Submitted by: 14 party members
Mover: Baroness Doocey (Lords Spokesperson for Policing).
Summation: Lisa Smart MP (Spokesperson for Home Affairs).
Conference notes that:
- More than two million crimes went unsolved across England and Wales in 2024.
- Backlogs across the police and criminal justice systems – from courts to forensics – are preventing victims from getting the justice they deserve and letting criminals walk free.
- Prolific offenders with 16 or more convictions make up about a tenth of all offenders but are responsible for nearly half of all custodial sentences handed down by the courts, highlighting the pressing need to reduce reoffending.
- Violence against women and girls (VAWG) is a national emergency with one in four women having experienced domestic abuse and a woman killed by a man once every three days.
- More than 27,000 suspected drug suppliers are currently on bail or released pending investigation, with forensic delays playing a significant role in these delays.
- Years of ineffective resourcing and mismanagement has left our policing service unable to meet the complex needs of the communities they serve.
Conference believes that:
- Everyone deserves to feel safe in their own home and walking down their own streets.
- Policing interacts with other public services on a daily basis, including the criminal justice system, healthcare and child protection services – all of which need to be functioning properly to keep our communities safe from crime.
- Public trust in the police is essential for policing by consent, which requires keeping our communities safe while ensuring everyone’s fundamental rights are respected.
Conference therefore supports the following policies to ensure the effective policing our communities deserve, which are the Liberal Democrats response to the issues identified in the Spokesperson’s paper Policing Fit for the Future:
- Establishing a more joined–up approach between police and other parts of the criminal justice system by creating a secure and confidential ‘data bubble’ between police and prosecutors to improve efficient information sharing.
- Tackling the courts backlog, reducing reoffending and preventing crimes of all kinds, including serious and organised crime, from being committed in the first place, including by:
- Expanding specialist courts that steer repeat offenders towards rehabilitation, including intensive engagement with probation officers and drug counsellors.
- Reviewing which offences can go to the magistrates’ courts instead of crown court.
- Creating a National Diversion Framework to keep people out of the criminal justice system, drawing on experience in the West Midlands.
- Making youth diversion a statutory duty for young people up to the age of 25.
- Expanding specialist county lines taskforces across the UK.
- Improving international cooperation to tackle cross–border drug trafficking, including a stronger leadership role for the UK in Europol.
- Updating training on modern slavery, child trafficking and spotting signs of child criminal exploitation (CCE).
- Enabling police forces to effectively respond to violence against women and girls (VAWG), including by:
- Providing sustainable funding for support services for survivors of VAWG and domestic abuse.
- Addressing honour–based abuse, including by developing a statutory definition, better support services, and training that enables police, social care and education professionals to effectively recognise and respond.
- Expanding the provision of high–quality perpetrator programmes in domestic abuse cases, with the aim of preventing further abuse.
- Enabling police forces to treat rural crime with the seriousness it deserves, including by:
- Embedding properly–funded dedicated rural crime teams or specialists in every police force.
- Extending the Equipment Theft (Prevention) Act 2023 to include GPS theft.
- Enforcing stricter penalties for livestock–related offences and for fly–tipping.
- Implementing training for police and 999 control room staff to better understand rural crime.
- Ensuring everyone has access to a community police counter, based where the public already goes such as in supermarkets and railway stations.
- Ensuring police forces have the technology they need to prevent and solve crime, including by:
- Improving regional cooperation between police forces on technology procurement processes.
- Introducing regulations to enable the more effective use of police drones in rural areas, adopting an intelligence–led ‘beyond the line of sight’ model with strict safeguards.
- Expanding regional and national coordination of forensic services to address backlogs.
- Strengthening the role of the Office of the Biometrics and Surveillance Camera Commissioner (OBSCC) to oversee the impact of emerging technology such as facial recognition and its impact on civil liberties.
- Ensure police forces have the specialist officers and staff they need to effectively tackle different types of crime, including by:
- Allowing forces to start a recruitment drive for the specialist skills they need, such as digital forensic experts.
- Urgently drawing up a national recruitment, training and retention strategy to tackle the shortage of detectives.
- Improving training opportunities for officers.
- Rebuilding trust in policing and ensure high standards are maintained, including by:
- Introducing mandatory national vetting standards for police officers, including automatic dismissal for those who fail vetting or are convicted of serious criminal offences.
- Regularly publishing data on the number of officers under investigation for sexual or domestic abuse who are still on normal duties.
- Preventing further abuse by removing warrant cards from any officer being investigated for offences related to VAWG and domestic abuse.
- Ensuring every allegation of police–perpetrated domestic abuse is automatically referred to the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC).
- Guaranteeing universal access for police officers to ongoing clinical mental health support at work, and equipping frontline supervisors to better recognise signs of trauma and support their workforce.
- Improving the collection and use of religion and ethnicity information in police data to help improve policing outcomes and restore public trust.
Applicability: England and Wales except for 2. f) (lines 53–55), which are Federal.