. We can do more in terms of the design of bikes to design out crime. We want members of the public to do what they can; my hon. Friend talked about the need to make sure that bikes are properly locked and that any theft is reported, and that is crucial. Bike marking is also important, so that people know the model number. The police—in Thames valley, say, since I was talking about Oxford—often talk to me about the number of cases where bikes are stolen, but the people who report the theft to the police do not know the number on the bike, so there is no way of marking it. People should ensure that they take a picture of their number or that the bike is marked in some way so that they can tell the police. There are a couple of online spaces, such as BikeRegister, where bikes can be registered. That can also help if the bikes get stolen. We need to bring our policing back to our neighbourhoods and make sure that we are following the evidence in terms of emerging patterns of bike theft, which can be linked to more serious organised crime. We need to have the right legislation in place so that the police can act when they need to and work across Government Departments to make sure that we are pulling every lever we possibly can to design out and reduce this kind of crime. I conclude by thanking my hon. Friend for securing this debate. It has been a useful opportunity to talk about some of the challenges that we face. As ever, I welcome more ideas and suggestions from his constituents and from him on what else we could do. Question put and agreed to.

• 13 Nov 2025 · Police Reform · Hansard source

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  The hon. Gentleman raises the important issue of road safety. I am working very closely with colleagues in the Department for Transport on reforms in that space, which we will bring forward soon. I can assure him that we will put the money that we save into the frontline services that the public expect.

• 13 Nov 2025 · Police Reform · Hansard source

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  I join the hon. Gentleman in praising Cambridgeshire constabulary for the way it responded in incredibly difficult circumstances. The quick wit of many—including, of course, the people working on the train such as the train driver and others—saved lives, and we are all very grateful for that. The hon. Gentleman makes a point about funding, and the funding allocation will be made in the usual way before the end of the year. I appreciate the points he made, but there is more money going into policing this year and we will ensure that it is given to where it is needed. As I say, the police reform programme is designed to transform how we do policing so that we can become much more effective and productive in the future.

• 15 Sept 2025 · Antisocial Behaviour · Hansard source

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  Antisocial behaviour causes untold distress and misery across our communities. Under the previous Government, the response to this menace was weak and ineffective, and visible neighbourhood policing declined dramatically. This Government are putting that right by rebuilding neighbourhood policing and introducing respect orders to tackle persistent perpetrators and stronger powers to seize dangerous and deafening off-road bikes.

• 15 Sept 2025 · Antisocial Behaviour · Hansard source

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  I think the number of constituents who responded to my hon. Friend’s survey shows that this is really important for our communities and something that we have to get a grip of. There has been a worrying increase in such crimes. As part of our safer streets mission, this Government are cracking down on the crimes that make people feel unsafe in our communities, including snatch, theft, pickpocketing and robbery. Our safer streets initiative has been running this summer in town centres, including in my hon. Friend’s constituency, I think. We aim to prevent crime and antisocial behaviour, and the sale of off-road bikes is at the heart of that.

• 15 Sept 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  We need to ensure that our police officers are given the best support that they can be given through the Police Federation, which is the vehicle by which they are supported through any incidents they have. I will be working very closely with it to ensure that it is doing the right thing on behalf of its members.

• 2 Sept 2025 · Speciality Steel UK: Insolvency · Hansard source

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  Navantia, which is building three ships, has recently entered into a contract to use Liberty’s steel; that relates to the Dalzell plant in Scotland, so it is unaffected by the announcements we have made today. Of course, I work very closely with my colleagues in the Ministry of Defence to ensure that we use British Steel where we can, and that we have the right infrastructure across the country, producing the right types of steel. We produce some types of steel for defence and not others, and some types of steel for shipping and not others. We need to do everything we can to protect British jobs and produce what we can here in the UK.