• As part of Labour’s “Five Missions for a Better Britain”, Keir Starmer made a notable speech in October 2023, and the party published its policy document entitled “Making Britain’s Street Safe”.

Therein, Labour’s missions for public safety are:

• Halve the level of violence against women and girls.

• Halve the incidents of knife crime.

• Raise confidence in every police force to its highest levels.

• Reverse the collapse in the proportion of crimes solved.

Policies to halve violence against women and girls:

• Put specialists into the court system, including specialist support for rape and domestic abuse victims.

• Introduce specialist rape courts.

• Add specialist abuse workers to the control rooms of every police force.

• Tackling misogynistic online content.

• Introducing a domestic abuse register.

Policies to halve the incidence of knife crime:

• Make grooming and criminal exploitation of children illegal to pre-empt gangs who exploit county lines.

• Put youth workers into accident and emergency Departments and custody suites.

• Put mental health support workers into schools.

• Tackle online sites promoting and selling machetes and dangerous knives.

Labour in January 2024 provided further details to its knife crime policy:

• The plans include sanctions like curfews, tagging, behavioural contracts, and interventions at home and school.
• Pledged to launch a review of online knife sales whilst enforcing tough criminal sanctions on online marketplaces such as Amazon Marketplace, eBay and Instagram

Policies to raise confidence in the police:

• Add 13,000 neighbourhood police and PCSOs mandatory patrols for town centres.

• Overhaul misconduct and vetting procedures.

• Compulsory anti-racism training and training on violence against women and girls for policing.

• New standards regime for national policing reform.

• Support the Police Covenant, improving mental health support, training, and development as part of the proper workforce strategy.

• New Strong preventative antisocial behaviour plan.

• Introduce new “Respect Orders” (essentially an adult-only ASBO).

• Establish Community and Victim Payback Boards to oversee community sentences.

Policies to reverse the collapse in the proportion of crimes solved:

• Increase the Crown prosecutor pool by 50%.

• Set new joint arrangements for the police and CPS and tackle bureaucracy in bringing charges.

• Introduce a direct entry scheme for detectives for every police force.

• Significantly strengthen the Victim’s Bill.

Contained in the policy platform released by LabourList in October 2023:

Justice:

• Protect and improve the Human Rights Act.

• Extended Parenting Orders to force parents into parenting classes.

• Incorporate a “trauma-informed approach” to the justice system to limit reoffending.

• Create a child exploitation register.

• Overhaul Companies House to make targeting fraudsters easier.

• Make tackling misogyny a crucial part of school accountability.

• Make Misogyny a hate crime.

• Introduce minimum 7-year custodial sentences for rape and whole-life orders for rape, abduction, and murder of a stranger.

• Support the Assaults on Emergency Workers (Offences) Act and ensure it is properly enforced.

• Introduce tougher sentences for fly-tipping and littering.

Policing:

• Accept the findings of Baroness Casey’s independent review into the standards of behaviour and internal culture of the Metropolitan Police Service in full.

• Require stop and searches to be recorded.

• Labour will work with the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) to ensure confidence data is regularly published.

• Mandate the implementation of the Police Chiefs’ Council Race Action Plan.

• Will launch a review into the utility of current sentencing.
• Equalise the law on hate crime and extend the aggravated offences regime to all five protected characteristics recognised in law.

• Reduce reoffending rates by cutting prison drug use as well as violence in the prison estate.

• Provide 999 call handlers with domestic abuse specialists in peak hours.

• Review the Dangerous Dogs Act.

• Labour will develop IT systems to share data across police forces, including the British Transport police.

• Adopt the draft assaults on retail workers (offences) bill and the Protection of Workers (Retail and Age-restricted Goods and Services) (Scotland) Act 2021.

• Work with the rail sector to improve safety and support the British Rail Police.

• Ensure there is a specialist rape unit in every police force

• Consider the findings of the John Mittings undercover policing enquiry.Update the Counter-Extremism Strategy and support the Prevent programme.Reform prison education and employment post-incarceration to reduce homelessness for prisoners after release.

Extremism:

• Update the Counter-Extremism Strategy and support the Prevent programme.

Prisons:

• Reduce reoffending rates by cutting prison drug use as well as violence in the prison estate.

• Reform prison education and employment post-incarceration to reduce homelessness for prisoners after release.

Historic injustices:

• Create a Hillsborough Law to prevent future injustices that involved the state, mandating a duty of candour and an independent public advocate.

• Legislate against blacklisting trade unionists.

• Labour Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper in July 2022 made five policy commitments to speed up asylum decision-making and limiting channel crossings:

• • Re-enter a form of the EU’s Dublin Convention.

• • Open new resettlement schemes/legal routes to circumvent people smugglers.

• • Introduce new productivity targets for Home Office caseworkers.

• • Set a target of doubling the current annual asylum decisions to 30,000 (2015 level).

• Ms Cooper simultaneously stated that the Rwanda policy would end under Labour and its resources would form a new cell of specialist investigators under the National Crime Agency to challenge people-smuggling gangs.

• If the Windrush Scandal is not addressed, Labour will overhaul the Compensation Scheme, putting it outside of Home Office control.

• Redesign existing resettlement schemes to provide a more transparent process for refugees with family connections in the UK.

• Ms Cooper told The Telegraph in May 2023 that Labour would empower the Migration Advisory Committee as a way to reform the points-based immigration system. It could add and remove jobs from the shortage occupations list and offer a timescale on labour shortages.

• Labour plans to reduce the demand on immigration by upskilling the British Labour market.