Antisocial Behaviour and Off-road Bikes

Judith Cummins Excerpts

Thursday 26th May 2022 Westminster Hall

[Judith Cummins (Bradford South) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Fovargue. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Grahame Morris) on securing this important debate, as this problem stretches right across the country and the four nations of the UK.

I recently introduced a ten-minute rule Bill to try to address the problem of off-road vehicles—specifically that of quad bikes—and antisocial behaviour. While quads have an important and legitimate use in agriculture and related areas, their careless, reckless and often unsafe use on our streets is a menace. My constituents, quite frankly, have had enough.

Beyond the contributions here today, a number of stakeholders have identified the issue as a massive problem, including my own West Yorkshire Police, the College of Policing, Brake, and the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety. Likewise, the National Farmers Union sees it as a particular problem and estimates that some 1,100 quad bikes are stolen from farms each year, costing farmers upwards of £3 million. If just a fraction of those end up on public roads, that means hundreds of new illegal quads running rampant on our streets and paths.

Just one antisocial quad rider ripping through a neighbourhood will disturb hundreds and hundreds of residents. That constant noise causes distress to residents and undermines public confidence in our police over a perceived lack of action on it, as mentioned by my hon. Friend in his speech. However, most seriously, they are a risk to other road users, pedestrians, and to the drivers themselves. Only last year, in Bradford, a man was killed when his quad bike veered and collided with another vehicle. The drivers are often not wearing helmets to protect their lives but balaclavas to protect their identities.

My Bill would have required quad bike riders on public highways to wear helmets, created a registration system for all quad bikes, and directly tackled the antisocial element of these vehicles being in the wrong hands. In Northern Ireland, wearing a helmet is compulsory for all quad bike riders on public highways, but that is not the case in the rest of the United Kingdom. The argument is self-evident: without a helmet, when the worst happens, the results are catastrophic. A quad user is twice as likely as someone in a car to get into an accident in the first place, and is 10 times more likely to be seriously injured or killed.

This is neither a local nor a party political problem, but it highlights the gaps in our current legislation that have allowed this problem to manifest and torment communities right across the country. However, those gaps can be very easily addressed. For instance, the installation of immobilisers is not a legal requirement for quad bikes despite being a requirement for all cars since 1998. The device provides an additional layer of security and, by making immobilisers a requirement, we can make theft harder and reduce the number of quads getting on to our streets.

Again, a simple neatening-up of legislation can make a huge difference to people right across the land. Once a stolen vehicle has been seized, police must link the quad bike being used antisocially to an owner and an address. That can take hundreds of hours of police time—piecing together official reports from members of the public, scouring community websites, looking for intelligence on social media, or reviewing CCTV from businesses, such as petrol stations, for that single frame showing the rider’s face—all to make a strong enough case to act. Not only is that labour-intensive, but, should any link in that chain break, the police can do very little.

We could extend the registration scheme for licensed road-legal quads to cover all quad bikes, including those allowed for off-road use only, to establish a clear link and line of ownership right from point of sale. That would help police in their enquiries when investigating reports and would mean that, once seized, stolen quads could be more easily returned to their rightful owners.

We need to stop seeing these vehicles as toys. If we continue to let this type of vehicle slip through the cracks in current legislation, we will fail to protect legitimate owners from needless theft, residents dealing with chronic noise, and all road users and pedestrians, who will remain at unnecessary risk, and all of this increases antisocial behaviour on our streets.

It is time we brought in measures to provide consistency, to protect road users and legitimate owners of quads, and to stop the blight of the dangerous and antisocial use of quads on our streets. I hope the Minister will recognise that this is a serious and widespread issue, and that gaps exist in the current legislation, and that he will support the call of my hon. Friend the Member for Easington for further action in this area.

--- Later in debate ---

[Rachel Maclean]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his point, but I can assure him that I have met Joy Allen myself, not on this issue, but on other issues. I am always happy to meet police and crime commissioners, and I meet a number of them regularly. I would be happy to take specific representations from Joy Allen or from the hon. Gentleman’s chief constable on these specific matters. However, as he knows, we keep all our legislation under continuous review. If he will allow me, I will discuss that broader point a bit further.

The police, local authorities and other local agencies have a range of flexible tools and powers under the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014. It is an issue with a particularly local dimension and the Act was designed to take account of that. It is for local areas to decide how best to deploy those powers, depending on the specific circumstances. They are best placed to understand what is driving the behaviour in question and the impact it is having, and to determine the most appropriate response. Importantly, the 2014 Act contains measures designed to give victims and communities a say in the way complaints about antisocial behaviour are dealt with. The community trigger gives victims of persistent antisocial behaviour the ability to demand a formal case review. I am happy to provide more details about that if the hon. Gentleman wishes, but his local policing partners are fully aware of it.

As the hon. Gentleman mentioned, the statutory guidance for police operational frontline officers is regularly updated, and it has been reviewed again. We have not heard the calls he referred to for widespread changes to the law, but of course we keep these matters under review. We recognise the critical role of local policing and wider partnerships within community groups. That is why, as part of the police and crime commissioners review, we are seeking to improve the effectiveness of the community safety framework, which includes the community safety partnerships.

We are continually looking at whether the tools, powers and frameworks are fit for purpose. As the hon. Gentleman knows, we will not hesitate to act. We have introduced significant legislation to allow policing to tackle the most serious threats to our communities, including the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022. We will do a similar thing through the Public Order Bill, the Economic Crime (Transparency and Enforcement) Act 2022 and a number of other measures, including the Domestic Abuse Act 2021—the hon. Member for Croydon Central referred to violence against women and girls. I want to draw the House’s attention to the Government’s record of legislating when there is a need to keep people, our streets and our communities safe.

In addition to the antisocial behaviour powers, the police have the power under section 59 of the Police Reform Act 2002, which the hon. Member for Easington referred to, to seize vehicles, including off-road bikes, being used in an antisocial manner. That can be the result of using a vehicle in a careless or inconsiderate manner, or causing alarm, distress or annoyance to members of the public. The enforcement of road traffic law and the deployment of resources is the responsibility of individual chief officers, taking into account local problems and demands.

[Judith Cummins]

Is the Minister confident that the police have the power to seize and destroy illegal off-road quad bikes, rather than seize them and eventually recirculate them back into the system through selling them off?

[Rachel Maclean]

I thank the hon. Lady for her challenge. I am always happy to listen to specific challenges or requests from policing partners. She raises an issue outside the direct scope of my ministerial portfolio, but if she writes to me on these issues, we will look at whether there is a need to change those powers.

I would like to mention a piece of work that we are doing to address an issue that the hon. Lady raised. She talked about insurance, quad bikes and GPS trackers. We know that insurance policies that replace equipment like-for-like with no questions asked encourage a cycle of theft and disincentivise owners from protecting their property. That is why the Minister for Crime and Policing, my right hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse), wrote to manufacturers of agricultural and construction machinery in February, encouraging them to commit to do more to increase security. In the Home Office, we are supporting the National Police Chiefs’ Council lead for agricultural theft in ongoing discussions with manufacturers of quad bikes and the insurance industry. There is work going on in this space, and we are always happy to speak to hon. Members about it.

The Home Office announced this year the fourth round of the safer streets fund. For the first time, antisocial behaviour in its various forms is one of the primary crime and issue types being targeted. The hon. Member for Easington will be aware that his constituency has benefited from a successful bid for £444,234 in round 2 of the safer streets fund. That funding was provided to the Durham PCC to carry out a variety of crime prevention measures, including installing windows, internal lights, doors and a number of other local security measures to improve the safety of communities. I hope he has seen that that has had a good, practical impact. I have seen that in my area and many other areas, and I know that it makes a real difference to those communities. We will invest £50 million in safer streets funding all over the country every year for the next three years to give local organisations the resources they need to tackle crime and antisocial behaviour. Our beating crime plan is working—it is delivering results. Communities are safer, and official statistics show that a person is less likely to have their car stolen or their house broken into.

I thank hon. Members for their contributions to today’s debate. As I said at the start, we recognise the damage and distress caused by antisocial behaviour, especially that caused by off-road biking, and we are determined to drive it down wherever and whenever it surfaces. It is not acceptable for people—or businesses, as the hon. Member for Easington pointed out—to have to suffer as a result of others’ actions. We will continue to support the police and ensure that they have the tools they need to enforce road traffic legislation, including in relation to the antisocial misuse of off-road bikes. I hope I have provided some reassurance that we are committed to tackling these issues head-on.