The foreign governments warning citizens about the dangers of visiting crime-ridden Britain
Australia, France, Canada and even Mexico are advising their citizens to exercise caution when travelling to the UK
Before Samuel* travelled from Australia to the UK last October, his friends and family warned him about London’s reputation for crime. “I had planned to travel all around Europe,” says the 27-year-old architecture student from Sydney, “but my parents said, ‘once you get to London, you need to be really careful’”.
Conversations about the soaring robbery and theft rates in London are commonplace for Australian travellers visiting the UK, says Samuel. “Everyone knows of somebody [in Australia] that’s had their phone stolen in London,” he says. “It’s definitely common to hear the warnings in Australia, everyone knows that.”
Despite the warnings, Samuel became one of around 80,000 people whose phones were stolen in London last year. Walking up a flight of stairs at Euston station with his mobile in his back pocket, he noticed he had been pick-pocketed when he reached the top. The experience had such an impact on him that he still finds himself checking his pockets in Australia, even though phone theft is “non-existent” out there.
Warnings about London’s crime are not just hearsay out in Australia; they are now being issued by the Australian government. The government website Smart Traveller has raised the UK travel advice from a Level 1 to a Level 2 warning, urging Australians to “exercise a high degree of caution” when visiting Britain, adding that “petty crime is common, including pickpocketing” and alerting readers to thieves who use “scooters and bicycles to snatch belongings”.
Two extra bullet points recommend travellers “keep money and valuables such as mobile phones out of sight” and “avoid putting valuables in [their] pockets”.
In Australia, there are only four risk levels when it comes to travel warnings: Level 1 indicates that a country is “similar” to Australia safety-wise, while Level Four is “do not travel” because “your health and safety are at extreme risk”. Level 2, issued to the UK, “may reflect a weak law-and-order system, where violent crime is common,” explains the website, adding that the country “may lack some key public services, such as a responsive police force.”
Two fifths of mobile phone thefts in Europe now happen in the UK, according to the insurance company SquareTrade Europe. Its data reveals that phone theft claims in the UK have increased by 425 per cent since June 2021. One mobile phone is stolen every six minutes across the capital, according to the Metropolitan Police.
Meanwhile, violent crime has gone up by 30 per cent during Sir Sadiq Khan’s nine-year tenure as Mayor of London. In March, the Conservatives accused him of overseeing a “woefully inadequate” response to the problem of phone theft after dedicating only two sentences to the increase in his policing strategy for the capital.
In early July this year, the Home Office wrote on X that there had been a 44 per cent rise in street crime across the UK, record levels of shop theft and a million incidents of anti-social behaviour.
Australia is not the only country warning its citizens to take precautions when visiting the UK. Research by The Telegraph has uncovered a slew of foreign countries that have either put out fresh warnings about the rising levels of crime in the UK in recent years, or updated the “crime” sections of their websites with additional warnings. The countries include France, Canada, New Zealand, the UAE and, most surprisingly, Mexico, where six cities recorded homicide rates of more than 100 per 100,000 residents in 2022, according to Human Rights Watch.
The Telegraph: continue reading
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