Antisocial Behaviour

Dawn Butler Excerpts

Tuesday 10th November 2026 Westminster Hall

[Ayoub Khan]

I thank the right hon. Member for his intervention. He is eloquent and persuasive, as always, and I wholeheartedly agree with him. The police are forced to prioritise more serious crime because of the lack of resources. Ultimately, if we do not resource the agencies properly with a proper strategic plan, matters will get worse.

I hope the Minister can tell us today that the petition will not be necessary, that the legislation that has already been passed will be enacted, and that city councils up and down this country will be given the powers they need, but I fear that that is unlikely.

To conclude, perhaps most of all we need to change the way we treat antisocial behaviour, and appreciate that it is not low-level crime. It is destructive not in the same way as a violent or serious crime, but in the way it makes people and places feel unsafe. In many cases, it does not count as a criminal offence, but let there be no doubt: these are crimes against the community that drain the morale of our residents. I sincerely ask the Minister to commit to delivering Resolve’s six recommendations, and perhaps to meeting Resolve and me so that we can discuss how to properly address the scourge of antisocial behaviour once and for all and ensure that victims’ voices can be heard. People deserve the right to feel safe in the places they call home. It is the Government’s responsibility to make that happen.

[Dawn Butler (in the Chair)]

I remind Members that they should bob if they wish to be called in the debate.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Dawn Butler (in the Chair)]

Given the number of Members who wish to speak, I will impose a two-minute time limit. I call Brian Leishman.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jim Dickson (Dartford) (Lab)]

On car cruising, which is being fuelled by TikTok and other social media platforms, we have cars running fast up and down main roads in my constituency, creating noise nuisance and huge danger for residents. The police are on to this issue, but they say they need preventive measures. I have asked Kent county council whether it will introduce speed cameras, but it has said no. Does the hon. Lady agree that councils need to step up?

[Dawn Butler (in the Chair)]

Order. Interventions need to be short and snappy.

[Alison Bennett]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman.

I want to focus my remarks on town centres, and the need to have civic pride and facilities that people want to visit and enjoy being in. The story of the Martlets shopping centre redevelopment in Burgess Hill is too long to cover in the next minute and a half. However, despite the best endeavours of successive councils over many years, there are derelict buildings there. On Saturday afternoon, when I walked across the town centre with one of my children, she pointed out that there were smashed windows. Then, when we walked back, she told me that one of the smashed windows was open. We looked up and could see masked youths in the shuttered building, which used to contain a little supermarket. That level of neglect for facilities is bad for communities, and it is bad for the people of Burgess Hill.

Burgess Hill has done everything it can to try to get its town centre redeveloped. However, the levelling-up bids failed under the last Government, and the town is not eligible for Pride in Place funding, as far as we can tell, so that money has not been forthcoming. We are hopeful that a joint venture bringing together public and private sector money may actually get the town centre redevelopment off the ground but, as it stands, the morale of people who live in Burgess Hill is low.

The town council has done what it can by bringing the Park Centre back into use, providing youth facilities. The Burgess Hill Creative Community has taken up an empty unit in the Martlets shopping centre, where people can come together and do a variety of good, creative projects. People want the town centre to be one that works. Obviously, the policing presence is really important, but if we do not get the skeleton right—the civic pride and buildings that work and that people love and want to go to—we will attract the wrong kind of people: a handful of people who want to make life a misery for the vast majority of law-abiding citizens, who are there for their town and to support their community.

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[Lee Anderson (Ashfield) (Reform)]

Why have you got an intervention written down?

[Dawn Butler (in the Chair)]

Order.

[Bell Ribeiro-Addy]

I thank the hon. Member for his intervention. He is absolutely right: we do have to show them that these interventions are working, not least because it adds to the data on how much policing is needed in the area. If people do not report these things, and do not feel like there are results, nothing can really move forward.

I welcome the Government’s commitment to neighbourhood policing. The Government say they met their first target in January this year, but my constituents are not seeing or feeling that police presence on their streets in a meaningful way. For example, when the corner shop next door to my constituency office was robbed at knifepoint, our officers were probably being deployed to arrest pensioners holding up signs in central London. I would like my constituents to feel the effect of the proper community policing pledged by this Government, with the delivery of real neighbourhood policing officers sped up in places like Brixton, where the problems are long standing and well documented.

I would also like to see my local council, Lambeth, properly funded to tackle the addiction and homelessness crisis we face. We must get the root of the matter. We need to see a holistic approach to antisocial behaviour, because we simply cannot police our way out of this problem. I also truly believe that a difference can be made with a standing multi-agency group that brings together the police, the council, health services, housing and outreach teams, so that people are talking to each other and not working in silos—an issue I see time and again, with different bodies trying to tackle this problem, but no one talking to each other. That is not working, and is only exacerbating my constituents’ concerns about not being properly listened to and being made to feel that they are going round the same roundabouts.

Clapham and Brixton Hill should be a place where everyone feels safe. My constituents are asking to be listened to and to see change and, as someone who has called the area my home for my entire life, so am I.