Antisocial Behaviour

Max Wilkinson Excerpts

Tuesday 10th November 2026 Westminster Hall

[Max Wilkinson (Cheltenham) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Butler.

I will start by reflecting on the comments of the hon. Member for Ashfield (Lee Anderson), who suggested that we should make more people homeless in order to tackle antisocial behaviour. I suggest to him that homeless people may be more likely to engage in antisocial behaviour and annoy his constituents.

[Lee Anderson]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Max Wilkinson]

I will at the end of this point.

[Lee Anderson]

No you won’t.

[Max Wilkinson]

I will. The hon. Member also expressed his admiration for Singapore, where smoking in public is regarded as antisocial behaviour—I wonder whether his party leader might have views on that. Given the hon. Member’s own past conduct in Parliament—the behaviour that he engaged in with House of Commons staff—he might reflect that he might be out of pocket to the tune of several thousands of pounds if Singapore-style laws were introduced in the UK. I will now give way.

[Lee Anderson]

I thank the hon. Member for giving way. I am not worried about losing my job here; I have a GB News job that pays very handsomely. On his point about me trying to make people homeless, if there is a feral family living next door to me, my friends, my relatives or my constituents, I have absolutely no problem at all with kicking them out and letting other residents have a peaceful life.

[Max Wilkinson]

It is instructive that the hon. Member is boasting about his second job in this debate.

As Sir Mark Rowley told us last week, we have fewer police officers per head than France, Germany, Italy or Spain—in fact, fewer than most of Europe. In that context it is little wonder that people the length and breadth of the country repeatedly tell us their concerns about antisocial behaviour. Higher police visibility, facilitated by higher numbers, will clearly help us to fight antisocial behaviour.

The Office for National Statistics tells us that an estimated 41% of people experienced or witnessed antisocial behaviour in the year ending June 2026, up from 36% the previous year. All too often antisocial behaviour sucks the life out of our towns and city centres. In residential areas, too, it makes going about daily life a misery.

[Steve Darling (Torbay) (LD)]

In Torbay the town centres tend to be a focus for antisocial behaviour, often involving the drugs and alcohol challenges of street-attached people. Does my hon. Friend agree that we need to take a strong enforcement approach and, equally, to ensure that there is wraparound support for those who want to exit that world?

[Max Wilkinson]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. The answer is, of course, more community policing. After years of Conservative-led cuts to police numbers, people want visible, trusted local police officers who know their area and have the time and presence to prevent crime, not just to respond to it. For that to be effective, the police must be visible in the communities they serve.

Thanks to the decimation of proper community policing, we have seen a drastic decline in frontline police counters. In Bedfordshire the number of counters has reduced by 78%, in Surrey by 60%, in the west midlands by 58%, in West Yorkshire by 53% and in Greater London by 52%. That decline must be reversed by the installation of a police counter in every community across the country, as the Liberal Democrats have called for. They could be in community hubs such as libraries, shopping centres and town halls—convenient, accessible locations. That is how we will start to rebuild trust and improve police visibility in response to crime.

[Monica Harding]

I absolutely concur with my hon. Friend that we need more community policing and more visible policing. I have already made the point in the House that we need warranted officers on streets rather than at their desks or in call centres. Does he agree that the more the public report incidents of antisocial behaviour that they do not report at the moment, the more action we will get on it? Perhaps the Minister might think about how we can encourage the public to report the incidents they see.

[Max Wilkinson]

I commend my hon. Friend’s comments to the Minister.

Confusing legal frameworks make many instances of antisocial behaviour difficult to police. E-bikes, which have already been mentioned, are a common complaint in towns and city centres up and down the country, including in my constituency. Public concern is growing over the dangerous misuse of illegally modified high-speed e-bikes on pavements and in pedestrianised areas such as the High Street and the Promenade in Cheltenham. This is a particular concern to older people and parents with young children, but it can certainly alarm anyone—I speak from personal experience. It is antisocial behaviour in itself, but the suspicion is that these e-bikes are regularly used by drugs gangs and in county lines.

The legal framework for e-bikes is confusing, outdated and rarely enforced. As the hon. Member for Gillingham and Rainham (Naushabah Khan) mentioned, high-power conversion kits and illegal bikes are readily available online with almost no regulatory oversight. That would be a good starting point for Ministers wanting to introduce measures to tackle antisocial behaviour. We must tackle illegal e-bikes, including by giving police forces updated training to spot, intercept and confiscate them. Will Ministers look at how these proposals might tackle antisocial behaviour?

We must also recognise that a huge quantity of serious crime has moved online, as Sir Mark warned last week. The latest strategic assessment from the National Crime Agency warned that rapid technological change is the primary driver in serious organised crime, with the threat set to increase. That change is diverting resources away from frontline policing, producing poorer outcomes for victims of other crimes, including antisocial behaviour. A dedicated online crime agency would ensure that online crime was treated with the seriousness that it merits and would free up officers’ time to focus on neighbourhood crime, including antisocial behaviour.

That online crime agency would be funded by a new online crime levy on the big tech and artificial intelligence companies whose platforms enable the most serious crimes that Sir Mark warned about last week: child sexual abuse, fraud and money laundering. It would stop neighbourhood police being dragged off their streets to deal with those forms of online crime, which in many cases they are not trained to deal with. Just last week, Sir Mark warned that the police risk heading for failure if reforms do not empower officers to keep up with modern criminals operating online. Will Ministers consider that proposal, which the Lib Dems have set out before, to establish an online crime agency in order to improve community response on our streets?

The Government have made positive steps on some of these issues through their neighbourhood policing guarantee, but the proof will be in its delivery, especially given the upcoming police reform legislation. They must get those reforms right, with a proper focus on community policing, or they risk placing communities at greater risk and harming public confidence in the system. If the merging of forces means that officers become more distant from the communities they serve and less able to respond to local crimes, the Government will be making a serious mistake. Worryingly, the agenda being set by the Home Office seems to run counter to the devolution direction being set by the Prime Minister, particularly in respect of the number of boundaries that will be set and accountability to regional mayors. When will we find out how police reform fits in with the Prime Minister’s flagship agenda?