Marie Tidball
Main Page: Marie Tidball (Labour - Penistone and Stocksbridge)Department Debates - View all Marie Tidball's debates with the Home Office
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Jess Brown-Fuller
I appreciate the hon. Member’s remarks. She is right that this is not a new issue; it has been going on for many years. We are now seeing the effect in every constituency.
Dr Marie Tidball (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Lab)
The hon. Lady is making an impassioned speech. On the point about cuts to community policing under Conservative and coalition Governments, they are having a direct effect on my constituents. Jane, who lives in Ecclesfield, recently told me of a terrifying experience when multiple electric bikes sped past her on the pavement as she was crossing the road. She told me they were going as fast as cars, with speed limiters disabled. She said that if she had set foot on the pavement a second earlier, she would have been injured or potentially lost her life. Does the hon. Lady agree it is vital to roll out the 13,000 neighbourhood officers by the end of this Parliament, which the Government are working towards, to ensure that the dangerous use of e-bikes is properly tackled, including in my constituency?
Jess Brown-Fuller
I thank the hon. Member for getting on the record how important it is to have visible community policing. That needs to happen as quickly as possible so that the example she gave of her constituent and the fear she must have felt in that moment are addressed or alleviated by knowing that there is a police officer they can contact who understands the local area.
I also recognise that crimes are becoming more complicated. Evidence can come in many forms, with the rise of things such as Ring doorbells, CCTV and the use of WhatsApp chats being part of an evidence base. Models for dealing with the administrative burden differ from police force to police force.
We also have a real challenge with reporting. My local police force makes operational day-to-day decisions entirely predicated on the reporting data, yet I have called a number of times to speak to the police about an incident that is being widely discussed online only to be told that they have no such record of any incident ever occurring. I recognise the frustration that constituents voice to me that if they report, nothing happens anyway—but police forces are now so reliant on data that I cannot impress enough on people how important it is to report crime or antisocial behaviour when they witness it so that the police have an accurate record of where the hotspots are.