Crime and Policing Bill

Chris McDonald Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 10th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Chris McDonald (Stockton North) (Lab)]

I promised my constituents more police officers in Stockton, Billingham and Norton, and we are delivering on that. I promised a crackdown on antisocial behaviour on the high streets, and we are delivering on that. I promised a named police officer in every neighbourhood, and we are delivering on that. This is a serious Government rolling up their sleeves and getting on with delivering on the issues that matter most to the people to Teesside.

I have visited corner shops picking up the pieces after being attacked by balaclava-clad thugs. I have spoken to unions and retail workers about the devastating impact of shoplifting, theft and assaults on shop workers. Our high streets should be thriving, but too often they are overshadowed by antisocial behaviour that keeps families away. Crime erodes confidence in our communities, leaving people feeling unsafe in their neighbourhoods and making it harder for businesses to thrive, and nowhere is this more obvious than in the illegal use of off-road bikes. For too long, these bikes have been a menace as they maraud through estates, intimidate residents and are used by criminals to evade police. People have had enough.

I promised to come down hard on crime, increase police numbers, and make our high streets and communities safe, and that is exactly what we are doing. With £2.4 million invested in neighbourhood policing, Cleveland police, under our Labour police and crime commissioner Matt Storey, are delivering on that promise with 40 new officers on our streets, increasing the visible police presence in our communities. They are using new tactics to stop crime in its tracks, deploying police drones to track off-road bikes in real time. If criminals think they can evade justice, they are wrong. Their bikes will be tracked, seized and taken off our streets.

[Luke Myer (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is giving an excellent speech about the challenges we face on Teesside. Just today, I heard from James in Easterside, who said that in two hours there was not 15 minutes when an illegal off-road bike, quad or e-scooter did not pass. Does my hon. Friend agree that we need to seize such bikes, crush them and make our streets safe again?

[Chris McDonald]

I am sure that James in Easterside will be pleased to learn that Cleveland police have seized 359 vehicles linked to crime and dangerous driving since January alone, which is already making a big difference. Crime across Cleveland is now at its lowest level in five years following a more than 9% reduction, which means nearly 6,000 fewer victims of crime. This is what a proactive police and crime commissioner, a Labour Member of Parliament and a Labour Government working together looks like. We are putting police back at the heart of our communities, and ensuring that they have the necessary powers and the backing of a justice system that actually works.

We are introducing respect orders to tackle the worst antisocial behaviour offenders, and stamping out issues such as public drinking and drug use to ensure that our town centres are free from harm and nuisance. New offences, such as child criminal exploitation and cuckooing, will crack down on drug dealing. We will protect our high streets by ending the effective immunity for anyone caught shoplifting goods worth below £200 and introducing a new criminal offence to better protect retail workers from assault.

Stockton, Billingham and Norton deserve safer streets, and we are delivering. It should be clear to my residents that this Government and I, as their MP, are on the side of law and order. Although we are seeing green shoots of progress, there is still much more to do to reclaim our streets and town centres. The job is not done yet, but we are making real progress. Together, we will take back our streets and ensure that our towns are places of pride.

International Women�s Day

Chris McDonald Excerpts

Thursday 6th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Chris McDonald (Stockton North) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Brent East (Dawn Butler) for moving the motion. We have just heard some extremely powerful testimony from my hon. Friends the Members for Kettering (Rosie Wrighting) and for Knowsley (Anneliese Midgley), but, if the House will forgive me, I intend to shift the tone slightly and talk about a moment of joy that I experienced yesterday. First, however, I want to acknowledge the proud achievements of our Labour party in advancing the cause of women over the last century, and to pay particular tribute to the members of the women�s sections in our labour and trade union movement for the work that they do in their local communities.

Yesterday I paid a lovely visit to our marvellous education centre, where I met students from St Joseph�s Catholic primary school in Billingham, in my constituency. As always, I was asked the best and hardest questions by the students. One of those questions was, �What are MPs going to do to help women who play football receive the same pay as men who play football?� What a great question.

We have heard a bit about women�s sport today, and we are seeing the rapid growth and transformation of football for women and girls. We have heard about the Lioness effect. The England women�s team have been fantastic role models, and, on the main stage at Wembley under the floodlights, they have laid their critics to rest. However, we should not forget what they have been up against. The Football Association now has ambitious targets to grow the girls� game, but on 5 December 1921 the FA met at its headquarters in London and announced a ban on the women�s game, stating that

�the game of football is quite unsuitable for females and ought not to be encouraged.�

Before that, there were about 150 women�s football clubs, attracting 45,000 fans to their games. We have to wonder whether the FA was motivated by the fact that the women�s game was taking fans away from the men�s.

I think that if women had been asked about this before the ban, they would have said there was a bright future for the women�s game. There certainly is now, because since the ban was reversed in 1971 it has gone from strength to strength, and I commend the FA for the work that it has done to improve access and opportunities for women and girls. Tomorrow, to celebrate International Women�s Day, I shall be joining pupils at Bewley primary school, also in Billingham, to watch a training session and a football match run by the Hartlepool United Community Sports Foundation. The �Let Girls Play Biggest Ever Football Session� sends the strong message to girls growing up today that they can look forward to the same success and achievements in our national game as boys.

Let me end by saying that it is incredibly inspiring for me to work with such brave, talented, dedicated and hard-working women in Parliament, including everyone who is speaking in today�s debate. Our women Members are wonderful role models.

Antisocial Behaviour and Illegal Bikes

Chris McDonald Excerpts

Wednesday 5th March 2025 Westminster Hall

[Luke Taylor (Sutton and Cheam) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Murrison. I thank the hon. Member for Tipton and Wednesbury (Antonia Bance) for bringing this important debate to Westminster Hall today. Everyone deserves to feel safe in their own home and on their own streets, but for far too many in the UK, that is simply not the reality.

It is pertinent to begin by considering just how widespread the problem of crime is in our country, and how universal the concern that police forces are not being given the resources they need to clamp down on it is. Every single day, 6,000 cases are closed by the police across England and Wales with no suspect identified. Only 6% of reported crimes result in a charge. Three in four burglaries and car thefts remain unsolved. This is not just a failure; it is a crisis, and the British people are right to expect us to do something about it.

The previous Conservative Government made a disastrous decision when they slashed the number of police community support officers. We have lost more than 4,500 since 2015. That reckless move created a vacuum where crime could thrive completely unchecked in our communities. In London alone, the number of PCSOs in the Met fell from 4,247 in 2008 to only 1,215 in 2023. That was an astonishing cut in capability, losing almost three in four officers, from an average of around 56 in each London constituency in 2008 to only 16 in 2023.

I stood here a few weeks ago and outlined the need for a public health approach to knife crime—a strategy underpinned by a return to good old-fashioned community policing. The argument I used then—not just more bobbies, but more beats—is equally applicable to tackling antisocial behaviour more widely, including and especially in the case of illegal use of off-road vehicles. The legacy of the previous Government has left outer London boroughs understaffed and vulnerable. The few PCSOs we have left are stretched thin, often pulled away to cover the city centre, leaving our local neighbourhoods defenceless against this kind of criminal activity. Such activity does something more nefarious than just instil a heartbreaking lack of security in communities; it actively undermines the sense not just of safety, but of comfort. We should be able to relax and trust that our neighbourhoods are and will remain good places to live. Perhaps more fundamentally, when someone sees a young person speeding down the street on a modified scooter, loitering around in intimidating groups, snatching phones, waiting for drug dealers, or even harassing passers-by, it cannot surprise us that they lose some fundamental faith in the system and feel that something is rotten in our country. I am sure that many of us in this place have been that person themselves, witnessing first hand in our constituencies vehicle abandonment, drug use or utter disrespect for fellow citizens.

This is not just a problem in rural areas. Off-road vehicles and the wider problem of antisocial behaviour plague us even in communities such as mine in the suburbs of London. In Sutton, I have witnessed the use of Sur-Ron dirt bikes travelling at speed on our largely pedestrianised high street. Policing Sutton high street is already a complex task. Stretching almost 1,500 metres, it is one of the longest high streets around. Some of these bikes are legal, but most are not. All of them are motorised, high-powered and capable of evading police capture, helping them to commit not just disruption but crime.

Sutton’s Liberal Democrat-run council has worked incredibly hard to rejuvenate the high street, and we are making great progress, as part of our vision of a high street fit for the future of Sutton. To finish the job, we need our great local police to get the resource they need to return to proper community policing. Having great shops, cafés and community spaces is fantastic, but all this great work will be undermined if the people in places just like Sutton all around the country are worried about antisocial behaviour.

[Chris McDonald (Stockton North) (Lab)]

The hon. Member makes a really interesting point. I was reflecting on my own constituency, where, from leafy Thorpe Thewles to the infinity bridge in the centre of town, we have this issue with off-road bikes as well. Does the hon. Member agree that no community around the country is immune from this scourge?

[Luke Taylor]

I completely agree. It is about the feeling of powerlessness, as a resident—as a citizen—just standing on the high street and seeing these things whizz past, not being able to do anything about it, and knowing that that person could be long gone by the time the police are able to respond.

It is clear, from all the words spoken around this hall today, that the Government must urgently restore proper community policing. To do this, we must get more officers out on the streets, funded partially by scrapping the costly police and crime commissioner experiment and investing the savings directly into frontline policing. We must also, as I have said, reverse the disastrous cuts to PCSOs and to safer neighbourhood team officer numbers.

On the specific point about the illegal use of off-road vehicles, I know that many forces have made some great initial efforts, from increasing patrols in hotspots, to using drones—as we have heard from the hon. Members for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell) and for Stoke-on-Trent North (David Williams)—to the use of trackable forensic sprays, but we need more.

I hope the Government will bring forward effective measures on this issue in the Crime and Policing Bill—I look forward to scrutinising it in greater detail on Second Reading next week—but it is also important that everyone in this place urges forces to feel confident in using the powers that are already available to them, despite the flaws with the legislation that have been commented on already.

Oral Answers to Questions

Chris McDonald Excerpts

Monday 25th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Dan Jarvis]

The shadow Home Secretary has raised an important issue. Yes, we agree with Jonathan Hall; he is absolutely right. Our overriding priority will always be to ensure that the victims of crime get justice, and we will look at how best that can be achieved.

[Chris McDonald (Stockton North) (Lab)]

4. What steps her Department is taking to help tackle shoplifting and violence against shop workers.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Policing, Fire and Crime Prevention (Dame Diana Johnson)]

In the last year of the previous Government, shop theft reached a record high, and we saw intolerable levels of abuse against shop workers, leaving people fearful of going to work. This Government will not stand by as these crimes devastate our high streets and town centres. That is why we are committed to rebuilding neighbourhood policing, scrapping the £200 limit, which has let thieves steal below the level with impunity, and introducing a new, stand-alone offence of assaulting a retail worker.

[Chris McDonald]

Our shop workers will be putting in some long, hard shifts in the coming weeks to help us to get ready for Christmas, but a report from the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers has said that their risk of being the victims of assault in the workplace has doubled in the last year. Will my right hon. Friend join me in commending USDAW’s Freedom from Fear campaign and affirm that the Government’s commitment to removing the immunity from certain types of shoplifting introduced by the Conservative Government will proceed at pace?

[Dame Diana Johnson]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for highlighting USDAW’s findings and its tireless campaigning alongside the Co-op for the new stand-alone offence of assaulting a retail worker, which we will be proud to introduce in the forthcoming crime and policing Bill alongside the scrapping of the £200 limit. I take this opportunity to recognise the commitment of Cleveland’s police and crime commissioner, Matt Storey, in tackling retail crime. I look forward to working with all police and crime commissioners to tackle this scourge on our communities.