Anti-social Behaviour: East of England

David Taylor Excerpts

Tuesday 11th March 2025 Westminster Hall

[Jen Craft (Thurrock) (Lab)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Mr Twigg. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich North (Alice Macdonald) on bringing forward this important debate. Antisocial behaviour and disorder is a blight on our high streets and town centres, and I hear all too often from my constituents in Thurrock about behaviour that is making their lives a misery, forcing them to avoid problem areas and, in the worst cases, making them too afraid to leave their homes. Through experiences that have been shared with me, I see how crime perceived to be low level leads to people worrying about themselves and their children, and feeling unsafe in their community. These problems can all too often feel intractable.

At a street meeting that I recently held in west Thurrock, residents told me that their peaceful lives had been made consistently miserable by the menace of dirt bikes. One resident told me that the noise is unbearable, sometimes continuing for hours at a time. Those who work from home have their working hours consistently interrupted by the noise of dirt bikes.

[David Taylor (Hemel Hempstead) (Lab)]

There are many things about the Crime and Policing Bill that I welcome, but I particularly welcome the action that we are going to take on dirt bikes. I hope in the future that we also look at other types of vehicles, particularly those with modified exhausts. One of the problems that I often hear about from residents, and that I have come across many times myself, is boy racers at all hours of the day seemingly acting with impunity because the police and local councils often do not have the resources to act.

[Jen Craft]

My hon. Friend is right that powers introduced in the Crime and Policing Bill will go some way towards alleviating some of these problems. He raises a good point about how the noise itself is an issue which exacerbates people’s fear of this kind of antisocial behaviour, which makes some areas almost a no-go zone. That cannot be right. Another resident told me that when those bikes are out and about she is worried for her child’s safety. She approaches the distance between her house and the local park with fear, as she knows the bikes are being driven in an illegal and reckless manner. She worries that her child could eventually be hit by one of those drivers, having had a number of close shaves in the past.

I have held a number of coffee afternoons to bring residents together to discuss the issue of antisocial behaviour and crime in their neighbourhood. The problems I hear about are consistent, and ones that all Members in this Chamber will be familiar with—things like graffiti, disorderly behaviour, dirt bikes and fly-tipping. I know there are measures in the Crime and Policing Bill to give councils more powers to tackle fly-tipping. They are all things that add to the overall impression of an area that is run down and undesirable. Our area and places across the country deserve better than that.

My hon. Friend the Member for Norwich North spoke about her area having much to offer and great civic pride. Thurrock also has a lot to offer, but we find that too often communities are afraid to come together in that spirit because of the behaviour they see on their own doorstep. One of the things that comes up time and again is the broken link between communities and their local neighbourhood and community policing force. The refrain, which will again be familiar to most of us in the Chamber, is, “You just don’t see a police officer any more.”

The Government’s switch to pushing for community policing is the right move. It allows police officers to get to know the area, the pinch points and the issues that residents have. It offers visible reassurance to people who are afraid to leave their homes that there are police available, and that they are on their side. Quite often residents say, “I haven’t got the time to sit and call 111, or to file a report that goes into great detail about what I saw and when, but if I saw a police officer on the street, I would go up to them and say that I saw this behaviour, at this time, at this place.” That builds an intelligence-led policing narrative that can only be for the best.

That is why I welcome the Government’s move to neighbourhood and community policing. It is the kind of preventive work that stops problems becoming larger, that allows people to feel safe on their streets, and that ultimately allows for the kind of society that we all want to see and live in. Of course serious crimes must be given priority, but in this era of competing priorities, what plans do the Government have to make sure that police forces prioritise community policing, and recognise the importance of a visible police presence on the street and people having a named police officer for their area? How can we encourage police forces to follow through with that?

--- Later in debate ---

[David Taylor (Hemel Hempstead) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich North (Alice Macdonald) for securing this important debate.

I will start with a quick stocktake of my constituency and the region. I am immensely proud of my community, as I know everyone in this room is of their own, and I do not want to be accused of doing my town down in any way, but we undoubtedly have some important challenges with antisocial behaviour. In January 2024, we were the worst major town in Hertfordshire for antisocial behaviour, with more than 200 reported incidents. The town centre, which should be—and is—a great place to meet friends and loved ones and do some shopping, is now one of the most dangerous in the county. Dacorum has the highest number of vulnerable children at risk of exploitation by drug dealers and county lines in Hertfordshire. Indeed, we have a long-standing issue with drugs. I do not talk about this often, for obvious reasons, but even members of my own family have in the past been affected by drug addiction issues due to scumbag drug dealers peddling horrible drugs.

In Hemel Hempstead, the overall crime rate in 2023 was 95 crimes per 1,000 people. Damningly, between 2014 and 2024, the crime rate doubled. I am proud of my community, but we cannot allow the thugs to win. People often ask why we are in this mess, and it is impossible to ignore the indisputable fact that, in the time that the Conservatives were in power—14 years nationally and longer locally—local crime skyrocketed. They ignored antisocial behaviour, cut our police force by 20,000 officers nationally and took 60p out of every £1 from local authorities. Objectively, that is why we are where we are; this is their mess, and people in my patch are the ones who have to deal with it.

However, there is light at the end of the tunnel. I was delighted to speak last night on Second Reading of the Government’s Crime and Policing Bill, and to vote in favour of it. It is at the heart of our Government’s safer streets mission, and I want to briefly touch on some aspects of the Bill that will help to combat antisocial behaviour in my patch and in the region.

Clause 1 will provide the police, local authorities and other agencies with a new power to tackle antisocial behaviour: respect orders. Like a stuck record, I will once again suggest that Hemel Hempstead should be considered for a respect order pilot. I believe that the orders will make an incredible difference to the hard-working local police force.

Clause 4 will make life tougher for criminals and thugs by increasing the upper limit for fixed penalty notices from £100 to £500. We must make sure that victims are prioritised and criminals face the full force of the law. There must be enough of a sting that they think twice before behaving in this manner.

Part 3 of the Bill will address retail crime, as others have mentioned. I will not repeat what I said in the Chamber yesterday, except to highlight the need to ensure that we are not letting people wander into our shops and steal what they want with impunity.

Clause 14 will introduce a new crime of assaulting a retail worker. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for South West Norfolk (Terry Jermy) for highlighting this point and I agree with him. I also put on the record my thanks to both USDAW and the Co-operative party for their hard work and campaigning on these issues over many years. We saw during covid that retail workers are not just hard-working, outstanding members of our community, but essential to our very survival, and I welcome the fact that the Labour Government will reflect that in law.

Labour is taking seriously the blight of antisocial behaviour, but so too have our police. As I have said before, I have been out with bobbies on the beat through a ride-along scheme. If any Member of this House has not taken part in such a scheme, I recommend that they do so—indeed, many police forces allow individual citizens to do so—because it is an eye-opening demonstration of the tough challenges that our police face. They are true heroes of our community.

Thanks to local police in Hertfordshire, we have seen some progress in tackling the blight of antisocial behaviour, despite the resource pressures that they have faced. I thank them again for their service. The force’s Operation Clear Hold Build in the Grovehill area of my town and Operation Hotspot in the town centre have brought significant uplifts in patrols and prevention.

I also thank the Minister for her engagement. I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to meet her recently to discuss some of the specific issues in my constituency, including antisocial behaviour hotspots such as Hosking Court, Livingstone Walk, Swallowfields. For too long, people in Hemel Hempstead have been let down, but this Labour Government are showing leadership. I look forward to continuing to do all that I can locally to ensure that the national changes that we make are felt in my town.

Crime and Policing Bill

David Taylor Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 10th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[David Taylor (Hemel Hempstead) (Lab)]

Much within the Bill will bring significant positive changes to communities like mine in Hemel Hempstead, where crime and, in particular, antisocial behaviour continue to be a major issue. Under consecutive Conservative Governments, criminals got an easy ride. The Conservatives left a great mess, and this Bill helps to fix that.

I could speak at great length on many parts of the Bill, but I will focus on two that are almost always at the top of my postbag in Hemel Hempstead: antisocial behaviour and the current epidemic of shoplifting. I recently met a couple called Gary and Margaret—not their real names—whose case shocked me. For two years, Gary and Margaret have been harassed, including verbal abuse, trespassing and the damaging of their property, by an offender who lives on their street. The family feel unsafe and isolated, with the harassment worsening the mental health of their eight-year-old son, who suffers from severe anxiety and is too scared to play outside. They inform me that they have been in constant communication with the council and the police, but have faced rejection from the local council’s antisocial behaviour department, which stated that they would not intervene due to the low-level nature of the antisocial behaviour.

It is not just antisocial behaviour affecting people in Hemel Hempstead; we also face an epidemic of violence against retail staff, as other Members have mentioned. I met employees from the Co-op in Queens Square in Adeyfield, and I have also met people from the post office in the same square. I was grateful to those from the Co-op for the time they took to show me their store, including their CCTV room, but I was shocked by what I saw there: an entire table of CD after CD, each containing evidence of shoplifting in the store, with many people brazenly walking out of the shop, not even attempting to conceal their theft. What is more disturbing is what one of the store employees told me. A shoplifter had been caught, and the store had managed to get the police and the criminal justice system to take the case to court. That brave employee had been to court to testify against the shoplifter. Unfortunately, the case was thrown out and the perpetrator let off and able to walk free. Even more shockingly, the employee had to sit on the same bus home as the person she had just given evidence against.

Thankfully, provisions in the Bill will make a difference for that employee, for Gary and for others who have been the victims of crime and antisocial behaviour. First, clause 1 and respect orders will give the police and local authorities what they need. I have in the past asked for Hemel Hempstead to be considered for a respect order pilot, and I hope the Minister will forgive me for making another pitch for that today.

It disgusts me that hard-working people in Hemel Hempstead pay for their shopping while others can simply storm out without paying. It disgusts me that people in my constituency have to put up with antisocial behaviour on an almost daily basis, while the perpetrators walk away with impunity. I have been out with the police for ride-alongs, the purpose of which is to see at first hand the challenges that the police are facing. I have had meetings with Police Federation reps, so I am well aware of the extra equipment and support that they need. I will continue to do everything I can to support those brave police officers facing antisocial behaviour, and I am strongly in favour of this Bill, which I believe will give the police extra powers to do more to crack down on these yobs.

There is much more I would like to say, but much like our police force under George Osborne and Theresa May, I have had to subject my speech to brutal cuts, so I will finish there.

Respect Orders and Antisocial Behaviour

David Taylor Excerpts

Wednesday 27th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Dame Diana Johnson]

The definition that I gave earlier—causing harassment, alarm or distress—will be used when respect orders are applied for. I ought to say that civil injunctions will remain in place when it comes to housing, so those can be used. Respect orders will be only for adults; for young people, the youth injunction will still be available, and there are sanctions within that. There will be a range of ways that antisocial behaviour can be tackled, using either respect orders or the reformed civil injunctions.

[David Taylor (Hemel Hempstead) (Lab)]

Hemel Hempstead has some of the worst antisocial behaviour in our part of the county. We have hotspots such as Livingstone Walk, Hosking Court, Waveney and Swallowfields, where there are issues such as drug use, boy racers with modified exhausts, abandoned vehicles, shoplifting and drunken noise; I have seen the evidence of that while out on the streets with local police. Fortunately, Hemel police are carrying out a great pilot project in Grovehill to try to clear the area, rebuild relations and deal with the thugs there. Could the Policing Minister kindly outline how the new respect orders will help Hemel police to do that great work, and will she join me in paying tribute to them for the work that they do to clean up our streets?

[Dame Diana Johnson]

I will absolutely join my hon. Friend in paying tribute to the police and other partner agencies, such as councils and housing associations, for the work that they already do. There is a great deal of good work going on around the country, and we need to build on that and give the police and others the powers that they need to take the action that they want to take on antisocial behaviour, which has just grown and grown in recent times. I wonder whether my hon. Friend would like to add his constituency to the list of pilot areas.