Yvette Cooper responds to Patel's comments on the policing bill

Yvette Cooper, Labour's Shadow Home Secretary, responding to the Home Secretary’s comments about the policing bill, said:

"Labour has forced the Government to make a series of concessions and U-turns on crime and violence against women and girls over the last few months in response to our amendments - including lifting the 6 month limit on domestic abuse prosecutions, treating domestic abuse as serious violence and taking action on spiking. 

"But crime is rising, prosecutions are falling and there are still major steps that Labour is calling for to keep communities safe that Priti Patel is refusing to take. 

"It is shameful that the Home Secretary is still refusing to make violence against women and girls a strategic policing requirement so it has the same prominence as tackling organised crime. 

"She is also still refusing to establish specialist rape units in every police force area or minimum sentence for rape and stalking, and shockingly is still resisting Labour’s proposals for action against landlords who pressurise tenants into sex for rent. 

"Priti Patel is also still trying to criminalise people for protesting noisily or singing in the street rather than tackling serious crime. Too often under the Tories, criminals are getting away with it and victims are being let down."

Ends

Notes to Editors: 

Labour action in Parliament has forced the Government to: 

• Accept that domestic abuse and sexual offences must be included in the definition of serious violence

• Agree to safeguards on the extraction of data from victims' phones - safeguards against digital strip searching.

• Lift the limit for prosecution of common assault or battery in domestic abuse cases

• Accept a new offence to tackle breastfeeding voyeurism. 

• Accept a new offence to tackle violence against shopworkers 

• Extend Football Banning Orders to include online abuse. 

• Enable a local authority to establish a ‘buffer zone’ around schools and vaccination centres to prevent threatening protestors targeting children or NHS staff

• Establish a review into ‘spiking’ to find out how widespread it is and who is being targeted. 

There was a record number of votes won against the government on the Police, crime, sentencing and courts bill, in the modern House of Lords (since it was reformed in 1999). 

Labour has called for a number of things which the Conservatives still refuse to do which would tackle violence against women and girls and bring criminals to justice: 

• We still do not have a specialist rape unit in every police force area. 

• Labour has called for Violence Against Women and Girls to be a strategic policing requirement giving it the same prominence as terrorism. 

• The Conservatives have refused to bring in minimum sentences for rape and for stalking as Labour called for. 

• They have opposed making misogyny a hate crime. 

• They have also rejected our amendments on sex for rent. 

• Establishing a ‘duty of candour’ on the police workforce.