Reform promises a ‘massive expansion of stop-and-search powers’ and says ‘DEI will be ripped out of British policing’
Nigel Farage’s Reform UK is making a major push on law and order (Image: Ioannis Alexopoulos/LNP)
Reform UK has unveiled plans to “tear up” the present “diversity-obsessed policing system” by scrapping the College of Policing and hiring 30,000 new police officers. Nigel Farage’s party would introduce a “total ban” on diversity, equality and inclusion (DEI) policies in policing and “axe structures set up solely to advance equality of outcome”. A Reform UK Government would remove DEI-related modules from training materials and “race action plans” would be forbidden.
These pledges come alongside promises for stronger policing in areas plagued by antisocial behaviour with “guaranteed foot patrols”. Reform also wants to overhaul the anti-terror Prevent programme to “focus on Islamist terrorism and mandate home searches in cases of repeat referrals”. Under its plan: “Where an individual is referred by three separate corroborating authorities, they will automatically and without exception be subject to a thorough physical search of their homes.”
The measures are part of Reform’s SAFE plan, focussing on “Safety, Antisocial behaviour, Functioning institutions and Equal enforcement”. Colin Sutton, a former detective chief inspector who is Norfolk Police and Crime Commissioner, said: “We’re prioritising the safety of Brits with a massive expansion of stop-and-search powers and 30,000 more officers on the street. We’ll come down hard on antisocial disorder, banning balaclavas and cracking down on nuisances like illegal e-bikes. We’re intent on having functioning institutions, ending early release for serious criminals and ensuring that our brave police officers are protected from woke outfits like the College of Policing. We will doggedly pursue equal enforcement; DEI will be ripped out of British policing.”
Mr Sutton claimed the proposals were “practical and common sense answers” which drew on the expertise of people who have a “track record of success in bringing even the most hardened criminals to justice”. Earlier this year the Policy Exchange think tank estimated that police and crime commissioners and forces have spent £631million on DEI initatives since 2020. Reform wants a “saturation of stop-and-search in crime hotspots” alongside the “restoration of short sentences”, fast-track courts for repeat offenders and 12,000 new prison places.
Nigel Farage on walkabout in Chelmsford (Image: Will Colebourne/the Press Association)
Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp responded, saying: “The Conservatives have a fully funded and credible plan to hire 10,000 more police and build 50,000 more prison places. We will abolish non crime hate incidents so the police catch criminals, not harass people for what they put on social media. We will hotspot patrol high crime areas, triple stop and search and use live facial recognition to catch criminals. We will make sure prolific and dangerous offenders end up where they belong – in prison.”
A Home Office spokesperson said: “We are delivering the biggest reforms to policing in over 200 years, including bringing the College of Policing into the National Police Service to ensure consistent standards across the board. The National Police Service will have a clear mandate and powers to get things done, focus on protecting their communities and make the public safer. We have already committed to delivering 13,000 additional neighbourhood officers into communities blighted by antisocial behaviour by 2029. In the first year of this pledge, more than 3,800 extra personnel are in these roles across England and Wales.”
Colin Sutton as a detective chief inspector in 2008 (Image: Getty Images)
COMMENT by Norfolk Police and Crime Commission Colin Sutton
We all know what’s going on. You pay for your train ticket, walk through the barrier, and then someone forces their way through behind you. Nobody stops them. You look around, half-expecting a member of staff to do something, but the offender has already disappeared down the escalator. Gone.
In moments like these, we might not be frightened, but we’re all annoyed. Irritated. Angry. And the question going through all of our minds is perfectly reasonable: why am I being mugged off for following the rules?
It’s the same for the shopkeeper who reports a thief for the third time. He doesn’t need a lecture about the “root causes” of criminality. He wants to know the thief won’t come back. He wants the thief caught and punished. We all do. Except apparently the Conservative party, who told the police not to bother investigating thefts below £200.
Calling this sort of thing “low-level crime” is convenient for politicians. But I’m not a politician. I’m a crimefighter. A manhunter. I’m the former Detective Chief Inspector for the Metropolitan Police who led the investigation into Milly Dowler’s murder. I locked up serial killer Levi Bellfield, and serial rapist Delroy Grant.
But, some of the cases I am most proud of are those that people don’t know about. The thefts, the muggings, the drug dealing. The so-called petty crime, that gnaws away at society and neighbourhoods.
Every crime matters. Every indignity matters. And as Reform UK’s Policing and Crime Advisor, it is my number one priority to bring not just everyday safety back to British streets, but to ensure we fix our broken institutions, and end two-tier policing.
No more having to watch your back. No more getting mugged off.
Our S.A.F.E. plan, which we’re launching today, commits us to tackling all crime, big or small. Local and national.
We’re prioritising your Safety with a massive expansion of stop-and-search powers and 30,000 more officers on the street. We’ll come down hard on Anti-social disorder, banning balaclavas and on nuisances like illegal e-bikes. We’re intent on having Functioning institutions, ending early release for serious criminals and ensuring that our brave police officers are protected from woke outfits like the College of Policing. We will doggedly pursue Equal enforcement; DEI will be ripped out of British policing.
Protecting people must come first. Serious violence, sexual offences, and criminals who prey on vulnerable victims require painstaking investigation and properly-equipped specialist police.
It is a scandal that only one in ten sexual offences results in a conviction. And what happens in those handful of cases which result in a conviction? Too often plastic sentences. Take the pedophilic men who view and send child pornography. Of those convicted on this basis, fewer than 1 in 5 will see the inside of a prison cell.
At the same time, British neighbourhoods and high streets up and down our country have been left to criminal gangs because in this day and age, it’s deemed easier or simpler just to let it all fester. There seems to be no interest in tackling the persistent harassment, especially of women, in our communities. Things like vandalism and threatening behaviour go totally unassailed but they create misery for people every single day. It’s not on. It’s not the country we want to live in.
The distinction between serious crime and everyday disorder matters operationally. But one can’t be abandoned in pursuit of the other.
Making the machinery of all of this work against the criminals is not glamorous. But it’s critical and often ignored.
People need to feel like they know what’s being investigated, why, and what the process is going to look like. The idea that someone comes and takes a statement and then you never hear from them again is just insulting for everyone. And it’s a waste of time.
Where there’s no realistic prospect of identifying an offender, an honest explanation is better than a reference number presented as though it were a result in and of itself. It is unacceptable that over two million crimes go unsolved each year. Two million victims without answers. Two million criminals who escaped justice.
Equal enforcement is what holds the whole thing together. It’s part of the social contract of our nation. Over the last five years, as law and order has collapsed, the police have found time to arrest over 60,000 for speech offences. This is a stain in itself, but also indicative of the warped priorities of British policing.
Punishments for real crimes matter. But if you’re going to get tough in rhetoric, you’ve got to match that in prison capacity and broader infrastructure. We’ve all watched local police stations close at the same time successive governments have tried to pretend they’re “getting tough.” People can see through such empty claims. And critically, so can criminals.
Reform UK has a plan. The S.A.F.E. plan. The practical and common sense answers, led by people who have a track record of success in bringing even the most hardened criminals to justice.
The people following the rules have kept their side of the bargain. It is time for the government to keep theirs. And that starts on day one of a Reform UK administration.
Labour is trying to silence us on migrant crisis – just like grooming gang victims were
Exclusive: Nine women from Piddington descended on Parliament to demand Labour shelves plans to house 1,256 asylum seekers next to their village.
Piddington women descended on Parliament today (Image: Tim Merry/Staff Photographer)
Labour’s bid to “silence” women terrified by the asylum housing crisis is identical to the treatment of grooming gang victims, ministers were told. Andy Burnham and Shabana Mahmood were accused of using “class as a weapon” to ignore warnings they will “suffer” at the hands of men “from cultures where women are treated worse than animals”.
Nine women from Piddington descended on Parliament on Wednesday to demand Labour shelves plans to house 1,256 asylum seekers next to the Oxfordshire village. They insisted ministers must “get a grip” of the “out of control immigration” crisis. But hundreds of MPs symbolically voted for the proposal, despite widespread public outrage, and rejected calls to leave the European Convention on Human Rights.
Shadow Women’s Minister Joy Morrissey launched a scathing attack on proposals to house migrants at MoD Bicester, declaring the men will “blight” the area.
She said: “The Government has said middle-class areas need to bear their fair share. Using class as a new weapon to silence concerns. It is a dangerous, lazy approach from a Government that is supposed to unite our country.
“This isn’t about class, race or anything else that the party opposite wants to use to silence those speaking up. That technique was used to silence rape gang victims in our cities and towns and it’s appalling Labour has not learned from that scandal. This is about women speaking up about fears for their safety and their children.”
More than 1,200 migrants will be housed next to Piddington (Image: Shutterstock)
“The Prime Minister should listen, the benches opposite should listen. They know these women and their communities will suffer.
“They know this because we already have proof. Communities across this land have seen their women’s and girls’ lives ruined.
“Ruined by a fundamental failure from this Government to protect them from the threat posed by men who come here illegally.”
The nine Piddington women – Samantha Phillips, Deborah Swift, Victoria Hubbocks, Gina Perkin, Jo Haw-Cook, Sandra Innes, Melise Witkin, Christina Gower and Louise Brooker – sat in the front row of the public gallery as they watched MPs tear Labour’s plan to shreds.
They then met with Tory leader Kemi Badenoch, just weeks after she visited the village.
The Tories used their Opposition Day to force Labour MPs to hear concerns about the Government’s asylum plans.
But Labour MPs symbolically voted for the Piddington proposals. Only the Conservatives and Reform voted against them.
Piddington villagers warned they could become “victims in a similar way to the grooming gang scandal”.
Victoria Hubbocks told the Daily Express: “I see comparisons on our campaign and the grooming gang scandal in one important respect: women raised serious concerns, both for themselves and for the country, yet too often felt ignored and unheard by those in positions of power.
“I had hoped that the government would take the lessons of history seriously and ensure that the same mistakes were not repeated. However, the fact that no Labour backbench women remained in the chamber to listen to the opposition debate has left me deeply concerned.
“When women raise legitimate concerns about issues that affect both their lives and the wider country, those concerns deserve to be heard, acknowledged and taken seriously, regardless of political affiliation.”
Fellow villager Sandra Innes said: “Our concerns are being completely dismissed and marginalised.
“If that continues then we could end up in a situation where women and children become victims in a similar way to the grooming gang scandal.
“How many times do we need to be ignored before something serious happens?”
Kemi Badenoch meets Piddington women (Image: Tim Merry/Staff Photographer)
Ms Morrissey told the Daily Express after the vote: “Labour’s female MPs today put their party before British women and girls. By not even turning up to the debate on Piddington they showed total contempt for the legitimate concerns that women and girls have for their safety.
“The Lib Dems not even bothering to vote was equally shameful. The Conservatives are clear – we will always put women and girls before illegal migrants.”
Former Home Secretary Suella Braverman also condemned female Labour MPs for failing to turn up for the debate.
She said: “They [the women of Piddington] are angry, and they feel like no one in Government is listening to them. And these people are not far-right thugs.
“The women that I met, and indeed the men, many of them are elderly pensioners. Some of them are widowed and living alone.
“Many of them are parents speaking on behalf of their children. And this small rural village is fighting against the British state to protect itself.
“It is a scandal that no one in this government is willing to listen.”
Labour wants to house more than 1,200 migrants on the site for at least 10 years.
The villagers of Piddington voted 285 to 26 to “secede from the UK and pursue self-determination” over the plans to house up to 1,256 asylum seekers in the former Ministry of Defence garrison half a mile from the village.
Local campaigners are demanding that the scheme be halted until full ecological surveys are completed to determine the potential presence of some of Britain’s rarest and most protected bats and newts on the site.
But Tory MP Dr Kieran Mullan told MPs: “At the heart of this debate is whether women have a legitimate, reasonable concern to be worried about the people that are being placed in their communities.
“And I’m afraid to say that I do think the culture of the people very often placed in these constituencies is inferior to ours.
“I’m not afraid to say our culture, when it comes to women and girls, has a lot to do.
“But it’s significantly better than the culture towards women and girls in countries like Eritrea, Sudan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and a whole range of countries.
“It’s perfectly reasonable for women who are being asked to live alongside huge numbers of people coming, unvetted, from those countries to be concerned and have worries, and we should not be afraid to call that out.
“This has nothing to do with racism.”
Mr Mullan told MPs 46% of married women in Iraq have faced “spousal violence” and that between 70 and 90% of women in Pakistan have faced domestic abuse.
He added that in Afghanistan “more than 90% of the population think that spousal physical abuse is justified.”
The Shadow Justice Minister added: “We have a culture of football hooliganism in this country.
The Channel migrant crisis has become a women’s safety issue (Image: Getty)
“Predominantly white people engage in football hooliganism in this country,
“I’m happy to say that. It doesn’t make me racist towards white people, and it doesn’t make you racist towards other cultures when you point out their issues and their problems.”
Numerous MPs highlighted the leaflets – exposed by the Daily Express – telling migrants not to rape or beat women.
Ms Morrissey added: “The village of Piddington does only have 350 people but the 1,300 migrant men will be a blight on their small village. Men from cultures where women are treated worse than animals.
“Men that the Government decided need a leaflet asking them to not rape women and girls.
“It isn’t just their values being different from ours. It is taking advantage of nature, our values, and our culture.
“Men who will pay no notice to a gently worded leaflet trying to encourage them to understand our cultural values. These men don’t care about our values. They are here to take advantage of our welcoming culture.”
Home Office minister Anna Turley had earlier said that the way asylum seekers have been housed until now has been wrong, but said a final decision on Piddington had not been made.
“For too long, the way in which we house asylum seekers has not been fair,” she said.
“Billions of pounds have been spent putting them up in hotels while communities have seen these hotels, often at the centre of their towns or cities become a symbol of a broken asylum system.
“Areas where housing costs are low, and which are already left behind were asked to bear more than their fair share.”
She added: “While the Home Office has submitted a planning application to use MoD Bicester site for asylum accommodation, no final decision has been made.”
She praised Piddington campaigners for an “incredibly imaginative and very forceful” campaign.