The Prime Minister asked the Work
and Pensions Secretary for an update on today’s Labour Market
statistics. He said the stats showed the plan is working, with
payroll employment at a record high, real wages growing for seven
months in a row, and our inactivity rate is below the US, France,
and Italy.
The Prime Minister turned to an
update on action to cut crime and make our streets safer. The
Prime Minister said our crackdown on crime and anti-social
behaviour is working, with violent and neighbourhood crime halved
since 2010. He added that to support this we are building 20,000
new prison places, the largest programme since the Victorian age,
which he funded as Chancellor.
The Home Secretary outlined work
to ensure crime continues to come down, meeting our target of
recruiting an extra 20,000 police officers, and the ongoing work
of Violence Reduction Units and the Safer Streets Fund. The
latest annual crime survey showed a 19% reduction in overall
crime, since 2019, and yesterday he hosted an anti-fraud summit
where the UK is leading the world with fraud, down 13% in the
last year.
The Home Secretary set out work
to ensure we remove more foreign national offenders from the
country and build on the 24,000 people successfully removed by
the Home Office last year who had no right to be
here.
The Justice Secretary said that
as well as crime being significantly down, re-offending has
fallen from 31%, in 2010, to 25%. He said this was thanks to work
to make sure prisoners released from prison are not left without
a place to stay or a job, with the number offenders in work six
months after leaving prison doubling in the last year
He also set out how we must do
more to deport foreign criminals. He said that agreements with
countries like Albania, and measures such as the early removal
scheme, meant the UK removed 4,000 of the worst offenders last
year and will reduce the number of prison places taken up by
foreign national offenders.
Finally, the Foreign Secretary
updated on discussions he is having with international partners
to secure further agreements to remove foreign national
offenders, which is a priority for the FCDO.
