Dame Diana Johnson

Dame Diana Johnson

Labour — Kingston upon Hull North and Cottingham

Speaking in the House of Commons on 3 July 2025

Debate

Phone Theft

Contribution

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Brent East (Dawn Butler) on securing the debate and I thank the Backbench Business Committee for allocating the time. I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for sharing her experiences, particularly the “Starsky and Hutch” approach that she took to trying to recover her mobile phone when it was stolen 10 years ago. I am grateful to all Members of the House who have made contributions. In the limited time that we have had available, we have had an important discussion, spanning many different areas, both geographically and topically. The hon. Member for Dewsbury and Batley (Iqbal Mohamed) spoke about the experience in West Yorkshire. My hon. Friend the Member for Stratford and Bow (Uma Kumaran) talked about the interchange at Stratford station and, along with my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Leyton and Wanstead (Mr Bailey), talked about the problems with e-bikes as enablers of mobile phone theft. I want to be very clear: this Government are absolutely determined to address the menace of mobile phone theft. I say to the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Weald of Kent (Katie Lam), that the unfortunate truth is that by the time this Government took office, this type of criminality had become so common that it was essentially a feature of daily life in some areas, and the statistics bear that out. She talked about the policing of speech and locking criminals up, but she needs to reflect on the record of the Conservative Government. They introduced the non-crime hate incident guidance under the previous Policing Minister, the right hon. Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp), who is now the shadow Home Secretary, and failed the prison system by not building enough prison places. This Government are having to deal with that.

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