Safe Streets for All

Antony Higginbotham Excerpts

Monday 17th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Antony Higginbotham (Burnley) (Con)]

I cannot speak in any debate on making our streets safer without first thanking all the police officers and PCSOs of Burnley and Padiham police, who do a brilliant job of keeping us safe. I also want to put on record my enormous congratulations to Andrew Snowden, our brilliant new police and crime commissioner for Lancashire. I have known Andrew for quite a while, and he has the drive, passion and determination to tackle the issues that matter most to residents, not just antisocial behaviour in our towns, which he will tackle, but rural crime. I am really pleased that he is already looking at doubling the rural task force that Lancashire police have set up.

There is so much in the Queen’s Speech for us to be optimistic and pleased about. I am privileged to be a member of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Public Bill Committee, which starts in earnest tomorrow. The Bill is particularly welcome. I have yet to meet anyone who thinks we should continue with the automatic release of violent and sexual offenders halfway through their sentence. Not a single person has told me that they think that is a good idea.

Our emergency service workers—we have stood up in this House and praised them time and again—deserve the protections that we can offer them, so doubling the sentence for people who assault them is welcome. However, as my hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Miriam Cates) said, we also need to focus on the more bread-and-butter crimes: the rural crime issues that I just spoke about and which our PCC is looking at, such as speeding cars on our roads and fly-tipping on our country lanes. That is what our residents want us to be focused on, because that is what blights our communities.

However, we are also a nation of fair play and of doing the right thing, and for too long our immigration system has not matched that. As such, the new plan for immigration brings in that sense of fair play for people who follow the rules and do the right thing. No more of people throwing up new human rights concerns 24 hours before deportation that are spurious and meaningless: now, we will reward people who follow the safe and legal route of coming to the UK when they need to, as well as tackle those who try to prey on people’s fears and get them to spend thousands of pounds in the hope of a brighter future, only to lead them down dangerous routes.

My message to the Government on the Queen’s Speech is that there is so much—on crime, on policing, on immigration, and on online harms—that we can be proud of, but let us not lose sight of those bread-and-butter crime issues, such as fly-tipping and speeding cars, that our residents want us to be focusing on every day that we are in this place.