Mohammad Yasin
Main Page: Mohammad Yasin (Labour - Bedford)Department Debates - View all Mohammad Yasin's debates with the Home Office
(1 month ago)
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Chris Philp
Cases of the kind that the hon. Lady describes would not have been in the scope of the contingency outlined in the letter of a week ago. The antisocial behaviour that she described is completely unacceptable. I am sure that many Members are parents and would want their own children to go to and from school safely. The Government have launched an antisocial action plan, one of the elements of which is a funded scheme for antisocial behaviour hotspot patrols. That started just a few weeks ago, so I would urge the hon. Lady to speak to her local police and crime commissioner—I think a newly elected one in Northumbria, if memory serves me correctly—and to ask that one of the funded hotspot patrols be set up in the vicinity of that school to try to tackle the issue that she described, because no parent should have to face that.
Mohammad Yasin (Bedford) (Lab)
Figures published last month showed that Bedfordshire police has the slowest response time to 999 calls, because of understaffing. Does the Minister realise how ridiculous it sounds to ask the police not to police and to arrest fewer people, because his Government have broken the justice system and are allowing criminals to get away scot-free?
Chris Philp
That is a completely inaccurate characterisation of the situation. The eight-day period provided for a contingency that was not required. I have read to the House an assurance from the relevant National Police Chiefs’ Council lead that arrests were not forgone or cancelled as a result of the contingency. More widely, as I have said, we have record police numbers and lower crime than 14 years ago, and I would have thought that we would all welcome that.