Community Payback

Lee Anderson Excerpts

Tuesday 28th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Lee Anderson (Ashfield) (Con)]

It is absolutely ridiculous that the Labour party has brought this Opposition day debate, and then sent along four of its Back-Bench MPs. It is an absolute scandal. It is worth pointing out that, since I have been in this place, Labour has voted against every single measure to increase sentences for criminals such as murderers and rapists.

Labour Members really do have a cheek to talk about community payback, especially after my experience of Labour MPs and supporters calling for my head, and calling me some sort of right-wing fascist, when I had the temerity to suggest that criminals should go to work for a living, pay taxes and work hard. That was just before the election in 2019. I was working with residents on the Carsic council estate in Sutton-in-Ashfield, and they had had enough. They were having problems with antisocial behaviour, and with criminals who were making their life a complete misery. This was a handful of no-good villains who the council thought it was a good idea to put into flats and bungalows meant for pensioners, in order to try to integrate them with old-age pensioners, but it did not work. I did not think it was fair, so my suggestion was pretty simple: make these criminals go to work. There is a shortage of workers on our farms and in our agricultural industry in this country, so the answer is quite simple: do some graft, earn a wage and pay some taxes. That just might stop these people causing trouble by going out thieving and robbing people.

[Sarah Owen]

The hon. Member talks about hard graft. Does he think that making birthday cards and greeting cards is a suitable punishment for criminals?

[Lee Anderson]

No, I do not think that is a good way for criminals to do community payback. Of course it is not, but during the pandemic and in lockdown when people had to stop inside the house, we had to find something for them to do, so for that period of time I would say yes, get them to do some work, like making personal protective equipment. That was a great thing for them to do. We have not been living in normal times.

Imagine the outrage from Labour Members when I said all that stuff about people going to work. Going to work! The outrage! It was incredible. They said I wanted to open up gulags and forced labour camps, just because I was asking for people to go and pick vegetables. They said it was cruel to make people work on farms, yet they said it was not cruel for immigrant labour to come in and pick fruit and vegetables on farms. Do they just not like immigrants? Is that what it is? Because that is how it looks. It is not cruel for people to work hard, pay taxes and contribute to society. It is the right and decent thing to do in any civilised society.

We all know that the Labour party is trying to rebrand itself as the patriotic, low-tax party of law and order that is tough on illegal immigration. What a load of nonsense that is! Even Labour Members are laughing right now. It is ridiculous, isn’t it? They need to make their mind up, because the same MPs were saying, a while back, that we should not deport foreign criminals at Christmas time because it was cruel. I think it is a great Christmas present, deporting criminals. The people in Ashfield think it is brilliant. [Interruption.] I was in here when Labour Members said it, and it was absolute nonsense. They were absolutely out of touch with the decent, hard-working, tax-paying people in places such as Ashfield—[Interruption.] They can shake their heads all they want, but they are completely out of touch.

Labour Members have voted against every single measure to lock people up for longer. They should be ashamed of themselves. I know they think I am on a rant, and that I like picking on them, but I do not. I like to be sensible, calm and measured, and to put a proper argument across—[Interruption.] But there they are, chuntering away. This is great.

I hope that the Government will listen to some of my suggestions and take on board what I am saying, because criminals up and down the country are living rent-free in social housing, and every day they are making people’s lives a misery. It is true. I say again—I stick to my words—that these people do not deserve to be given free housing while we have decent people on the waiting list. They should work for a living.

Community payback is a great idea, and the Government are doing great things and investing millions of pounds in it—it is absolutely fantastic—but I hope they will look at doing something a bit more long term to sort this problem out. I will stick to my guns: as I have said before, we have a massive shortage of labour on farms in this country, but the good news is that we have a massive pool of habitual, bone idle, self-entitled criminals who are a drain on this great society of ours, so when the payback is finished, how about the Government—if they are listening to me—ensuring that these people are sentenced to 40 hours’ paid work a week for the rest of their life until they retire? Imagine that! It would send them into meltdown. That’s me done, Madam Deputy Speaker. Thank you very much.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sarah Owen]

I will not be retracting that. I said “effectively” legalised. When only 1.6% of reported rape cases are prosecuted, the crime is effectively legalised. It is a shameful statistic for a Minister.

[Lee Anderson]

On that point—

[Sarah Owen]

I have not finished.

It is a shameful statistic and it is shameful that rape victims are left without any justice. Although there is much political difference here, that is one statistic that we should all agree needs to be improved.

[Lee Anderson]

The hon. Lady is being very generous with her time. Does she realise that language such as that in this place strikes fear into the hearts of women in this country and encourages men who are thinking about doing these horrible crimes to go out and commit them? It is absolutely shocking. She should retract what she said.

[Sarah Owen]

When it comes to using moderate language, I think the hon. Member for Ashfield (Lee Anderson) might have to take some of his own advice. And when it comes to protecting women and giving them faith in our Crown Prosecution Service, in our Criminal Justice System and in our policing, that responsibility is on this Government, and for 12 years they have let victims down, so I will not be apologising for their mistakes.

This Government, as I have said, have the wrong priorities and seek only to divide our communities when our communities should be offered the hope that, as a society, we can be brought together to live safely and to see those who do not want to live by those laws adequately punished and rehabilitated.

After 12 years of Conservative Government—it may come as a shock to Conservative Members, but they have been in power for 12 years—we have seen record criminal case delays, police officers disappearing from our streets, courts sold off and a court backlog that cannot just be blamed on covid. Communities have no faith that the Criminal Justice System, for which the Government are responsible, is keeping their communities safe from crime. But it does not have to be this way.

We have all heard, from both sides of the House, many examples of how community payback can stop more serious reoffending, but judges have stopped handing it out because this soft-on-crime Conservative Government cannot be trusted to ensure that offenders pay back for their crimes. To be honest, when they look at the state of the Prime Minister, is it any wonder why this Government do not care if criminals get off scot-free?

To give Members an idea of the sheer scale of how let down victims feel, I can tell them that, last year, 1.3 million cases were dropped because victims just gave up. They did not have hope that the system would deliver for them, and that includes only the people who made a report. We can only guess at the number of unreported crimes where the victims did not have the faith that they would see justice. When will this Government stop treating victims as an after-thought?

I have spoken to people in Luton North who have been conned and defrauded of their money by bogus cowboy builders. Not only have their homes been wrecked in the process, but they have lost hard-earned savings. In one heartbreaking case, a pensioner lost pretty much everything, but they were told that it was a civil matter and that they would never get their money back. That may have been true, but the people who are conning our residents are criminals and they should pay for that, yet under this Government they do not.

We have seen reports from across the country of police being so understaffed that they no longer investigate burglaries, leaving victims to take matters into their own hands. Is that what the Government mean by community payback? One woman tracked down her stolen car only to be threatened with a crowbar. The BBC reported three other serious incidents where the community were left to fend for themselves under this Government.

A mother reported that her 12-year-old son had been sexually assaulted by a man in a pub toilet. She said that it took a week for the police to investigate, and officers then accidentally wiped the CCTV footage. A victim of domestic abuse was assaulted by an ex-partner in front of her children, aged two and four. She was told that no one could visit her until the following morning. The man returned later that evening. A stalking victim said that officers failed to attend her home despite repeated visits by her stalker, which included death threats.

These serious failings are not one-offs. Sadly, they are becoming the dangerous norm—if the Minister wants to listen. I am perfectly clear that this dangerous new norm is the fault of the Tory Government, and not the fault of the hard-working, dedicated police officers working with fewer resources and fewer colleagues to keep people safe. I recently visited Luton police station with my hon. Friend the Member for Luton South (Rachel Hopkins) whose constituency it is in. That followed a visit to the Bedfordshire Police headquarters in Kempston. We met Detective Superintendent Zara Brown and spent time listening to officers and police support workers tackling some of the toughest cases. Those teams covered rape and serious sexual assault, protecting vulnerable people and domestic abuse.

What struck me as I listened to the officers was not only how dedicated they were to each individual victim, but how frustrated they were on the victims’ behalf with the backlogs and the delays in getting them justice. Many in those teams have not seen significant pay rises and were regularly called in on their days off to attend in uniform to police extraordinary events in the region.

Most strikingly, that visit showed me, clear as day, without anyone saying a thing, the half-empty desks—not a covid measure, but because there were not enough police officers to fill them, and certainly not enough detectives. The failure for victims does not fall on hardworking and dedicated police officers and staff, but squarely on this Conservative Government, and that failure is being brutally felt in communities such as mine. The Conservatives’ version of community payback is one where the community pays repeatedly for this Government’s failure. That is not justice.

Labour knows that our communities need and deserve better than this. We will create neighbourhood prevention teams that will give our communities the tools and support to tackle the root causes of antisocial behaviour. We will put communities and victims at the heart of how offenders repay society and make sure justice is seen to be delivered locally and for good. Labour will put security at the heart of its contract with the British people.

The hon. Member for Ashfield talked about criminals living rent free, so I have one final question for Conservative Members: when will they get rid of the one living in No. 10?