Birmingham Attacks and Extinction Rebellion Protests
Debate between Jacob Young and Kit Malthouse(4 years, 1 month ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Kit Malthouse
As I said earlier, during my time at City Hall, when police officer numbers were much higher, we faced the same challenge with knife crime, but managed to drive it down, making significant reductions. We hope that we can do the same thing across the whole country, including in the west midlands, but we need support and help from people such as the hon. Lady and others to do so.
Jacob Young (Redcar) (Con)
How many more ambulances need to be stopped by protesters before the police start arresting people who create illegal roadblocks?
Kit Malthouse
My hon. Friend is quite right that that is the unfortunate effect of some of those protests. As I said earlier, the Metropolitan police has made over 600 arrests now, with dozens made over the weekend. Hopefully that is having an impact on the numbers, but we all want XR to think about the practical consequences of their protests, in terms of not just what we in this House think, but the impact on their fellow citizens.