Prime Minister’s opening remarks at Cabinet: 17 May 2022

Good morning, everybody.

Thank you very much.

The crucial duty of our Government is to make our communities safer, which is what we are doing.

That’s why we put, of the 20,000 police that we promised at the 2019 election, we’ve already put 13,576 on the streets.

They are bringing down neighbourhood crime and that’s a great thing to see. But we’ve got more to do.

We want to make sure our streets are safer and we will round up those county lines drugs gangs with Project ADDER, taking the criminals off the streets, stopping the deaths of young people from knife crime and gun crime.

But what we’re also doing is making sure that we give everybody the confidence that we are on their side when it comes to the law and their experiences of crimes – particularly crimes of sexual and domestic violence – and we want to see more prosecutions for those who engage in such crimes.

We want to see more rapists brought to justice.

I’m pleased to see the facts. Several of you across the table have been working very, very hard and we are starting to see progress.

This matters deeply to me. It matters to our government.

It’s vital to every person, it’s vital to every woman and every girl in the country that we get this right and I want to see more progress on that.

But there’s another reason why it’s so vital to bring down crime by making sure that our streets are safe, which is integral for our project for uniting and levelling up.

It is only when you have safe streets and you have safe communities, that you get the confidence of business to invest and drive jobs and growth and that it is absolutely critical now as we deal with the aftermaths of COVID and we help people with their current costs and we take the economy through a difficult patch.

That is why cutting crime is integral to our economic mission as well.

Making our streets safer is absolutely vital.

May I just say – on that point – that today I am very pleased to see that unemployment is now at the lowest level it has been since 1974 and to borrow a phrase from the Chancellor of the Exchequer…our plan for jobs is working.

Crime crime crime is what we want to focus on.

Making our streets safer.

Thank you very much.