Shabana Mahmood MP: speeches

Speeches

• 26 Jan 2026 · Police Reform White Paper · Hansard source

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  Let me assure my hon. Friend that the Policing Minister met representatives of the Welsh Government today, and we will continue those conversations. The independent review will take into account existing devolution and local governance arrangements, and I will happily ensure that he and others who are interested in this are kept updated as the review rolls out.

• 26 Jan 2026 · Police Reform White Paper · Hansard source

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  I can, 100%.

• 26 Jan 2026 · Police Reform White Paper · Hansard source

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  I can assure the hon. Gentleman that there will be local policing areas within the new regional forces, with neighbourhood policing as the absolute bedrock of those local policing areas. I would not be bringing forward these reforms if I was not absolutely certain that we are absolutely protecting local policing in the set-up of the new model for policing, so that every area gets the type of policing it needs and deserves.

• 26 Jan 2026 · Police Reform White Paper · Hansard source

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  Under this Government, we have increased funding to forces by close to £2 billion since being elected, and the funding settlement for 2026-27 is an increase of £796 million based on the year before. It is this Government who are funding police.

• 26 Jan 2026 · Police Reform White Paper · Hansard source

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  In Scotland and Northern Ireland, the National Police Service will be able to carry out operations only with the agreement of the legally designated authority. That reflects the current arrangements for serious and organised crime and counter-terror policing in both Scotland and Northern Ireland. I will be happy to write to the hon. Gentleman on any other points of detail.

• 26 Jan 2026 · Police Reform White Paper · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is 100% right—that is exactly the intention of the reforms, and it is how we will ensure that we have a new model for policing that can serve every community and deal effectively with every type of crime.

• 26 Jan 2026 · Police Reform White Paper · Hansard source

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  We are very much focused just on policing and we are consulting on those matters as we speak.

• 26 Jan 2026 · Police Reform White Paper · Hansard source

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  Yes. The point of the new model for policing is to make sure that victims of crime get a good standard of service for whatever type of crime they have been victims of, no matter where they are in the country.

• 26 Jan 2026 · Police Reform White Paper · Hansard source

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  Let me assure the right hon. Gentleman that we will work closely with the police as we develop the new licence to practise. We will obviously want to strike the right balance between ensuring that our officers are up to date on training and investing in their skills, but not creating a bureaucracy that then gets in the way. At the moment, we already have quite a bureaucracy when it comes to training. It is right that we move forward to a more professional model by having this licence, but we will consult and work with policing as we roll it out.

• 26 Jan 2026 · Police Reform White Paper · Hansard source

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  The new model for policing will ensure that wherever people live in the country, whatever community they are part of, they will have a high standard of service. The new model will ensure in future the police are capable of dealing with every type of crime, whether that is going after terrorists and serious and organised crime through the National Police Service; dealing with specialist investigations to bring murderers, rapists and other serious offenders to justice; or dealing with the local issues that my hon. Friend raised through local police areas.

• 26 Jan 2026 · Police Reform White Paper · Hansard source

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  I do regret the hon. Gentleman’s inability to move beyond party politics. As he will know—in fact, the Minister for Policing and Crime, my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon West (Sarah Jones), has engaged with the Scottish Government today—the National Police Service will be UK-wide, but its powers and remit will vary between England and Wales and Scotland and Northern Ireland. In England and Wales it will have full operational powers and will be able to carry out its law enforcement activities, but in Scotland and Northern Ireland it will carry out operations only with the agreement of the legally designated authority, which is the position today.

• 26 Jan 2026 · Police Reform White Paper · Hansard source

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  I thank the Liberal Democrat spokesperson for his support, I believe, for at least some of the reforms, particularly those on neighbourhood policing. He is absolutely right: neighbourhood policing is critical and will be bedrock of the new policing model unveiled in the White Paper. We have already made progress on increasing the number of neighbourhood police officers. There are already 2,400 additional officers, and that number will be 3,000 by the end of March, with at least 1,750 over the next financial year; we will continue to make progress on neighbourhood police officers. The hon. Member also mentioned police numbers. As is clear in the White Paper and from my statement, what matters is what those officers are doing. I hope that he and his Liberal Democrat colleagues will agree that nobody wants warranted police officers to be sat behind desks working in HR and admin support. We want police officers out policing our communities, going after criminals, and providing the reassurance that only visible policing can provide. He will know that decisions on police counters and other measures are for individual forces, but I hope that he will recognise that we have delivered on our commitment to have a named contactable officer in every neighbourhood, which I believe goes some way to reassuring local communities. The hon. Gentleman made a good point about counter-terror policing and the National Crime Agency. I assure him and the whole House that those two organisations will only move into the National Police Service when it is fully ready. We will not compromise on the operational capabilities of either of those organisations. I will work closely with the leadership of both to make sure that the switch into the National Police Service only happens in a way that does not compromise the operational effectiveness of either counter-terror policing or the National Crime Agency. I assure the hon. Gentleman that these reforms are fully funded to the end of the Parliament. He also made a point about regional forces. Again, I urge him to absorb the detail of the White Paper and I look forward to discussing these issues with him in more detail. Within the regional force structures, there will be local policing areas, right down to the neighbourhood level. That will ensure that whether people live in a rural area or in an urban one, like me, they get the local policing that they need and deserve. That is the absolute foundation of all these reforms, so that regional forces can concentrate on the things that can be done at scale, like specialist investigations and public order policing, and local police areas can police right down to the neighbourhood level and deal with the everyday crimes that are blighting communities all over the country, exactly as he says. That will apply equally and just as forcefully for rural communities as it will for those in towns and cities across the country. I reassure the hon. Gentleman that although I believe that live facial recognition is incredibly important technology, we will ensure that its roll-out is in line with the sort of regulations that we would expect to make sure that it does not have a distorted effect. We are consulting on that right now. In the future, the National Police Service will ensure that the adoption of technologies across policing takes place quickly and in line with the standards that we would all expect.

• 26 Jan 2026 · Police Reform White Paper · Hansard source

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  The reforms in the White Paper are fully funded. Let me reassure the hon. Member that every force in the country will see a real-terms increase in its funding in the new police settlement. The hon. Member raises the challenges seen by Thames Valley police and across the country, but the reason we are rolling out this model of policing is to have a better balance between neighbourhood policing, local police areas, regional forces and the new National Police Service.

• 26 Jan 2026 · Police Reform White Paper · Hansard source

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  No, I do not.

• 26 Jan 2026 · Police Reform White Paper · Hansard source

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  Let me reassure my hon. Friend that we will ensure that the roll-out of all policing powers, including the use of technology, is in line with the race action plan, which we support, and that any measures are stress-tested to ensure that they serve all communities equally. It is our position that the police must always police without fear or favour, so that every community can be confident that they are getting the right quality of policing and nobody is being unfairly targeted.

• 26 Jan 2026 · Police Reform White Paper · Hansard source

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  Let me assure my hon. Friend that accountability at both national and local level is critical to these reforms. Once the review has reported on what the shape of those new regional forces should be, we will be able to say more on the exact relationship between areas where there is a crossover of mayoralties, as well as for local policing and crime boards. It is absolutely the intention that, at every level, there will be obvious accountability for local responsiveness and performance. That goes right up to the national level, where the Home Secretary will have new powers going forward.

• 26 Jan 2026 · Police Reform White Paper · Hansard source

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  With permission, Mr Speaker, I will make a statement on police reform. A little less than 200 years ago, speaking at this very Dispatch Box, Sir Robert Peel declared that: “the time is come, when…we may fairly pronounce that the country has outgrown her police institutions”. —[ Official Report , 28 February 1828; Vol. 18, c. 795.] Those words could just as well have been spoken today. Policing is not broken, as some might have us believe. Last year, the police made over three quarters of a million arrests—5% more than the year before. Some of the most serious crimes are now falling, with knife crime down and murder in the capital at its lowest recorded level. However, across the country things feel very different. Communities are facing an epidemic of everyday crime that all too often seems to go unpunished—and criminals know it. Shop theft has risen by 72% since 2010, and phone theft is up 58%. At the same time, in a rapidly changing world, the nature of crime is changing. Criminals—be they drug smugglers, people traffickers or child sexual abusers—are operating online and across borders, with greater sophistication than ever before. The world has changed dramatically since policing was last fundamentally reformed over 60 years ago. Policing remains the last great unreformed public service. Today, as this Government publish a new policing White Paper, I set out reforms that are long overdue. They define a new model for policing in this country, with local policing that protects our communities and national policing that protects us all. Since taking office, we have already restored a focus on neighbourhood policing that the last Conservative Government eroded. They pulled bobbies off the beat, and now over half of the public report that they never see police on patrol in their local area. It was a foolish error, because neighbourhood policing works. Across the world, the evidence shows that visible patrols in high-crime areas work. The last Labour Government put more officers on the streets, and confidence in policing hit record levels. The Tories cut them, and confidence fell. This Government are righting that wrong, with a target of 13,000 more neighbourhood officers by the end of the Parliament, and we have already put 2,400 back on to the beat. We have also introduced the neighbourhood guarantee, so that every community has a named, contactable officer. I also intend to end the distortive “officer maintenance grant” that was introduced by the last Conservative Government, who had to replace the 20,000 police officers lost on their watch. The results were perverse: uniformed officers hired but stuck behind desks, with 12,000 men and women in uniform now working in support roles, including—absurdly—some 250 warranted officers working in human resources. I intend to end that by introducing a neighbourhood policing ringfence, which will ensure that forces are putting uniformed officers where the public want and need them: out in the community, fighting crime on our streets. However, we must do more. Today, policing happens in the wrong places. We have local forces responsible for national policing, which distracts them from policing their communities. At the same time, we have forces of various shapes and sizes, and quality varies widely force by force. This Government’s reforms will ensure that we have the right policing happening in the right place. That starts with the creation of a new national police service. At first, the force will set standards and lift administrative tasks off local forces. In time, it will draw in all national crime-fighting responsibilities, including counter-terrorism policing, serious organised crime, and fraud. This will ensure that local forces are no longer distracted by national responsibilities, while at the same time creating an elite national force that is expert at fighting the ever-more sophisticated criminals who are operating nationwide, across our borders, and online. Alongside the new national force, we will replace the patchwork of 43 local forces that has remained almost unchanged since the Police Act 1964. That model has been straining for decades, and today it is simply not fit for purpose. Our 43 forces are of varying sizes: some have just 1,000 officers, others over 8,000, and the Metropolitan police is 30 times larger than our smallest forces. As a result, some forces are not equipped to handle complex investigations or respond to major incidents. Meanwhile, the duplication across force headquarters means that money is wasted, drawing resource away from frontline policing. We will introduce a smaller number of regional forces responsible for specialist investigations, including murder, serious sexual offences and public order. Within these forces, we will introduce smaller local policing areas. These will be focused exclusively on local policing, tackling the burglaries, shoplifting and antisocial behaviour that too often go unpunished today. It is vital that we set these new forces up in the right way, so I will soon launch a review to determine the precise number and nature of the new forces. Its work will be completed this summer. Taken together, these reforms will put the right policing in the right place: an elite national force will tackle nationwide crime; regional forces will conduct specialist investigations; and local policing will tackle the epidemic of everyday crime. Our structures are outdated, and so is our adoption of the tools and technology that could make our policing more effective and more efficient. Criminals are operating in increasingly sophisticated ways, but in policing, in all honesty, our response is mixed. While some forces surge ahead, with the results to show for it, others are fighting crime in a digital age with analogue methods. We will ensure that every force is adopting the latest technology, led out of the new national police service. This will include the largest-ever roll-out of live facial recognition technologies, across England and Wales. We know that this approach works. In London, in just two years, the Metropolitan police has made 1,700 arrests, taking robbers, domestic abusers and rapists off our streets. When the future arrives, there are always doubters. A hundred years ago, fingerprinting was decried as curtailing our civil liberties, but today we could not imagine policing without it. I have no doubt that the same will prove true of facial recognition technology in the years to come. At the same time, we will launch police.AI, investing a record £115 million in AI and automation to make policing more effective and efficient, stripping admin away to ensure that officer time can be devoted to the human factor that only a police officer can provide. Common standards apply both to the technology we use and the quality and performance of our officers. We must, and we will, set and maintain the highest standards. We have already introduced new vetting requirements enabling forces to dismiss those who fail vetting checks, alongside a range of measures to lift policing standards. We will introduce a licence to practice for police officers, recognising the professionalism, dedication and duty that comes with the uniform. We must be willing to set clear standards and the performance that we expect within forces, and to hold policing leaders to account for their delivery. Under the last Conservative Government, there was a retreat from the historical role held by Home Secretaries and the Home Office since the days of Peel. That was an error, and this Government will reverse it. As the old Peelian maxim has it, the police are the public and the public are the police. I consider it essential that the people, through Parliament, can determine what they expect from their forces, so this Government will restore targets for police forces and set minimum standards that forces must abide by. Force performance will be transparent and public, and where performance falls, we will take action. We will create new turnaround teams to go into a force where performance has fallen, and in the most extreme examples of a failure of leadership, I will restore the Home Secretary’s power to fire a chief constable. This vital power was relinquished by the last Conservative Government, who handed it to police and crime commissioners—a position that I consider a failed experiment, despite the best efforts of many excellent PCCs across the country. We will now draw that experiment to an end. Local accountability and governance will remain essential, however, and will continue to be provided by mayoralties or local crime and policing boards. Taken together, these are, without question, major reforms: a transformation in the structures of our forces, the standards within them, and the means by which they are held to account by the public. These are the most significant changes to how policing works in this country in around 200 years. The world has changed immeasurably since then, but policing has not. We have excellent and brave police officers across the country, and effective and inspiring leaders across many of our forces, but they are operating within an outdated structure, making the job of policing our streets and protecting our country harder than it should be. I began by quoting Peel’s declaration that “the country has outgrown her police institutions”. He went on to argue that the “safest course will be found to be the introduction of a new mode of protection.” —[ Official Report , 28 February 1828; Vol. 18, c. 795.] Now, as then, it is time we had the bravery to pursue a new mode of protection and a new model of policing, with the right policing in the right place. That means local forces protecting their communities and national policing that protects us all. That is what this Government will deliver, and I commend this statement to the House.

• 26 Jan 2026 · Police Reform White Paper · Hansard source

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  I will say more about specific funding decisions in the coming days, but let me reassure my hon. Friend that we absolutely recognise the role that violence reduction units play in dealing with knife crime in particular. Let me also reassure her that local police areas within regional forces will ensure that every community, wherever it is, gets the high standard of service that everyone deserves.

• 26 Jan 2026 · Police Reform White Paper · Hansard source

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  I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend, who makes a powerful point: in the end, policing is a public service. It is essential that we maintain public confidence in our policing and that we are also sure that the standard of service we get from our police is the same no matter where we are in the country.

• 26 Jan 2026 · Police Reform White Paper · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is right. The National Police Service will draw in the national responsibilities of both counter-terror policing and the National Crime Agency. Those two organisations collaborate very effectively, and I pay tribute to their leadership and the way in which they operate alongside one another, but they duplicate and build similar capabilities. Instead of having those capabilities built alongside and within two organisations, it makes sense to bring them into one organisation and to prevent that duplication of capabilities and functions. That is one of the main benefits of the reform. On the sorts of people whom these organisations go after, we know that we are one of the few major countries in the world that does not combine counter-terror policing and serious organised crime. International criminals often cross boundaries and indulge in all sorts of different types of work, including terrorism financing and serious organised crime. The reforms will lead to a very effective service and build on the excellent work already done by officers in counter-terror policing and the NCA.

• 26 Jan 2026 · Police Reform White Paper · Hansard source

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  I can reassure my hon. Friend that the only reason I am bringing forward these proposals is to improve our police service across every part of the country, with neighbourhood policing as the absolute bedrock. We will have local police areas, regional police forces and a National Police Service, so that we can deal with every type of community and every type of crime effectively in this country. We want confidence in our policing to be high no matter where people live. My hon. Friend cautiously welcomed the proposals, but I hope that he will consider the detail and support their delivery over the months and years to come.

• 26 Jan 2026 · Police Reform White Paper · Hansard source

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  It will be for the review to recommend what the new structure of the regional forces should look like, but let me pay tribute to the work of Greater Manchester police and the chief constable in particular. Greater Manchester is a very good example of a large force that is not burdened by significant national services. It is therefore able to concentrate on policing its local communities, and to do so very effectively. [ Interruption. ] The shadow Home Secretary chunters from a sedentary position, but he could do with learning a few lessons from Greater Manchester.

• 26 Jan 2026 · Police Reform White Paper · Hansard source

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  I can give my hon. Friend that assurance. Responsibility for high standards across the whole service will in future sit with the National Police Service, but in the meantime I am working closely with police leaders everywhere to ensure our standards are as strong as they can be, so that no matter where you are in the country, you get the quality of service that you deserve.

• 14 Jan 2026 · West Midlands Police · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend will know that it is not for me to make decisions on prosecutions. I am sure that the IOPC will consider all the findings made by Sir Andy Cooke and act upon them, once it has had a chance to make that assessment. The IOPC is independent and it would be inappropriate for me to say anything further from the Dispatch Box about what it, or indeed any other prosecutorial authority, might do. That is not a power that the Home Secretary has.

• 14 Jan 2026 · West Midlands Police · Hansard source

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  This matter has been of interest to all policing leaders across the country, and it is why I addressed the final remarks in my statement to policing leaders everywhere because it is important that we learn the lessons from this event, and I hope that everybody will hear that message loud and clear. Operational independence will always be respected, but we all as a country—every citizen and every one of us as parliamentarians and members of the Government—need to know that when the police make a risk assessment, we can trust that assessment and rely on it.