Chris Philp: Crime doesn’t just harm individuals, it hurts economic growth too

Chris Philp is the Shadow Home Secretary and MP for Croydon South

 Crime changes how businesses behave.

It raises risk, erodes margins, and forces firms to think about survival before growth. Theft, damage, rising insurance premiums, security costs, shorter opening hours, staff shortages are pressures that push businesses away.

If crime increases, and crime raises risk for business, then investment will be lower, leading directly to weaker productivity growth, slower employment growth, and lower output. Crime is both an economic and a social problem. A drag on growth with severe effects on the investment environment.

 Investment is a central driver of growth, expanding productive capacity. Where investment is insufficient, productivity growth stagnates, output remains weak. Too often, this debate is reduced to GDP statistics that mean little to people’s daily lives. What does it mean? Our economy is the aggregate of millions of individual decisions, and it should be seen as such. Decisions taken by individuals willing to take risks in pursuit of a better life. Unless government policy creates the conditions that lower risk and reward enterprise, those decisions do not happen at scale and the economy cannot thrive.

 Higher risk and uncertainty change how businesses behave. They raise required rates of return and, at the margin, deter investment altogether. We see this most acutely for small and medium-sized businesses. Here, margins are thin and exposed. Even modest increases in risk can decisively alter decisions about expansion, hiring, or operation.

 That is exactly what we are seeing under Labour.

Crime has risen across a wide range of serious offences in England and Wales. Shoplifting has surged by 5 per cent and robbery of business property has increased by 66 per cent. Structural costs in doing business, undermining footfall in town centres, and a signal to shopkeepers and small traders that risk is rising faster than returns.

 At the same time, policing capacity is being cut.

Police officer numbers fell by 1,318 in the year to September 2025. That is 1,318 fewer officers on the streets, fewer investigations pursued, fewer overstretched teams backed up when it matters. Thanks to Labour and Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, the public and businesses are less safe.

 The question, then, is whether this trend can be reversed. Empirical evidence across multiple jurisdictions indicates that increased police presence and enforcement reduce certain categories of crime through deterrence and incapacitation effects. Marginal increases in effective enforcement have been shown to deliver measurable reductions in crime, especially in high-risk areas.

 In my own constituency of Croydon, we have seen what happens when that trend is reversed. 

Targeted neighbourhood policing has focused on crimes such as phone snatching and shoplifting. As a result, injuries resulting from violence have fallen to their lowest level in five years, while more than 1,000 additional offenders have been arrested each month. For businesses on Croydon’s high street, lower crime has translated into reduced losses from shoplifting and greater confidence to invest, hire, and expand.

 Live facial recognition has helped police make more than 1,000 arrests across England and Wales between January 2024 and July 2025 and delivered a 70 per cent reduction in robbery at the Notting Hill Carnival. In Croydon itself, its deployment contributed to a 12 per cent reduction in crime in Fairfield ward, including the arrest of a man wanted on suspicion of kidnap and the identification of a registered sex offender breaching a sexual harm prevention order.

 The value for businesses is straightforward.

A small number of persistent offenders drive a disproportionate share of shoplifting and robbery. Identifying and removing them changes behaviour fast. Crime becomes riskier, repeat offending is disrupted, and high streets become less attractive targets. That is why the next Conservative Government will have forces deploy live facial recognition routinely in high-crime areas. Safer streets lower risk for businesses and allow local economies to grow rather than retreat. Croydon offers a concrete example of how policing, when effective, delivers public safety partnered with measurable economic dividends.

Labour’s proposed policing reforms risk cutting directly across this logic. 

Central to Labour’s plans is the forced merger of police forces. There is no evidence that dismantling local police forces improves crime outcomes or raises performance. On the contrary, top-down reorganisation introduces disruption, dilutes accountability, and pulls decision-making away from the communities where crime is experienced and prevented. Proposals that would see a single force span areas as large as Dover to Oxford, or Penzance to Swindon, a route to remoteness. Centralisation may simplify control, but it weakens local responsiveness, hitting rural towns and villages hardest.

More troubling still is what Labour’s plans omit.

Total police officer numbers are falling under this Labour government and yet their plans fail to address this matter. Labour are reshuffling officers between teams to create the appearance of reform while overall capacity declines. Fewer response officers mean slower emergency responses. Fewer investigators mean crimes that go unsolved. Fewer officers mean weaker deterrence and a visible retreat of policing from the streets. As enforcement thins, confidence erodes, and the public is left less safe as a result.

 Analysis by the Office of the Police Chief Scientific Adviser and the National Police Chiefs’ Council estimates that each £1 spent on policing generates approximately £4.17 in economic benefits. These benefits reflect avoided losses and increased economic activity resulting from safer commercial environments. Conceding that estimates are necessarily subject to uncertainty, they provide a robust indication that policing expenditure delivers net economic returns.

The Conservative Party’s Policing Plan will restore law and order in our country and keep the British public safe. Namely, we will hire 10,000 extra police officers, backed by £800 million of funding. Applying the cost-benefit analysis to our £800 million annual investment in policing, we could expect to generate approximately £3.3 billion in economic benefits per year.

 By reducing crime-related risk, policing changes how businesses make decisions. It restores predictability to local trading environments, lowers the premium placed on caution, and shifts behaviour away from retrenchment and back towards expansion.

 We also recognise that crime in Britain is not evenly spread.

A small number of streets and neighbourhoods account for a disproportionate share of serious offending. In London alone, just four per cent of neighbourhoods generate more than a quarter of all knife crime. That concentration matters, because where serious violence clusters, acquisitive crime such as robbery and shoplifting follows.

 Hotspot policing reflects this reality by focusing officers, stop and search, and enforcement activity where offending is most entrenched. The deterrent effect is immediate. Criminal routines are disrupted, repeat offenders are removed, and the perceived risk of being caught rises sharply. For businesses operating in or near these areas, that visible enforcement is decisive. 

 hat is why the next Conservative Government will mandate intensive hotspot patrolling in the 2,000 neighbourhoods responsible for a quarter of violent crime. These areas make up just five per cent of the country, but account for 25 per cent of the harm. Focusing enforcement where crime concentrates is how high streets are protected and business confidence restored.

 Making the streets safer delivers for the economy.

£3.3 billion is a material contribution, achieved by restoring the basic conditions under which businesses are willing to invest. Restoring law and order is therefore an economic imperative.

A prerequisite for rebuilding confidence, revitalising local economies, and getting Britain working again.