Preventing Crime and Delivering Justice

Debate between Colleen Fletcher and Kit Malthouse

Wednesday 11th May 2022 Commons Chamber

[Colleen Fletcher]

In my constituency, off-road motorbikes are being used in a very, very intimidating way. They are almost escorting cars around. They are not doing them any actual harm, but they are intimidating people, so much so that one person in my constituency had to stop at the side of the road to gather himself to be able to drive on. That has been said to me time and again through emails and through visits in the community. I visited the police. I had a meeting with our police and crime commissioner. Only two weeks ago I had a summit meeting with the leader of the council and others, where I spoke about off-road motorbikes.

It would be useful if we could do something. The police and the police and crime commissioner tell me that there are not enough resources, and they have to put the resources where they need them. There are pots of money, such as the safer streets fund, but is that really the way to tackle those problems? This must be done far more broadly than it is now. Of all the antisocial behaviour incidents, I deal most with off-road motorbikes, and I know that this goes on across the whole west midlands. It does not happen only in my area, which is why we should look at what we are giving to police forces and say, “This is a problem up and down the country. We need to tackle it.” I would work with anybody to try to tackle it.

In a tacit admission of the damage that they have inflicted on policing, the Government introduced the police uplift programme. Although any uplift in officer numbers is welcome, let us be clear that this will still not take West Midlands police back to pre-austerity levels of policing. We lost 2,221 officers in the west midlands during the austerity years, and although the force is due to get back more than 1,200 officers through the police uplift programme, that still leaves a shortfall in the west midlands of more than 1,000 officers compared with 2010 levels.

[Kit Malthouse]

rose—

[Colleen Fletcher]

I have nearly finished and I have already given way.

When launching the uplift programme in 2019, the Prime Minister said:

“I have been clear from day one I will give the police the resources they need”.

If his rhetoric is to match reality, and if he is to meet his pledge to level up, the Prime Minister must return the 1,000 police officers to the west midlands. Sadly, there was no commitment in the Queen’s Speech to either resource the police properly or tackle the antisocial behaviour problems on our streets effectively. I fear that once more on crime and justice, the Government have failed West Midlands police and failed the people of Coventry North East.