Boris Johnson comes out of isolation to launch Beating Crime plan that vows to make yobs clean streets, track burglars with GPS tags and give police new search powers

Boris Johnson comes out of isolation to launch Beating Crime plan that vows to make yobs clean streets, track burglars with GPS tags and give police new search powers - amid backlash at 'gimmick' proposals

Prime Minister's crime blitz: The key proposals revealed today

Boris Johnson re-emerged from self-isolation today to unveil his new Beating Crime Plan to toughen up policing and crack down on criminals - only to be immediately met with a storm of criticism.

Among the proposals are relaxing restrictions on stop and search to tackle knife crime, establishing high-vis 'chain gangs' made up of yobs cleaning up rubbish and fitting burglars with 24-hour GPS tags.

The Prime Minister - who was told to stay at home after a positive contact - also wants to ensure that every neighbourhood in England and Wales has a named police officer that residents can contact.

But Labour slammed the document as a mere 'gimmick' that 'rehashed' previous policies and would do nothing to make the streets safer.

The party pointed out that the Tories cut the number of police by more than 20,000 after taking office in 2010 and recently froze their pay, causing the National Police Federation to declare it had 'no confidence' in Miss Patel.

Meanwhile, human rights organisation Liberty said easing the restrictions on Stop and Search would 'compound discrimination' in the UK, while Diane Abbott called the proposal 'alarming and counter-productive'.

John Apter, the chairman of the Police Federation of England and Wales, today slammed the plans as a 'gimmick' as he lambasted a pay freeze that saw the group declare it had 'no confidence' in Miss Patel.

A letter delivered to No10 today read: 'We don't need old ideas presented as new; we need genuine investment for the whole of the criminal justice system and genuine consultation over new ideas. Without that, this is just another ill-thought-out initiative.

'Police officers are sick of gimmicks. Sick of underfunding. Sick of mixed messaging putting police at risk. Sick of Government contempt for police. It's time for a total reset.'

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Prime Minister Boris Johnson, with Home Secretary Priti Patel, speaks to a police dog handler today during a visit to Surrey Police headquarters in Guildford, Surrey, to coincide with the publication of the government's Beating Crime Plan

Ministers pledge to make officers feel 'more valued' despite pay freeze

The Government has defended a decision not to offer an across-the-board pay rise to police officers this year because of economic 'difficulties' caused by the pandemic.

Policing minister Kit Malthouse pledged that the Government would do 'other things' to make police officers feel 'valued and supported'. Officers who earn more than £24,000 are subject to a pay freeze this year, compared with NHS staff who will receive 3%, and firefighters and local government workers who will get 1.5%.

Mr Malthouse told Sky News: 'We want to make sure that officers feel valued and rewarded and are supported in doing their job. And while obviously a decision was taken last week around pay which is tough, there are lots of other things about policing which have been good over the last couple of years.'

Mr Malthouse added: 'It has been tough this year. I hope we can return to some kind of normality in the future, but our economy is in some difficulties. Obviously the private sector has taken a big hit and it is the private sector that pays for the public sector, and we have to balance all those things.'

Last week, the Police Federation of England and Wales, representing more than 130,000 officers from the rank of constable to chief inspector, passed a motion of no confidence in Home Secretary Priti Patel in a row over pay. Mr Malthouse, who answers to the Home Secretary, said he had recently met officers on a visit to South Wales who were 'focused on their mission' and had not shared concerns expressed by the Police Federation.

He later told LBC that the Government will bring forward plans to offer police officers support with their mental and physical health later this year. He said: 'Later in legislation this year we have got the Police Covenant coming, which is looking at wellness, safety, family support to make sure that police officers feel we are looking after them physically and mentally as they do their challenging job.'

An authorisation for stop and search no longer needs to be referred up to a senior officer. Inspectors can also search someone if they are concerned an incident involving serious violence 'may' – rather than 'will' – occur.

It lifts conditions imposed under the Tories in 2014 when Theresa May was Home Secretary.

Stop and search is the most controversial element of Mr Johnson's crime plan, and today prompted a backlash from civil rights campaigners.

Today, Boris Johnson defended the wider use of Stop and Search powers, insisting it was not a 'strong-arm' tactic but a 'kind and loving' way to get dangerous weapons off the streets.

'I disagree with the opponents of Stop and Search. Section 60 Stop and Search orders, I think, can play an important part in fighting crime,' he told reporters at Surrey Police HQ.

'They are not the only tool that we have got to use. They are part of a range of things we have got to do to fight street crime.

'I think that giving the police the backing that they need in law to stop someone, to search them, to relieve them of a dangerous weapon - I don't think that's strong-arm tactics, I think that's a kind and a loving thing to do.

'The people who often support stop and search most passionately are the parents of the kids who are likely themselves to be the victims of knife crime.'

Policing minister Kit Malthouse also hit back at criticism, and asked: 'What else can we do?' when questioned whether Stop and Search is discriminatory.

He told Sky News: 'I am afraid I just don't agree with that, and when people charge me on Stop and Search, I often say: 'OK, if we can't do Stop and Search, what else can we do?' But it has to be something we can do tonight.

'We know that those people with knives in their pockets going out to injure and kill are out there tonight, and if I were a parent of one of these young men, and it is often young men, sadly, I would want to know that the killers might have been stopped and searched on the way to perpetrating that awful act.'

Mr Johnson speaks to Sergeant Dog Handler Mike Barnes as he throws a ball for six year old cocker spaniel Rebel, a proactive drugs dog, during a visit to Surrey Police's headquarters this morning

1,500 more burglars, thieves and robbers to be given 24-hour tags

Hundreds more burglars, robbers and thieves will be electronically tagged in a bid to cut down on reoffending, Boris Johnson's new plan states.

Ministers expect that over the next year 1,500 more offenders will have their whereabouts monitored 24 hours a day for up to a year by GPS tags upon release from prison.

All burglars who have served a sentence of a year or more will be tagged. At present this only occurs in six police forces in the country, but the scheme will be expanded to 13 more, ensuring it covers half of the country.

The Government will trial the use of monitoring tags that detect alcohol in the sweat of offenders guilty of drink-fuelled crime. The test, which will take place on prison leavers in Wales, is to address the fact that alcohol is a significant driver of crime, playing a part in 39 per cent of all violent offences.

On release offenders may be required to wear a tag and either not drink at all or not consume more than a certain amount.

Mr Malthouse added: 'To those people who are critics of the tactics, I would say: look at the numbers, particularly somewhere like London, and tell us what the tactic should be instead. There's long-term work, I agree, it is not the long-term solution. But in the short term it can have a big impact on suppressing knife crime.'

Emmanuelle Andrews, policy and campaigns officer at Liberty, said: 'We all want to feel safe in our communities, but expanding what have proven to be discriminatory police powers isn't how we get there.

'Many communities, particularly communities of colour, experience overbearing and oppressive policing and the package the government has put forward will only worsen this. It will subject more young people to further coercion, punishment and control.'

Meanwhile, former Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott called the proposal 'alarming and counter-productive'.

Other proposals to tackle street crime include more money for targeted patrols, street lighting and CCTV.

As part of the plan, Mr Johnson wants to make community service more visible by getting offenders to clean up public places rather than working inside.

Many work in charity shops or in warehouses sorting clothes from charity collection bins.

A number will be employed clearing waterways and canal paths as well as sprucing up woods and beaches. The offenders will wear hi-vis jackets.

Mr Johnson today said he wanted hi-vis 'chain gangs' to act as a deterrent to people getting involved in anti-social behaviour.

He told reporters at Surrey Police HQ: 'I do think that the lockdown has driven some anti-social behaviour and we need to deal with it. That's why we are backing the police in the way that we are.

'But I also want to see those who are guilty of anti-social behaviour properly paying their debt to society. Somebody's anti-social behaviour may be treated as a minor crime but it could be deeply distressing to those who are victims.

'If you are guilty of anti-social behaviour and you are sentenced to unpaid work, as many people are, I don't see any reason why you shouldn't be out there in one of those fluorescent-jacketed chain gangs visibly paying your debt to society.

A thousand ex-cons to join the civil service

The government wants to boost job opportunities for former prisoners to reduce the risk of reoffending.

A summit will be held later in the year to boost opportunities for prison leavers to get jobs, and the Government will aim to recruit 1,000 ex-offenders into the Civil Service by 2023.

'So you are going to be seeing more of that as well.'

Writing in the Daily Mail today, Miss Patel says: 'The public want to see justice done and criminals pay the price for their crimes. They want to see yobs pay back to the communities they've blighted by their thoughtless actions.

'That's why we are relaunching unpaid work so it is more visible, to ensure offenders are publicly making reparations for their crimes by undertaking work that is valuable to their local areas, such as cleaning the streets, estates, alleyways and open spaces of litter and other visible signs of disorder in local neighbourhoods.'

Rebel, a proactive drugs dog looked after by Sergeant Mike Barnes, leaps to catch a ball during the PM's visit to the Surrey Police HQ today

Police forces will be ranked in league tables according to how quickly they answer 999 and 101 calls to respond to the public's pleas for help.

PM backs GMP pilot to send an officer to every burglary

Today the government backed an initiative from the new chief constable of Greater Manchester Police to send an officer to investigate every burglary.

Stephen Watson became the first police chief in the country to commit publicly to sending an officer in person to every domestic break-in, which he acknowledged were usually a 'very big deal' for the victims.

He said after being sworn in this May: 'I'm 48 hours into the job, but in the future you will not have the situation where people's homes are burgled and the police don't come - that's not happening.

'We will investigate all burglaries and that will involve physical attendance of premises'.

The Beating Crime Plan said ministers would 'evaluate' the results of the scheme.

The government will work with the HM Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services to draw up the rankings.

It comes as some victims are waiting up to ten minutes for their 999 call to be answered due to the 'pingdemic' causing staff shortages.

Emergency calls made in the West Midlands area during the early hours of Sunday were taking an average of four minutes to speak to an operator. Some call waiting times reportedly stretched to nearly ten minutes.

Labour West Midlands Police and Crime Commissioner Simon Foster said of the 999 league tables: 'This is an extra layer of bureaucracy and a gimmick that will just add to the police's workload and slow things down.'

The Police Federation – the officers' union – said the return to targets would be a damaging and retrograde step.

But the government said it was important for the public to understand how responsive their local force was to enquiries.

The Beating Crime Plan vows to ensure that that every single person living in England and Wales will have access to the police digitally through a national online platform.

This will 'allow them to access a range of interactive police services in one coordinated place', including details about their neighbourhood police officers and their contact details so that they can get in touch with them to raise concerns.

Mr Johnson put policing at the heart of his campaigning before the last general election, pledging to recruit 20,000 police officers following criticism that cuts to numbers under previous Tory governments had damaged community policing.

Today's move follows long-held concerns about the severing of ties between police and local communities resulting from a reduction in regular patrols.

Mr Johnson said the Government was setting out 'plans to back the police but also to back the public'.

Action to reduce court waiting times amid Covid backlog

The document vowed to speed up court waiting times to ensure speedier justice, but did not give any detail about how ministers planned to do this.

Around one in five (18 per cent) of cases had been outstanding for a year or more in the three months to December last year, the Ministry of Justice revealed in March.

This is three times as high as for the same period at the end of 2019 (6 per cent) before the coronavirus outbreak.

Out of 55,725 cases at the end of 2020, 9,421 had been waiting one to two years to be dealt with - the highest figure in records dating to 2014.

The 'outstanding duration' for cases over two years, 866, is also a record for the series.

Out of 37,374 cases for the same period in 2019, there were 1,779 waiting one to two years and 433 waiting more than two years.

That would mean 'if you are the victim of a crime you have a named police officer that you can go to, wherever you live'.

He added: 'What you need is somebody who understands what's going on in your neighbourhood, who understands who the likely miscreants are, who understands whether the thing you are reporting - the crime that you are experiencing - is a one-off or part of a trend.'

The plans also include a £17 million package to persuade young people who go to an emergency department with a stab wound or have contact with police to stay away from violence.

But Iryna Pona, policy manager at the Children's Society charity, said intervention should take place long before young people end up in hospital.

She added: 'Prevention is better than cure. We need to be helping young people well before they end up being rushed into A&E fighting for their lives.

'We want to see a long-term plan for investment in early help for children at the first signs that they are vulnerable to being groomed.'

The government also pledged £45m for specialist teams in schools located in violence hotspots. Today's document said these would 'support young people at risk of involvement in violence to re-engage in education'.

Ministers also vowed to direct officers to deal with 'the tiny minority of truant kids'.

There were a raft of promises to tackling the drugs trade.

A scheme to support addicts piloted in Blackpool will be expanded to eight other areas, and police use of drug testing on arrest will rise with the aim of cracking down on recreational drug use.

New 'victims' law' to codify their rights

One eye-catching proposal is for a 'victims' law' to codify their rights in legislation and hold criminal justice agencies to account for delivering them.

However, no more information was given about this proposal so it is difficult to understand what it could entail.

A cross-Government summit will also be held with the aim of reducing demand for drugs, and an annual homicide summit attended by officers from the forces with the highest rates of violent deaths will also take place.

The report also vowed to continue work 'dismantling' county lines drug gangs.

Fraud offences have boomed during the pandemic, and is now Britain's most widespread crime, the government said today.

It vowed to unveil a new 'action plan' to tackle offenders, which will involved £25m of funding for Action Fraud, the main UK police unit tasked with countering fraud and financially-motivated cyber crime.

The Beating Crime Plan also touched on abuse on social media, vowing that this area would be included in a new hate crime strategy published this autumn.

PRITI PATEL: Public want to see justice done... and offenders pay for crimes

Crime destroys lives and ruins neighbourhoods. It leaves people afraid, bereft and bereaved.

It must be confronted. Our Beating Crime Plan contains a range of measures to reduce crime and level up the country so that everyone has the security and confidence that comes from having a safe street and a safe home.

From day one as Home Secretary, I've made it clear that I will back the police. We have already recruited nearly 9,000 extra police officers as part of our unprecedented recruitment drive to bring in 20,000.

We'll make sure that every community in the country has a named police contact – someone who knows your neighbourhood and can act on the challenges your community faces.

PRITI PATEL: Crime destroys lives and ruins neighbourhoods. It leaves people afraid, bereft and bereaved

The significance of this cannot be underestimated – I know that Mail readers want to know who their local bobby on the beat is and who they can turn to when affected by crime.

The public also want to see justice done and criminals pay the price for their crimes. They want to see yobs pay back to the communities they've blighted by their thoughtless actions.

That's why we are relaunching unpaid work so it is more visible, to ensure offenders are publicly making reparations for their crimes by undertaking work that is valuable to their local areas, such as cleaning the streets, estates, alleyways and open spaces of litter and other visible signs of disorder in local neighbourhoods.

We will step up our efforts to go after drug gangs that exploit the young and vulnerable. We have already closed more than 1,100 county lines, there have been more than 6,300 arrests and millions of pounds and lots of drugs have been seized.

More than 1,900 vulnerable people have been rescued from exploitation by drug dealers. Our plan represents our comprehensive, far-reaching strategy for driving down all types of crime.

PRITI PATEL: GPS tagging is a highly effective way of keeping track of offenders and it will be rolled out to a further thirteen areas (stock image)

It will give the law-abiding majority confidence in the police to deal with crime and it will ensure that criminals know they will face the consequences of their vile actions.

The plan sets out our approach to hidden harms, which can leave people feeling vulnerable in their own homes. Women and girls are affected by certain violent crimes in particular ways and to a greater degree than men and boys, requiring a specific response and a distinct strategy, which we recently published.

We are increasing investment in the Safer Streets Fund. Meanwhile, violence reduction units will receive an additional £17million to deliver targeted interventions to young people – including at moments of crisis, such as when they go to A&E with a knife wound.

GPS tagging is a highly effective way of keeping track of offenders and it will be rolled out to a further thirteen areas.

We will launch alcohol monitoring on licence in Wales later this year, to explore how alcohol tags can change behaviour and reduce alcohol-fuelled crime, including on release from prison.

One of the biggest drivers of crime is drugs. There will be more drug testing when people are arrested. Project Adder is an intensive approach that addresses addiction, diversion, disruption, enforcement and recovery.

It has worked very well so far, so we are going to expand these schemes to an additional eight local authorities.

The first duty of any Government is to do all it can to keep people safe. We will not shirk that responsibility. We are going to drive down crime.

Sickening moment maskless 'Karen' COUGHS in the face of grocery store customer, then claims she doesn't have to wear a mask because she 'isn't sick'

A woman was captured on camera following a customer through a supermarket as she coughs on her after claiming she does not need a mask because she is not sick. Video of the incident, which has garnered hundreds of thousands of views on Twitter alone, allegedly took place in a Su per Saver in Lincoln, Nebraska according to Twitter user @davenewworld_2. In it, an unidentified woman was captured dramatically coughing as she smiles saying 'Excuse me! I'm coming through' in the direction of the customer recording her. Scroll down for video An unidentified woman was captured dramatically coughing as she smiles saying 'Excuse me! I'm coming through' in the direction of a woman recording her A woman was captured on camera following a customer as she coughs on her in a supermarket without a mask on claiming she does not need one because she is not sick @chaiteabugz #karen #covid #karens #karensgonewild #karensalert #masks we were just wearing a mask at the store. ¿ o

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