Cooper warns over rise in shoplifting as downturn bites

The Shadow Home Secretary and West Yorkshire MP used her keynote speech at the Labour conference to criticise the Government for being “triumphant” about falling crime levels amid a wave of new problems.

“Home Office Ministers called (the latest drop in crime) ‘spectacular’,” Ms Cooper said. “Nick Clegg called it a ‘triumph’.

“I don’t think they get it. Everyone welcomes the 20-year drop in recorded crime, and we want it to go further.

“But there is nothing spectacular about eight-and a half million crimes last year. Ministers should be troubled, not triumphant, about growing problems - police reports from Devon, Nottinghamshire and Yorkshire about increases in shoplifting for basics like meat for a family meal.”

Ms Cooper also told the conference that controversial Government ad vans warning illegal immigrants to go home or face deportation have borrowed National Front rhetoric.

“Unlike the Tories, we won’t do ad vans sent to the highest black and ethnic British communities, borrowing the language of the 1970s National Front,” she said.

“Just consider - those ad vans were driving past the homes of families whose parents and grandparents had to endure those same slogans scrawled high in graffiti 40 years ago, whose children now run local businesses, work in hospitals, serve their country in our armed forces.

“It really comes to something when even (UKIP leader) Nigel Farage says you have gone too far. Those ad vans were not about illegal immigration, and I say enough of the divisive gimmicks, they are an utter disgrace.”