Everyone deserves to feel safe in their own home. Families should have the confidence that if someone does break in, the criminal will be caught and punished. But with unnecessary Conservative cuts leaving our police forces overstretched and under-resourced, that’s simply not the reality for people today.
I wanted to find out the extent of these shortcomings - and the answers shocked me.
In 2022, nearly 75% of burglaries went unsolved. That’s nearly 90,000 burglaries where the police didn’t even identify a suspect, let alone charge anyone. Not to mention that an officer didn’t even attend the scene in more than 45,000 cases.
That’s just not good enough. This Conservative Government is letting down victims and allowing criminals to get away with it.
At the very least, people should be able to expect that if they are burgled, the police will attend the scene and investigate properly. But despite all their tough talk on crime, the Conservatives aren’t even getting the basics right.
That’s why Liberal Democrats are calling for a new statutory guarantee that all burglaries will be attended by police and properly investigated. The Home Secretary can bring forward legislation to do this, but if she doesn’t, we will seek to add this to the Victims and Prisoners Bill, which is heading through Parliament right now.
Of course, this statutory requirement must be coupled with the funding and resources needed so local police forces can get the job done. That means finally delivering on the pledge to recruit 20,000 extra police officers. And freeing up local forces to tackle burglaries and other neighbourhood crimes by creating a new Online Crime Agency to take over things like online fraud and abuse.
People are sick of broken Conservative Party promises. It’s time to act now.
Liberal Democrats are calling for a new statutory guarantee that all burglaries will be attended by police and properly investigated.