Suella Braverman Calls on Police Not to Class Certain Crimes as ‘Unimportant’

Home Secretary told BBC 'police must follow every reasonable line of inquiry'

Undated image of police tape at a crime location in England. PA

The home secretary, Suella Braverman, has criticised the police for regarding “certain crimes as unimportant or minor” and has called on them to follow all “reasonable lines of inquiry” when investigating low-level crimes such as mobile phone robberies.

Ms. Braverman told the BBC: “There is no such crime as a minor crime, whether it’s phone theft, car theft, watch theft, whether it’s street-level drug-dealing or drug use, the police must now follow every reasonable line of inquiry.”

The latest Home Office figures show that in only 4.4 percent of theft cases in the year up to March 2023 was an individual charged.

The Conservative government has pointed out that 20,000 recruits have joined police forces in England and Wales in the past three years.

Ms. Braverman told the BBC: “The police have a record number of men and women working on their front line than ever before. So they have the numbers of people who are there.”

‘Common Sense Policing’

“This is about ensuring that those resources are properly diverted to what I call common sense policing, back-to-basics policing, that they don’t dismiss certain crimes as unimportant or minor. It’s about ensuring that they are freed up from doing other time-consuming tasks,” she added.

In October last year the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) made a commitment to send a police officer to attend every home burglary.

Now, as part of a joint agreement between the Home Office, the NPCC and the College of Policing, new guidelines have been published setting out how crimes should be investigated.

The College of Policing guidelines (pdf) say police forces in England and Wales should consider all potential evidence, including footage from CCTV cameras, doorbell cameras and dashcams as well as phone tracking when trying to solve thefts and burglaries.

Britain's Home Secretary Suella Braverman leaves 10 Downing Street following a meeting of Cabinet, in London, on June 13, 2023. Daniel Leal/AFP via Getty Images

The guidelines say police should, “identify and follow all reasonable lines of enquiry to gather all reasonably available material and, where a suspect is identified, investigate towards and away from the suspect.”

The opposition Labour Party, which is led by a former director of public prosecutions, Sir Keir Starmer, sees crime and policing as a key battleground at the next general election, which is due to take place before January 2025.

‘Staggering Admission of 13 Years of Tory Failure’

Shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper said: “This is a staggering admission of 13 years of Tory failure on policing and crime. Pursuing reasonable leads like CCTV is what the police should be doing but, because of abysmal Tory management, over 90 percent of crimes go unsolved, the proportion of crimes prosecuted has dropped by more than two-thirds and more criminals are getting off.”

Ms. Cooper said: “Instead of supporting our brave officers to catch criminals, the Conservative government have cut neighbourhood policing by nearly 10,000, left a 7,000 shortage of detectives and allowed the growth of appalling delays between the police, CPS and courts.”

Last month the home secretary said anyone who committed crimes during disorder in London’s Oxford Street triggered by a TikTok video should be  “hunted down” and jailed.

Hundreds of young people turned up in central London after a video on TikTok encouraged people to come along and “rob JD Sports.”

On Monday, Ms. Braverman insisted the police had the resources they needed and she said the police needed to make more effort to solve crimes like car theft, shoplifting and criminal damage.

Last week The Epoch Times reported how 350 cars a day are being stolen in Britain, often using electronic devices bought on the internet and capable of bypassing vehicle security systems by mimicking keyless fobs.

Assistant Chief Constable Jennifer Sims, the NPCC lead for vehicle crime, told The Epoch Times: “We know that the majority of vehicles are stolen with no keys so we are proactively working with the Home Office and government to consider how to stop the sale of items like keyless repeaters and GPS jamming devices which have no legitimate purpose outside of criminal use.”

PA Media contributed to this report.