Preventing Crime and Delivering Justice

Debate between Catherine McKinnell and Kit Malthouse

Wednesday 11th May 2022 Commons Chamber

[Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)]

It would be customary to say that it is an honour to follow the hon. Member for Dudley North (Marco Longhi), but, without being personal in any way, it is incredibly frustrating, when we are facing a catastrophic rise in the cost of living, a war in Europe and an economy that is just starting to recover from the covid-19 pandemic, that this is the Queen’s Speech we are dealing with today. It should have been full of ambition and vision for our country, but instead we have cynicism, half measures and a total lack of vision. We have an eclectic mix of Bills that is more about stoking division and setting up dividing lines. It does not come close to tackling the issues that the public care most about—the catastrophic fall in their incomes and the cost of living soaring as a recession looms.

The very beginning of the Queen’s Speech talked about supporting the police to make our streets safer. We know the Government have no shortage of hard-line rhetoric on crime; we heard it from the Home Secretary earlier. Browsing the headlines on any given day, there is a good chance that we will see something about how harshly criminals will be punished if they get caught. But it is the “if they get caught” bit that is really crucial. After 12 years of Conservative cuts, the police, and the justice system, often do not have the resources to investigate even the most relatively straightforward crimes. The impact of this has been devastating. The antisocial behaviour that blights significant parts of our country, including my constituency, has effectively been decriminalised. The cuts to frontline policing and the criminal justice system have caused the proportion of reported crimes ending in prosecution to plummet.

[Kit Malthouse]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Catherine McKinnell]

If the Minister wishes to disagree with the very obvious statistics on this, he is welcome to; we would love to hear it.

[Kit Malthouse]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady. Obviously antisocial behaviour is an important issue across the whole country, and we definitely recognise that. In my own county of Hampshire, the police and crime commissioner has established an antisocial behaviour taskforce, using the extra resources that the Government have now provided for the third consecutive year. Has she had the same conversation with her own Labour police and crime commissioner to establish exactly the same kind of assertive response in Newcastle upon Tyne?

[Catherine McKinnell]

I appreciate that the Government state their commitment to the issue, but over the past 12 years we have seen an accumulation of the impact of public service cuts right across the board, whether in education, youth services or our police, sending the message to constituents across my constituency and elsewhere that people are getting away with it and very little can be done.

The relatively small increases in police numbers are not going to change that either. Northumbria Police has lost 1,100 officers and we still need 632 more to get back to 2010 levels, but replacing police officers is not going to take us all the way. Ministers have also shown very little interest in replacing lost back-room staff, who are essential to releasing that police resource on to the street. The Minister seems to think the problem is solved, but residents in my area, and right across the country, would disagree. We need to make community safety a priority, and that means more police out there tackling crime, antisocial behaviour and dangerous drivers: the things that they came into the force to do. The Minister’s own Back Benchers have been calling for it repeatedly today. That means tackling the backlog in the judicial system—something that the Government have simply ignored and continue to ignore.

We know the distressing impact that antisocial behaviour can have on victims, destroying their mental health and impacting every part of their life. In the worst cases it can be life-ending. When I speak to people in my constituency in Lemington, Newbiggin Hall, Kingston Park, West Denton, Gosforth and Fawdon, they are very clear that what they want is greater support and protection from antisocial behaviour and crime, and greater strength and legal protection as victims. Yet victims are too often treated as an afterthought. The community trigger, which is supposedly the main instrument to support antisocial behaviour victims, is largely unused, and meanwhile support for victims remains a postcode lottery due to the lack of dedicated Government funding. It is disappointing that the long-promised victims Bill is still not enacted after being promised in no fewer than four Queen’s Speeches and three manifestos. Putting the victims code on a statutory footing is so overdue, and I urge the Government to take up the Victims Commissioner’s recommendation to include in it victims of antisocial behaviour. We must give them the same rights as victims of crime. We must end the postcode lottery in support for victims with proper dedicated funding.

Taking on crime is also vital to rebalancing our economy—or levelling up, as the Government like to call it. Crime not only leaves people fearful in our own communities but damages the prospect of attracting people and businesses to areas that quite often badly need the investment. The levelling-up agenda itself seems up in the air, with little sense of the Government’s priorities. The modest changes expected in the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill simply are not enough, especially if the Government have already passed up the chance to transform northern economies by delivering on the long-promised eastern leg of HS2.

In the Levelling Up White Paper, the Government identify 12 missions to drive and measure change. I do not have time to go into them all, but take, for example, the mission of 90% of children meeting the expected standard in reading, writing and maths by the end of primary school by 2030. We would all love to see it happen, but is it possible to achieve, when the highest performing areas currently do not reach 90%? It is hard to see how a Government who are presiding over half a million more children sinking into absolute poverty can possibly achieve that goal, given all that we know about the impact of poverty on achievement at school. Promises are one thing; delivery is another, and indeed there is no mention of child poverty at all in the Queen’s Speech or in the Levelling Up White Paper, even though we know it accounts for much of the difference in attainment at school across the country and impacts on so many areas of life, including health, wealth and happiness. It has become a reality that must not be named, but in failing to do so, the Government are failing our children.

I will touch on transport, because the transport Bill will include long-awaited and much-needed measures to roll out charging points for electric vehicles. Making the shift to low-carbon vehicles will save drivers money, increase energy independence and clean our air. We know that nearly 40,000 buses on Britain’s roads need to be replaced, both as part of the switch to zero-emission vehicles and to encourage people to switch from private to public transport with a new modernised fleet. The Department for Transport’s target is to fund 4,000 zero-carbon buses in this Parliament, but 40,000 need to be replaced.

The DFT’s approach of funding zero-emission buses through this ad hoc centrally administered funding pot, forcing local authorities to spend precious time and money writing bids, feels like an outdated and half-hearted solution, if I am honest, to the urgent problem of decarbonising our transport system. I often imagine my communities with full electrification of cars and buses, and think how quiet and clean the air would be. It is within our grasp; we just need more urgency, and we need to streamline the process of returning bus networks to public control, so that green buses can become integrated, efficient and accountable, like they are in major cities such as London. We want the same for Newcastle.

Fundamentally, we need to remove fossil fuels from transport. We need to make electric vehicles affordable for everyone and ensure that every community has the infrastructure to charge them. We need the right regulation and funding for a clean, efficient bus network, and we need investment in cycle paths and walking to allow people to travel safely. That is how we create safe and healthy communities.

Crippling energy bills and runaway inflation are hitting families hard, and the catastrophic fall in disposable income alongside the crisis in Ukraine will define our politics for the foreseeable future. The very first line of the Queen’s Speech should have acknowledged that we are living in a cost of living crisis and made a commitment to bringing forward a Budget to support households. Yet that is not what we got yesterday, and we are left with grudging half-measures previously announced by the Chancellor. That is scant comfort to constituents facing another increase in the energy cap in the autumn, when energy bills are expected to reach a staggering £2,500 to £3,000 on average. It is just not good enough.

Two and a half years into his premiership, it is not at all clear what the Prime Minister’s guiding mission in office is, other than staying there at all costs. It is a remarkably thin policy programme from a Government with an 80-seat majority who tell us that they are going to level up our country. It shows a Government seriously lacking in ambition and far more interested in stoking culture wars that they think will benefit them in the next election, rather than supporting British people and British businesses through the multiple domestic and international crises we face. I will work with Labour colleagues to try and improve these Bills and the Government’s programme, but frankly, after 12 years, it is time for a Labour Government.