Antisocial Behaviour and Off-road Bikes

Navendu Mishra Excerpts

Tuesday 11th July 2023 Westminster Hall

[Navendu Mishra (Stockport) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Pritchard. I congratulate the hon. Member for Stockton South (Matt Vickers) on securing the debate. People who are less familiar with Stockport often confuse it with Stockton, so it is interesting to be in this debate and to thank the hon. Member for securing it.

Moving on to more serious matters, I think the hon. Gentleman mentioned he has 264 more police officers on the street recently. Is the Minister aware of how many we have lost since 2010, when the austerity agenda came in? The Government have cut the grant to my local force, Greater Manchester police, by £215 million since 2010. As a direct result, we have 2,000 fewer police officers on our streets, and 1,000 fewer support officers. I am grateful to everyone at Greater Manchester police for the difficult job they do in challenging circumstances. I also want to highlight the important job done by police support officers.

My office receives a large amount of correspondence about antisocial behaviour and illegal off-road bikes. The issue seems more pronounced in the summer months. I have often seen and reported illegal off-road bikes in my constituency to the police. They cause a lot of problems for residents. People who live on their own, are elderly or have health or mobility issues feel quite threatened in their own homes, due to antisocial behaviour and illegal off-road bikes. It is sad to say that my office receives a lot of letters, emails and phone calls—the figure for the last few weeks is around 250 pieces of correspondence about antisocial behaviour, and around 40 about illegal off-road bikes. I meet the police regularly to get updates, and I hold regular resident meetings to talk about these matters and learn the fundamental issues from residents.

It is all well and good for the Government to talk about what they are going to do, but they have significantly cut police funding in the last 13 years—although the solution cannot just be more police on the street; there has to be a well-rounded solution.

[Peter Gibson]

I am interested in the point the hon. Gentleman is making, but does he acknowledge that we now have more officers in our police forces nationwide than ever before?

[Navendu Mishra]

I thank the hon. Member for his intervention. He is making an important point, but I wonder whether he has compared the rise in police officers with the rise in population, and the complexity of crime. It is not just about more men and women in police uniforms on the street; it is also about the type of work they do.

I have been in the constituency with officers who tell me that they have to do more and more in less and less time. The types of crime being committed can be extremely complex and time-consuming. A few months ago, an officer told me about the impact of the workload on her mental health. We have to be realistic about the nature of crime, the amount and complexity of crime, and the understaffing. All those issues have to be addressed. It might be fair to say that there are more police officers now than ever, but the population has also gone up, and the nature and complexity of crime have also changed.

[Alexander Stafford]

We are talking about the complexity of crime. Off-road bikes, antisocial behaviour and auto-crime are complex crimes. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that we need bespoke solutions to deal with that? In South Yorkshire, we have an off-road bike team that does an amazing job, but there is only a handful of them doing that. Does he agree that some of those extra officers need to go into more off-road bike teams, with their own quad bikes, to tackle the people who are riding their own bikes? We need to have the right officers doing the right jobs to deal with this particular type of crime.

[Navendu Mishra]

Absolutely. The hon. Gentleman makes a fair point. We have a dedicated team in Greater Manchester police that deals with illegal off-road bike crime. I wish there were more officers on that team, of course. We have had several issues with Greater Manchester police over the last few years. I cannot comment on South Yorkshire police; I am not an expert on South Yorkshire.

The force, under new leadership in the last couple of years, has done a lot of good work. As I said earlier, I want to thank officers in Greater Manchester police, but the reality is that they are still underfunded and could do a lot more. It seems to me that the Government do not have that on their list of priorities. Living in one’s own home and being threatened by antisocial behaviour and illegal off-road bikes, with people wearing full face coverings, might be low intensity, but it can be serious for people.

I will make a couple of concluding points. There are high levels of antisocial behaviour in Stockport and across Britain. My local council has seen a 30% cut to its settlement funding. I do not think we would have seen such high levels of crime if the local council funding had not been cut and if Greater Manchester police’s funding—police funding in general—had not been cut. The solution cannot just be talking about putting more and more police officers on the street. We have to talk about youth clubs and what we offer these young people. We have to talk about support services and all those issues.

Finally, more generally in the north-west, between 2015 and 2022 there was a 41% fall in the number of neighbourhood police. The figures are staggering. I hope the Minister will address these important issues, particularly the complexity of the problem and the workload for police officers. We have seen crime go up, but prosecutions, cautions and community penalties have all gone down. That is a fact. Too often, when people report crimes or antisocial behaviour, they feel that absolutely nothing is done. That seems to be what many people feel, not just in Stockport but across Greater Manchester and England. It has to be addressed.