Westminster Report - Leigh-on-Sea

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Leigh On Sea News: Westminster Report – BY David Burton-Sampson MP for Southend West & Leigh.

Westminster Report – BY David Burton-Sampson MP for Southend West & Leigh.

BY David Burton-Sampson MP for Southend West & Leigh.

We have all heard harrowing stories of families affected by serious violence and we know that urgent action is needed.

We have all experienced the scourge of fly tipping, blighting our neighbourhoods. I hear on the doorstep how many of you are worried about anti-social behaviour; noise, disturbance, joy riding and graffiti.

I now have the chance to directly affect the law governing all of this and much, much more. I am proud to have been appointed to the Crime and Policing Bill committee that is helping write the legislation, currently going through parliament.

There is much to consider. Public order offences, the conduct of the police, provisions over terrorism: it is all in there and I will be going through the Bill line by line over the next two months to make sure we get it right for all of you in Southend West and Leigh and beyond.

You deserve to live in a safe community, not one that is plagued by random violence. The community deserves to have a pleasant environment to complement our wonderful sea-front and no one deserves to have their car stolen if someone has managed to get hold of an electronic device to help them steal your property.

All that is without considering the very serious sexual offences, which take up a considerable proportion of the Bill. These laws will go a long way to helping catch criminals, making you more secure in your homes and creating a closer community. I am thrilled to be a lawmaker representing you in parliament.

This is tough new action. Too often crime is dismissed as low-level. But it doesn’t feel low level when it’s our town centre being hit by antisocial behaviour, our high street facing an epidemic of shoplifting and police not responding to offences involving goods under £200, or your phone being snatched.

These types of offences make people stay away from town centres and feel scared on their own streets. For far too long, the last Government wrote off those crimes and disregarded how they made ordinary people feel but we are going to change all that.

Our Plan for Change has committed 13,000 additional neighbourhood police and PCSOs across the country. As you know, plans to axe every Police Community Support Officer in Essex were halted thanks to the government’s £100m funding boost earlier this year.

Essex police dealt with nearly 60,000 incidents of violent crime in the year up to Sept 2024, with more than 17,000 incidents of stalking and more than 48,000 thefts, while fraud in the county rose by 6%. These figures are too high, things must change.

We plan to take practical steps towards halving violence against women and girls over the next decade, something I am also dealing with as part of my work on the Women and Equalities Committee.

Our Crime and Policing Bill introduces Respect Orders to crack down on repeat offenders of antisocial behaviour and we are ending the Conservatives’ £200 limit on shoplifting, which has left so much shop theft ignored.

We will address the online sale and delivery of knives, with stringent age checks and tougher penalties for anyone who sells these deadly weapons to children.

We will protect women from stalking and spiking, stop sex offenders changing their names, and impose tougher sentences on dangerous predators who groom children.

I want to leave you all in Southend West and Leigh in no doubt. This Bill is ambitious and wide-ranging. We will work with the police and communities, we will never write off crimes that make people afraid and we will take back our town centres from the thieves and thugs.

I will play my part in the coming months on the Crime and Policing Bill Committee to help make sure our streets are safer in Southend and that everyone has confidence in our constabulary and the justice system. Nothing is more important than your security.

And remember if you have an inquiry or an issue, please let me know and I will always do my best to help.

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