Yvette Cooper

The right hon. Gentleman was the one who said it, so he is the one who will know. If he wants to deny that he ever said it, I will not say it again—honestly—but I think that he protests a little too much with this sort of wriggling. He would not do very well under interrogation. We have heard today that the leadership contest will run until November. We have five months of this. There are hardly any Tory MPs here because they are all off doing their little chats and meetings. It is like a cross between “Love Island” and the jungle. Rob and Suella have broken up, and now John has gone off with Kemi. Everyone is looking over their shoulder for snakes and rats. Apparently somebody has had a nervous breakdown, and that is probably all of their Back Benchers, dreading getting a little text saying that another candidate wants a chat. We can see it. Look at them all. They are all saying, “I am a Tory MP. Get me out of here.” That is exactly what our Labour MPs have just done: they have got a lot of Tory MPs out of here because the country is crying out for change—for what the Prime Minister has described as a decade of national renewal on our economy, our public services and our relationship with the world, and in politics itself, by bringing politics back into public service again. I say to all hon. Members, on my side and on the Opposition Benches, that I will work with everyone to restore Britain’s sense of security, public safety on our streets, secure borders, and confidence in our police and criminal justice system. Yes, I will repeatedly challenge the Conservatives on the legacy that they have left us, because the damage is serious, and I think that they have been hugely reckless with the safety of our country. Yes, the approach and values of our parties may be different, but I think that there are important areas where we should be able to come together to bring change in the interests of our country, our communities and our security, because that is what public service means. That is what this Labour Government are determined to do. We have set out in the King’s Speech three Home Office Bills on crime and policing, borders and asylum, and security. I will cover each issue in turn, starting with safety on our streets and confidence in the police and the criminal justice system. Everyone will have, fresh in their minds, the concerns raised by constituents during the election campaign. I fear that, at a time when we have 10,000 fewer neighbourhood police and PCSOs, confidence in policing has dropped. Street crime and knife crime are surging in towns and suburbs—not just in our cities—and shoplifting has become an epidemic. Those are the kinds of crimes that really affect how people live in their own communities, yet too little is being done.