Tories pledge to stop 35,000 crimes if elected

The Conservatives have promised to stop 35,000 crimes by deploying more police to violent “hot spots” if they return to power.

The pledge came as the party set out further details of its “Policing Plan”, which includes proposals to recruit 10,000 new police officers and treble the use of stop-and-search powers set out at this month’s party conference.

The Tories’ plan would also give the home secretary more powers to set “binding operational priorities” for police forces, focusing them on “real crime”.

This would replace the current system where the home secretary can only intervene if a force is “failing”, which the Conservatives said was “just not good enough”.

Shadow home secretary Chris Philp said: “Every day, victims are told there’s nothing police can do while criminals walk free.

“That failure corrodes public trust and weakens the rule of law.

“Keir Starmer does not have the backbone to take the difficult decisions Britain needs. That has to change.

“Our plan will end the culture of excuses.”

The Conservatives’ plan also sees additional officers being deployed to the 2,000 neighbourhoods with the most violent crime, where they will also be allowed to stop and search anyone even if they do not suspect them of anything.

Currently, such powers can only be used in a specified area for a 24-hour period if a senior officer believes people there will be carrying weapons or serious violence may take place.

Existing thresholds for stop-and-search powers in other areas would be lowered under the plan.

The proposals come after a week in which new statistics showed a mixed figure on crime.

Figures released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed homicides had fallen to their lowest level on record in the year to June 2025 while knife crime fell 5% compared to the previous year.

But other types of police-recorded offences increased, with shoplifting up 13% year on year to 529,994 – just below the recent all-time high – and theft from the person up 5%.

Overall, police forces recorded 6.6 million crimes in England and Wales in the year to June, down by 1.5% from 6.7 million in the previous 12 months.

But separate figures from the ONS Crime Survey for England and Wales suggest people aged 16 and over experienced 9.3 million incidents of crime in the year to June 2025, up slightly from 9.2 million in the previous 12 months.

The main driver of the rise was a 14% rise in fraud, which accounts for an estimated 4.1 million incidents, including 2.5 million incidents of bank and credit account fraud.

Labour has committed to recruiting 13,000 more neighbourhood policing officers by 2029, with 3,000 extra recruits to be in post by spring next year to tackle crime.

Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Max Wilkinson said: “Policing is at a crisis point.

“The former Conservative government destroyed neighbourhood policing and left our communities to pay the price. This Labour government has done too little to change course.”