Government failing the police and endangering public, Yvette Cooper claims

The Shadow Home Secretary said it is time for radical reform to policing and to put victims first in the criminal justice system in a speech to this year’s Labour Party conference in Brighton.

Cuts to police budgets are also affecting public safety, Yvette Cooper added.

With former Metropolitan Police Service Commissioner Lord Stevens expected to publish radical reforms in his Labour Party-commissioned review of all aspects of policing at the end of October, Ms Cooper said it is time for significant reforms to transform the service.

“This Government is failing victims of crime, undermining the police, dividing communities [and] failing to deal with the challenges of the future,” she said. “We will support the police, but we know that is harder when money is so tight, so we need reform.”

Domestic violence and rape are major blind-spots in the Government’s current plans, Ms Cooper added, referring to fewer prosecutions despite increases in reporting to police to support her view. She was concerned “sanctuary schemes” for domestic violence victims begun under Labour were under threat from cuts, and said Labour would bring in legislation to prevent community resolutions for offenders committing domestic and sexual violence to help remedy problems.

“Since police cuts started and this Government took charge, the clock has been turned back – more criminals and abusers are getting off, fewer victims are getting protection,” she said.

“Never forget that two women a week are killed by a partner or ex, yet [there is] still no sign of the action, the national standards, or the commissioner we called for. Ministers are just blaming others and turning their backs. It’s about time Theresa May took action and got it sorted out.”

Ms Cooper criticised the 20 per cent budget cuts, which she said saw “victims denied justice” and community resolutions used for serious and violent offences that need custodial sentences, adding Theresa May, the Home Secretary, is “quick to claim credit when things go right, [but] strangely absent when things go wrong”.

Claiming “corners are being cut” as officers “are too stretched”, Ms Cooper pointed to the poor turnout for the police and crime commissioner (PCC) elections last year as a sign of the Government’s failing reforms, and warned that officers would struggle to handle modern criminal threats if current policies continued.

Ms Cooper put forward proposed further legislative changes to make it easier to prosecute identity theft, which she said was necessary to bring the service up to speed with cybercrime and other modern threats, as outlined recently by Peter Goodman, national lead on cybercrime.

She said if Labour won the general election in 2015 it would introduce a ‘Police First’ programme “to get the brightest IT graduates into policing” for placements, similar to the Teach First model that brings in graduates to classrooms for two years before they enter other professions.

As well as post-election plans, Ms Cooper said the party was also working with Peter Neyroud, former chief constable of Thames Valley Police, and consumer watchdog Which? to “build an organisation to challenge online fraud”, which would act in a similar way to the Internet Watch Foundation’s work against online child abuse.

She stressed that Labour would follow a victim-centred approach, and pointed to the ennoblement of Doreen Lawrence, who was recently nominated by Labour to take a seat in the House of Lords, as one way the party would hold the police and the Government to account and ensure victims were supported by the criminal justice system.

Despite advocating wide-ranging reforms, Ms Cooper paid tribute to the work of police officers in cutting crime and protecting the public. However, she said the number of crimes committed was still too high and raised concerns over the changing nature of criminality, seeing questions raised over how the police respond to certain issues such as cybercrime and she repeated her call for radical reform.

“Everyone welcomes the 20-year dro