Reading Terrorist Attack
Chris Loder Excerpts(3 years, 10 months ago)
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Priti Patel
I thank the right hon. Lady for her question. In fact, she raised a similar point last week, and I am writing to her outlining the details of what we will be doing with the counter-extremism strategy. She is right, however, to point to online activities and the vile hatred that is spread online, but also on other forms of the web, the dark web in particular. There is a great deal of work being done, and I pay tribute to the many organisations and individuals, some of whom we have not even referenced today, who work to close down sites and track these individuals and some of the organisations they are networked with. That work will always continue, but I will share the details with the right hon. Lady shortly.
Chris Loder (West Dorset) (Con)
In the face of great adversity, we often witness the very best of public spirit, selflessness and bravery from our fellow citizens—those who sacrifice concern of their own safety in the interest of others—and none more so than the first responders during the terrorist attack in Reading, to whom I pay tribute. A member of our parliamentary family was, by chance, at Forbury Gardens on Saturday and, in the same way that my right hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood) did in March 2017, ran courageously towards danger; his only focus was to help the injured. I would like to pay particular tribute to James Antell, a member of my own staff who not only used his own shirt to stem the bleeding of one victim but continued resuscitation on a second victim until the paramedics arrived. This was indeed a remarkable and extraordinary effort from a young man who has been with us in Parliament for a little over four months and whom I am extremely proud—I hope the whole House is—to have as part of the West Dorset parliamentary team.
Policing (England and Wales)
Chris Loder Excerpts(4 years, 2 months ago)
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Richard Drax
No, I will not give way, because others wish to speak. There are maiden speeches to be given, and I very much look forward to hearing them.
May I first pay tribute to Dorset police—the chief constable and all the officers who serve under Dorset police?
Richard Drax
Ah, there is another Dorset MP in his place. The Dorset police do a fantastic job, as I am sure my hon. Friend would agree.
The aim of the police, in my view, is to prevent crime and to catch criminals—that is it. I welcome my hon. Friend the Minister to his place. He is doing a wonderful job, as he always has, and will be an extremely able Minister. I am sure he would agree that the police have more and more pressures piled on them, from looking after people with mental health issues to picking up wandering dogs. That is not their job. Their job is to catch criminals and to prevent crime. A lot of their time is taken up with doing other tasks. I am most grateful to my hon. Friend for this increase in our funding, but I must remind him, as I have done in the past, that Dorset is near the bottom of the pile. We welcome the levelling up, but more levelling up is needed, and the funding formula, which Opposition Members have mentioned, definitely needs to be looked at.
Before I get on to the three points that the police and crime commissioner has asked me to raise, I would like to touch on minor crime. I will not speak for very long. We hear time and again about the effects of minor crime. As a journalist for 17 years, I covered those sorts of things, and I saw the damage that they did. One old lady, for example, lost all her belongings when a burglar stole her husband’s war medals. She died a year later from a broken heart. That is not a minor crime. It is burglary, which is very serious, and the effects of it are devastating. That is why we need more police officers on the beat. I understand that the nature of crime has changed and that more officers are now behind the scenes dealing with online crime and all those things. I get that, but that does not negate the need for men and women in uniform—not in yellow jackets. Can we get them back in their blue uniforms with the proper hats, please, so that we know what a policeman looks like? They stand for law and order. They are not a whole bunch of children on a sort of trail with yellow jackets all over the place. We need more officers on the beat, so that people can actually see them and the criminals who are about to commit a crime can see them. That means foot patrols in our cities, our towns and our villages. There is nothing that beats a foot patrol. I know that because I am an ex-soldier who served in Northern Ireland. That was our job—to deter the terrorist and, in the event, to catch them in the act.