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Lola McEvoy (Darlington) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered police powers for tackling the use of illegal off-road bikes in the North East.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Barker. I thank all the Members who have come to support the call for more police powers, police resources and a multi-departmental approach to tackling the scourge of e-bikes, battery-powered bikes and off-road bikes on our streets. Since I was elected with this Labour Government in July 2024, it has become increasingly clear that battery-powered bikes are the getaway vehicle of choice for those who do not respect the rule of law.
I alert the House to my constituent Julie Francis, who is in the Public Gallery today. Her mother, Gloria, was killed in Sunderland by a teenager illegally riding an off-road bike. Julie is as determined as I am to get more resources, and to get justice for Gloria, herself and the family.
Lewis Atkinson (Sunderland Central) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend for securing this debate. Gloria Stephenson was my constituent, and her tragic death in Ryhope really affected our community. Does my hon. Friend agree, as the number of Members present suggests many of us do, that we need swifter action to prevent such tragic deaths in future?
Lola McEvoy
I absolutely agree that we need more powers, more action and more police on our streets to tackle this. I have some points on powers and resources that I ask the Minister to address in her remarks. She and I have previously met to discuss this. It is a cross-departmental issue, and as a group we will be meeting the Department for Transport to address some of the licensing issues, but this debate is about what the police need now.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I commend the hon. Lady for raising this issue, and she is absolutely right. I share her concerns, which we have back home, too. We have been working on a cross-party basis in the Assembly to ensure that the Justice Bill enables the Police Service of Northern Ireland to seize scooters and bikes right away, without warning. Does she agree that the Minister should commit herself—I know she will—to sharing best practice across the regions to stop those reckless riders turning our public parks into dangerous racetracks?
Lola McEvoy
As always, the hon. Gentleman makes a clear and coherent point.
I ask the Minister to consider bolstering police powers to support our communities, which regularly report antisocial behaviour in the form of balaclava-clad battery bike riders. The police’s problem is that they do not have the resources to send out a police helicopter and a full squad to chase down those people every time antisocial behaviour is reported. The issue in Darlington and across the north-east is that e-bikes are also the vehicles of choice for organised crime.
Ms Julie Minns (Carlisle) (Lab)
My hon. Friend and I have worked very closely on this issue. It is helpful to highlight that we are talking about two types of bike: dirt bikes, which have been around for more than 100 years, and e-bikes. The problem is that dirt bikes are unlicensed, so riding them on a road, in a park and so on is illegal. Similarly, when a non-compliant electrically assisted pedal cycle is ridden on a road or in a park, it immediately becomes illegal.
Does my hon. Friend agree that the sale of non-compliant e-bikes and the horrible kits that create them should be banned? A number of police, fire and crime commissioners across the country have asked for that. Does she feel that the solution for dirt bikes is that they should have a registered keeper when they are sold and that, if they are going to be used off road, they should have a statutory off road notification?
Lola McEvoy
My learned and hon. Friend is the expert on this issue in the House, and I absolutely and wholeheartedly agree. In the interests of time, I will not reiterate the points I agree with, because I agree with all of them, and they were part of my speech, but I ask the Minister to please address them.
I agree that we need to ban the sale of e-bikes, but I am concerned about the use of antisocial behaviour as a reason against the police being forced to take action on this issue. I would like the prolific use of off-road electric bikes in our communities to be increased to a criminal offence.
Mr Jonathan Brash (Hartlepool) (Lab)
One way we can help the police is to better educate the public. We are in the run-up to Christmas, and it is generally misunderstood that e-bikes are not legal in our parks, on our roads or on our pavements. One young constituent found that out to his cost: he had owned his e-bike for only a couple of weeks, but he rode it on the road, and it was seized and crushed. Should we not say to parents, “Do not buy them this Christmas, because you are likely to lose them”?
Lola McEvoy
I absolutely agree. I have written to some high-street retailers that sell battery-powered scooters, which are popular among the younger generation. Children also use them to copycat and mimic the criminals that we see across Darlington. That is an escalation in antisocial behaviour, and it is really dangerous for those children.
Amanda Martin (Portsmouth North) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend agree that we should ask the Minister to consider targeted funding? The shoplifting element of the safer streets programme, and the police operation we had, were really successful. We need targeted funding with better intelligence and transparent data about where bikes are being seized and crushed.
Lola McEvoy
I agree that we need targeted funding, including for police vehicles in Durham and constabularies across the north-east. Having the ability for a police team to use a motor vehicle or a motorbike is an effective way of catching these criminals. The problem is that it is a game of cat and mouse. The police have to go round all the alleys in Darlington and across the north-east, and they do not have enough power. We need deterrents too.
Lola McEvoy
I will make some progress. One of the deterrents I ask the Minister to consider is repeat reporting in hotspots. Neighbourhood policing needs more resources if it is to act as a deterrent. We would like to see increased police resources in estates or parts of the town where there is repeated antisocial behaviour involving off-road bikes.
Luke Akehurst (North Durham) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is being very generous in giving way. I thank her for her tireless work on this issue. At a recent meeting that I convened on this issue at Beamish museum with stakeholders including the police, local authorities, emergency services and community groups, a key theme raised was the need for stronger enforcement powers. Will my hon. Friend join me in urging the Minister to extend to police community support officers, as well as police officers, the power to stop and seize these bikes and report road traffic offences? That would give them the tools they need to tackle this persistent antisocial behaviour.
Lola McEvoy
I agree that PCSOs need further powers to be able to tackle the use of these bikes and to seize them. I attended a crushing, if that is what it is called—that word is new to my vocabulary—of 70 of these vehicles, which was incredibly satisfying; I really enjoyed myself. However, it is not enough to confiscate them. The public do not want to see them. They do not want them on the streets. We need to probit their sale, impose consequences for those selling them and strengthen community powers to ban them from areas.
Adam Dance
On community, a lot of residents in my constituency are scared to leave their home because of people with masks and balaclavas on riding scooters and e-bikes. I spoke to a resident who has not left her home in three weeks because she was knocked over the last time she did, and the police are just not doing enough. Will the Minister write to Avon and Somerset police to give PCSOs the authority to have handcuffs? We are one of the only places in the country where PCSOs do not have handcuffs.
Lola McEvoy
Unfortunately, I do not know enough about that bit of the legislation, but I am sure the Minister does and will address that point.
The use of balaclavas to evade detection is intimidating. The fact that the bikes are not licensed, plated or chipped means that the riders have a getaway vehicle. If the police were to catch and prosecute them, they could confiscate and crush the bikes, but that is not enough of a deterrent and the balance is weighted in favour of those using them.
I would like the Minister to consider our points. We are seeing an increase in blatant disregard for the law. There are reports of these criminals wearing balaclavas, drug dealing in plain sight in the street, and carrying machetes and other very dangerous weapons. It seems that they are willing to take the risk because they do not think they will get caught. As I said, the police are making incredible headway with Operation ORB, which is about seizing and crushing these bikes, but things seem to be weighted in favour of the criminals.
Lee Pitcher (Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme) (Lab)
In Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme, this problem destroys not just lives, but livelihoods. We are giving grants to community centres to get people out, but people are scared to go. Farmers and rural communities are having their livelihoods swept away by this horrible scourge. Will the Minister give us some reassurance that we will give our police more preventive measures to catch these people?
Lola McEvoy
I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend.
Will the Minister consider addressing the powers around this use of off-road vehicles, including antisocial behaviour orders? Using a public spaces protection order to ban the use of balaclavas and off-road bikes in Darlington town centre, for example, which I have called for, would mean that a police officer had to go and find somebody who was not committing a crime, but who was wearing a balaclava and using an off-road bike, and then issue them with a £100 fine for being in breach of the PSPO. Will the Policing Minister address the concerns about the deterrent being skewed, and not in favour of the public? A £100 fine is not enough of a deterrent, and the person has to be caught. We need to make sure that there are other deterrents in place, such as confiscation.
There are also problems with the licenses for riding these vehicles and with who is buying them. As my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Mr Brash) mentioned, these scooters can be bought on the high street, but as my hon. Friend the Member for Carlisle (Ms Minns) knows well, kits can also be bought online to change what could be seen by a parent as a pretty safe and fun vehicle into a really dangerous vehicle. We need to address that with more deterrents and tougher punishments.
Alan Strickland (Newton Aycliffe and Spennymoor) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend for leading the debate and for her national leadership on this issue. She makes important points about additional powers, but those powers need policing resource. Just a few weeks ago, we debated Durham constabulary’s financial challenges in meeting the requirements of increasing crime. Does she agree that, as well as additional powers, Durham police must have the proper funding they need to lead a crackdown on this appalling problem?
Lola McEvoy
I agree wholeheartedly with my hon. Friend. The funding formula is not in Durham police’s favour. We need funding formula reform, and we need it soon. I would also say that it is all well and good funding neighbourhood policing, which will act as a deterrent, but we simply do not have the resources to tackle the organised and very serious crime that is often masked as antisocial behaviour. I would argue that the scourge of balaclava-clad people on electric battery-powered bikes and dirt bikes on our roads is encouraging a more blatant flouting of the law in other areas.
I ask the Minister to address the fact that although communities are making a comprehensive attempt to report the use of these off-road bikes, by the time the police turn up, the culprits have obviously fled on those vehicles wearing a balaclava, and go completely unidentified. I therefore ask for some investigation into tracking the sale of these bikes or into other ways we can identify the wearers, who are blatantly dealing drugs in the town and surrounding areas.
I know that the Minister will be meeting the Department for Transport to address lots of these issues in a cross-departmental approach, but I ask that the Durham and north-east police forces, which are on the frontline, are seen as a pilot for any interventions. We have been given drones by our police and crime commissioners, but they are only as good as the police officers on the ground who follow them. It is all well and good seeing where the bikes are going, but if officers cannot then go and identify those using them, because it is seen as too little of a crime to drive one on the road, then it is not in their interests to use those resources to follow them. It is also not in the police’s interests to engage in a very dangerous high-speed chase down the main roads, because they know that that will endanger pedestrians.
I ask the Minister to understand some of the challenges we are facing in Darlington and the surrounding areas. I urge her to see what I have said not as an MP clutching her pearls and saying, “We are a lovely town”—which we are—“and we deserve better,” but as a canary down the mine for what criminals think they can get away with. If it is happening in Darlington in the north-east, you can bet your bottom dollar that it will happen right across the country.
The Minister for Policing and Crime (Sarah Jones)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Barker. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Lola McEvoy) for securing a very timely and important debate.
I will start by making the basic point that I absolutely recognise the challenges my hon. Friend describes. As an MP in Croydon, I have very similar challenges, and there are similar challenges across the country with this emerging nasty problem with off-road bikes, e-bikes and e-scooters. It is probably safe to say that every MP in the country has a challenge with them.
It was a privilege to meet my hon. Friend and her constituent to talk about the awful death of her mother. It was an impactful experience that made me think about the need for us to act and do more. I hope that those who have lost loved ones or been injured, and the MPs who have had conversations with them, can be reassured that we are looking very carefully at this challenge in the Home Office and across Government.
On the wider issue of funding and how we tackle these challenges, I am acutely aware, as my hon. Friend said, of how important it is to have police presence in our communities, and I am very aware of the wider challenges in the north-east with police funding and numbers.
Luke Myer (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Lab)
Will the Minister give way?
Sarah Jones
I know exactly what my hon. Friend is going to ask me, but I will happily give way.
Luke Myer
The Minister will be sick of me raising this, but I promised my constituents that I would continue to bang on about it. I urge her to remember Cleveland police in all the conversations she has around police funding, and of course the wider north-east, which hon. Members have mentioned.
Sarah Jones
The funding situation for Cleveland at the moment is that we have secured the money to cover the mutual aid costs that Cleveland has borne—just over £5 million. Durham and Cleveland have both applied for what we are calling exceptional finance for next year and are both through to the next stage, where the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy does an analysis of the challenges. It will look at the financial resilience of the organisations and the context within which they operate, so both those forces will be going through to that. We are doing a lot of internal work on the funding formula, which we will say more about soon, but the exceptional finance will be for this financial year. The year starts in January, but the announcements will be made in December, so we are looking at those issues now. Obviously, within the funding window, it is important to say that local police are operationally independent, so it is for them to make the decisions on the tactics they want to pursue.
There have been many questions about what we can do at a national level to support the tackling of this challenge.
Dame Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central and West) (Lab)
I emphasise that my constituents want to see extra resource and devolved powers to our local authorities to address the scourge of e-bikes, as my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Lola McEvoy) eloquently put it. I also want to make the Minister aware, if she is not, that a consultant at the Royal Victoria Infirmary told me that the hospital’s 36% rise in open leg fractures in the last three years is due to increased e-bike use. There is a cost to young lives and to the NHS. Is she working with her Department of Health and Social Care colleagues to look at the costs and at how they can be addressed by the policy she can put in place?
Sarah Jones
That is a shocking statistic. We will certainly take that away and see whether that is replicated elsewhere. We will ask our NHS colleagues to see whether there is data on that and how it is gathered, but that would be useful.
On what more we can do, I am having a series of conversations with MPs and I will do a couple of roundtables. I know a lot of MPs are interested in this space—I understand there is a WhatsApp group—and want to give their views. We have obviously taken some steps, such as the powers to seize these vehicles and not have to give notice, and the powers to extend dispersal orders, as well being able to dispose of these vehicles quicker than before.
On the point my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington made about PSPO breaches, we have increased fines to £500. It is not the answer to everything, but it is at least something, going from £100 to £500. We are looking at a number of different areas, and all the things that have been suggested are things we are looking at. I cannot promise that there will be magic money and, although I would like to, I cannot wave a wand and give all police forces extra money to tackle this problem, but we are very much looking at this challenge in the round and I know that the Home Secretary is very interested in this area, too.
There are legal changes we can think about, which obviously involve the need for legislation and to go through that process, so what are the things we could do sooner rather than later? How much can we corral police forces that carry out big operations that take these vehicles off the streets and dispose of them, and look at that nationwide? There are issues around training for officers, which we are looking at. My hon. Friend the Member for Darlington talked about the dangers of pursuing someone, but to be able to pursue, officers need a level of driving training. We need to look at whether there is an issue with the number of officers we are training. I talked only today with the new inspector of His Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary and fire and rescue services, who has just started his new role—he was the head of the College of Policing—about the things in this space that we can think about doing.
There is obviously a big piece of work to be done across Government about the rules for how these things can be used. The point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington about people not understanding that a lot of this is illegal is absolutely right. The existing legal situation is messy when it comes to what someone can and cannot do, and we need to work across Government to address that.
Lola McEvoy
I would have liked to have addressed a few easy wins, but in the interest of time maybe the Minister could address them now. One issue is that a lot of people who are caught are under 18 and do not have a driving licence. Is there any avenue to addressing that through the parenting orders? For example, if someone’s child is caught riding one of these on the road, there could be knock-on consequences for their driving licence.
We had an incident in Darlington where parents were ringing up the police and asking when they could get the confiscated vehicle back. It is not the same thing as when a teacher confiscates a child’s phone for using it in school; these bikes are illegal and dangerous and have no place on the road. We need to differentiate that for parents by applying some consequences, if we cannot do it for the young people themselves.
Sarah Jones
My hon. Friend raises a good point about what to do with under-18s. We have just introduced respect orders, which are useful in this space because people who are consistently antisocial and driving these bikes are prime suspects for respect orders, which can result in a criminal offence—people can end up in prison if they breach their conditions. But respect orders do not apply to the under-18s. We need to look at our under-18s and make sure that, whatever the antisocial behaviour is, there is deterrence and interventions, as well as support where the child is vulnerable and may need it. I will take that away and commit to looking into it.
We need to look across Government and the consider the different laws that exist around these vehicles. In the Home Office, we need to be thinking about what bit of legislation, what change, or what corralling in policing we can do, and how we can send out messages about what is and is not legal. We are considering all of these issues in the Home Office. Now is the time to have these conversations, and we are looking at what we can feasibly do.
There is a general point around bikes and antisocial behaviour, which is that post covid there has been a big increase in antisocial behaviour that policing has not kept on top of, largely because of resources. This is a symptom of that. We have to make it clear to our communities that there is a way to behave and a thing to do, and that there will be consequences if people do not stick within the law. The message to all our fair, law-abiding citizens should be, “You are abiding by the law, and we are grateful for that. These other people will not get away with what they are doing.”
I am thinking about what the quick wins are, what longer-term wins we need through legislation and how we can make sure this is not seen as in any way acceptable.
Lola McEvoy
I thank the Minister for being so generous with her time. Something that comes up a lot on the doorstep when we talk about this issue is that it is the same small group, and everybody knows who it is. They might say, “Everybody knows who it is and they are always driving these bikes in and out the house.” Obviously, I do not know because they will not tell me who it is, so there is an issue there with the neighbourhood policing.
Is there any support that the Minister could give police around repeated multi-problem hotspots and families, where it is known by the community? This is driving down public confidence in the police, as well as how people feel on a day-to-day basis, as has been raised by many hon. Friends across the House. It is making people feel intimidated, scared and miserable, as well as being a danger. Can the Minister address that?
Sarah Jones
My hon. Friend makes a good point. There is the wider issue here of the years of austerity that ripped away services that supported parents and families to be the best they can be, whether Sure Start or the various iterations of family interventions over the years that have been ripped away. The police can do only so much. There is an infrastructure issue around our other public services. That is something we will look at.
I want to touch briefly on PCSOs because they have been raised a couple of times. Certain powers are given to PCSOs by each force. Different areas do different things with their PCSOs. Some, for example, are able to use drones, but others are not. On a basic level, they cannot arrest people or carry weapons. There are certain rules about what PCSOs can do, but within that local forces have some flexibility. I will take away the questions about that. I am always keen to encourage more PCSOs and their use as much as possible. I am very happy to take that away and look at it.
Lola McEvoy
Let me put on record the stellar job being done by PCSOs on the beat in Darlington, across the north-east and in every other constituency. I am sure that everyone will agree with that. PCSOs take huge personal risk for very low pay, and they work often gruelling shifts.
One PCSO—she would not like me to name her—was incredibly brave when she found two people on an off-road bike. She followed them, jumped them and got the bike; but when they turned around and realised that she was on her own, they got the bike back and assaulted her. It is deeply disturbing that that is the level we are at in the lovely town of Darlington. It is not right that the balance is so skewed in favour of those who do not respect the law. Will the Minister keep her in mind when increasing the powers of PCSOs?
Sarah Jones
I will certainly keep that in mind. There are lots of extraordinary examples of PCSOs showing great bravery and being really important crime-prevention agents as well as fighting crime in our local communities. It would be wrong of me not to say that three police officers have died in my hon. Friend’s region over the past year. We pay tribute to them and what they have given for their country. We will continue to do that, and we are very grateful for what the police do.
I absolutely hear and am having lots of conversations about the need to look at this challenge, recognise it and see it. The Home Secretary recognises and sees it, and we are very much in the market for the things that we can do. It is, therefore, a very helpful time to have this conversation and debate. I thank all hon. Members who have contributed and encourage them to keep talking to me and others in the Home Office. I will convene some roundtable sessions, and we need a proper cross-Government session as well. I thank my hon. Friend for raising such an important matter.
Question put and agreed to.