Boris Johnson: Tory MP marks the PM 'ten out of ten'

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The Sunday Express can exclusively reveal that the Prime Minister will unveil his new Beating Crime plan on Tuesday as he builds on his 2019 manifesto pledges to bring crime down. Writing in the Sunday Express today, Mr Johnson said: “This government is utterly dedicated to fighting and beating crime. I want to bring the same focus to national crime-fighting that we brought to London during my eight-year tenure as Mayor. “Making this country safe is the single best and most effective way of levelling up – so that young people grow up in safer neighbourhoods everywhere.”

He sympathised with the “confusion” felt by crime victims followed by “a sense of shock, and violation” and then “fury” and promised that his Government would be on their side.

“We need now to redouble our efforts, to continue to put more police out on the street, and to back them all the way.

“And we want everyone to know that if you are the victim of crime you have a named officer to call – someone who is immediately on your side.”

During his time as Mayor of the capital city he brought crime down by 20 percent and murders down by 50 percent.

Today he has revealed that he will bring in three key reforms to help tackle crime and have a similar impact on the country as a whole.

Every community will be given a named police officer who will know the strengths and vulnerabilities of the area with their telephone and email contact details will be publicly available.

A new set of league tables will be published on the response times of 999 and 101 calls in police areas.

The Government will intensify the successful ADDER programme – the war against the county lines drug gangs, putting a ring of steel around the affected towns until we throttle the life out of the gangs.

The announcement comes after a difficult week where the Police Federation publicly attacked Home Secretary Priti Patel.

The trade union for officers in England and Wales passed a vote of no confidence of no confidence in Ms Patel over the decision to freeze their pay to help contain Britain’s covid debt crisis.

And with headlines filled with criticism over vaccine passports and the so-called “pingdemic”, which has forced hundreds of thousands of people to remain at home because they have received a covid alert, Mr Johnson has been under pressure to grab the political initiative again.

Polls also suggested Conservative lead over Labour has been cut.

A Yougov poll last week saw Tory support fall by six points to 38 percent with Labour on 34 percent.

However, an Opinium poll published last night has put the Tories unchanged on 43 percent eight points ahead of Labour also unchanged on 35 percent.

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But there was less good news for the Prime Minister who saw his personal approval rating fall by 5 points to -13.

But with freedom day last week marking a significant step to the end of the lockdown restrictions, Mr Johnson has returned to his 2019 manifesto to start focussing on the reforms he wanted to bring in before the pandemic.

A series of new policy announcements is expected to be followed by a cabinet reshuffle of his top team as Mr Johnson gets ready to fight the next election in 2024.

Last week he unveiled his plans for levelling up areas in Britain, particularly the north and midlands, which have been neglected for decades.

He also is set to unveil plans to encourage healthy eating.

And on Tuesday he will publish his crime strategy.

The Prime Minister has pointed out that the promise to recruit an extra 20,000 police officers is well on track and the Government has a strong record on law and order with a bill introducing tougher sentences going through Parliament.

In his piece, he noted: “We have already rolled up about a third of the county lines gangs. We have given the police new powers to stop and search, and with a new £25 million fund for better lighting and more CCTV we are turning the spotlight on street crime, and helping to make neighbourhoods feel safer – especially for women after dark.”

He said that the war against county lines gangs which often exploit young children in the illegal drug trade is a top priority.

“We must deal with the underlying incentives of these gangs – the drugs trade that is driven not just by the 300,000 “problem users” but by relatively affluent people who are also fuelling demand,” he said.

“We are bringing the police together with employers and health experts to develop sensible and practical steps that we can take – as a society – to cut drug abuse across the country.”

The announcement follows the publication of the crime outcomes for England and Wales 2020 to 2021 by the Office for National Statistics which showed there was a 13 percent fall in total police recorded crime excluding fraud.

The largest fall seen in theft (down 32 percent) with murder down 16 percent, serious violence down 11 percent and sexual offences down 10 percent.

However, there was a large increase in drug offences 13 percent compared with the previous year.

Added to this fraud offences increased by 3.5 percent in the year ending March 2021 while the total number of Computer Misuse Act (CMA) increased by 70 percent.

Mr Johnson said the news on the murder and serious violence rates was “encouraging” but warned “we also know that to some extent these figures have been helped by the pandemic.

“When we locked down the country, we locked down many of the criminals as well.”

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