Anti-social Behaviour Awareness Week

Peter Gibson Excerpts

Wednesday 20th July 2022 Westminster Hall

[Chris Evans (Islwyn) (Lab/Co-op)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Redcar (Jacob Young) on securing an important debate.

This week marks a year since the end of all lockdown restrictions. For most people who had been consigned to staying at home away from loved ones, it was a most welcome development. For the first time in what felt like eternity, people were able to gather, catch up with friends and reacquaint themselves with normal life. However, for some people, the ending of covid-19 restrictions has brought only misery, with a dramatic rise in reports of antisocial behaviour in my inbox. From across my constituency, I have received reports of graffiti, damage to rugby pitches, off-road biking, drinking, drug taking and threatening behaviour.

As we have moved into the summer months, things have got worse, not better. A few weeks ago, I held a meeting with market traders, shop owners, local councillors and the police in Blackwood in my constituency. I also attended a meeting in Newbridge, where I was told that antisocial behaviour was leaving people fearful for their safety. In both meetings, constituents were reluctant to report that behaviour, simply because of the amount of time they spent waiting on the phone having rung 101.

Antisocial behaviour accounted for one fifth of all crimes reported in May this year in my constituency, but I worry that that is not the full picture. Antisocial behaviour can often lie in a difficult place between a non-emergency crime and a time sensitive one. Many people are mindful not to place undue pressure on 999 lines, but are frustrated at being unable to quickly report antisocial behaviour.

A few weeks ago, I spoke in an Adjournment debate about the importance of having quick response times for 101 calls when illegal off-road biking is reported, as often perpetrators speed away before people can even make the call. I heard what the hon. Member for Redcar said about antisocial behaviour. Very often, we can be partisan on the issue, but I was pleased that the Policing Minister agreed to meet with me and several colleagues from across the House to discuss ways to combat off-road biking. It is an issue that affects anybody with a patch of green grass in their constituency and it is important to have a joined-up approach in how we tackle it.

[Peter Gibson (Darlington) (Con)]

I want to point out to the hon. Gentleman, as someone representing an urban constituency, that off-road bikes cause a problem on our streets and roads. It is not necessarily a requirement to have a patch of grass.

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[Peter Gibson (Darlington) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Sharma. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Redcar (Jacob Young) for securing the debate. It is a great pleasure to see my hon. Friend the Minister in her place to respond to the debate. My hon. Friend the Member for Redcar knows, as I do, that antisocial behaviour and the fear of it is of great concern to our constituents. It is like a cancer in our society that imprisons people in their homes, leading to them fearing venturing out, and causes part of our community to be perceived as a no-go area. That cannot be right in a civilised society.

I want to concentrate on a problem specific to Darlington: off-road bikes. From previous speeches, it seems that off-road bikes are a perennial problem across the country. Off-road and quad bikes are the vehicles of choice for those in my community who want to tear around our estates and parks, creating noise pollution, posing an intimidating danger to pedestrians and making life grim for those who live nearby. Parents are fearful of the danger to their children. Pedestrians are fearful of being knocked over, and the all-pervading drone of the engines make parts of our community inhospitable. We must do more to rid our communities of this problem.

I praise Durham Constabulary’s Operation Endurance, which is focused on tackling this scourge and, I am pleased to say, has had an appreciable impact. Since February, section 59 warning signs have been erected to notify offenders of the new powers. Anyone seen riding an off-road bike, quad or 4x4 in Darlington will have their vehicle seized straightaway by Durham Constabulary. That has had an immediate effect. By 15 February, 24 fixed penalty notices, three speeding tickets and 18 barring notices had been issued. Three illegal quads and one illegal off-road bike had been seized, while two stolen mopeds were also recovered. Furthermore, one vehicle was seized and the driver was arrested for drug driving, while a further driver was reported for careless driving. These actions are working, removing the ability of offenders to offend and acting as a deterrent by demonstrating real consequences to those involved. Durham Constabulary, Darlington Borough Council and others are working closely to tackle the problem.

[Paul Howell]

On working together, one thing I see in Ferryhill, part of my Sedgefield constituency, is groups of young schoolchildren coming together as what are called ambassadors. They reach out to the community and raise issues. One of the big issues they have been raising lately is antisocial behaviour and the fact that low-levels of it are affecting Ferryhill town centre and the way that children are going from the primary school to the senior school. It is wonderful to see these sorts of community-led things starting to engage with the process. As the hon. Member knows, my constituency surrounds his.

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[Peter Gibson]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend and constituent for his valuable intervention extolling the virtues of working together. I would like to draw the attention of the hon. Member for Islwyn (Chris Evans) to the proposal to bring forward an all-party parliamentary group on this issue. I encourage him to speak with his colleague the hon. Member for Bradford South (Judith Cummins), who I have had extensive discussions on this particular topic with.

As the MP for Darlington, I have continued to share the powerful messaging from Durham Constabulary and Darlington Borough Council to ensure that everyone reports these incidents to the 101 service. I could say much more about the Labour police and crime commissioner’s ability to improve response times on that service in County Durham, but I will not. It is vital that local communities play their part in tackling this scourge if enforcement is to be successful. I repeat my message that every sight and sound of off-road bikes should be reported, so that our police can gather the intelligence they need to eliminate this problem.

The problem, as we have heard, is not limited to Darlington. I would ask the Minister to respond to some simple, practical and sensible suggestions on how to tackle it. Compulsory insurance for off-road bikes and quad bikes would dissuade the casual user from illegal use of the bikes. Compulsory registration of off-road bikes would make the identification of these vehicles much easier for law enforcement. Mandating manufacturers to install immobilisers to these vehicles would also help to reduce theft and misuse by unauthorised riders. These suggestions have been raised in discussion with the Minister’s predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse), and I do believe that the time has come for Home Office Ministers and Department for Transport Ministers to work more closely on a package of measures to target this issue.

One further point on off-road bikes is the question of what happens after the vehicle has been seized. Currently, the police recoup their recovery and storage charges for seized vehicles by auctioning them off. This leads to a ridiculous merry-go-round of offenders buying back the very same vehicles the police have seized. Our police forces need a ringfenced pot of money to enable them to pay the recovery and storage charges, crush these vehicles and get them off our streets. There are many other types of antisocial behaviour, but the essence of today’s debate seems to have concentrated on off-road bikes, which are a scourge on all our communities.

[Margaret Ferrier]

Another issue I have seen in my constituency is graffiti. It upsets residents, who take a lot of pride in their community. Cambuslang Community Council has taken a great initiative in brightening up Cambuslang with some beautiful murals. Does the hon. Member think that cleaner, nicer surroundings that people can take pride in can deter graffiti, or is it something we will always see happening?

[Peter Gibson]

The hon. Member raises an important point. I think we can summarise this as the “broken window” theory. We all want to live in good, clean and smart communities. Graffiti is a symbol of decline in our urban environment. I think we should continue to double down on addressing it.

Darlington also faces illegal and unacceptable fly-tipping in our alleyways by fly-by-night operators, who will rock up in a Transit van or a flat-bed truck and take household rubbish away for a tenner, avoiding the inconvenience of contacting the council or taking a trip to the tip.

[Paul Howell]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Peter Gibson]

I will give way to my hon. Friend one last time.

[Paul Howell]

I thank my hon. Friend for his generosity. One of the biggest areas affected by the scourge of fly-tipping are the farms that surround Darlington. People take their rubbish and just dump it in the middle of a farm. It can be very serious for that farmer. It can block his access, destroy his crops and all sorts. I would encourage my hon. Friend to reference the rural, as well as urban, situation.

[Peter Gibson]

As my hon. Friend well knows, I have very little rurality in my constituency. My job is to represent the people of Darlington. As a constituent of mine, he knows the problems that Street Scene in Darlington faces in cleaning up our streets, but I commend his efforts in highlighting rural crime and the scourge on our farms. I have spent time on our streets with Street Scene—Darlington Borough Council’s environmental services department—and seen at first hand the impact that this issue has on local residents and on the town as a whole.

Since 2019, the now Conservative-led Darlington Borough Council has been delivering for local people, and I want to take this opportunity to praise it for all of its hard work. The new administration has also been taking action on fly-tipping, listening to the concerns of residents and working hard to tackle this scourge, with increased prosecutions of those found to be fly-tipping, and with Street Scene responding more speedily to incidents and taking a more proactive approach to rooting out those responsible.

While our Government, council and constabularies are tackling antisocial behaviour, more could be done through cross-Government working to tackle some of these issues, and with ringfenced pots of money to support the steps taken. I know that the Minister is a sound and sensible woman of integrity, and that she will have listened closely to the debate. I would like to invite her to Darlington, to see at first hand the problems, actions and further solutions to our first-hand experience of antisocial behaviour.

[Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Sharma. I congratulate the hon. Member for Redcar (Jacob Young) on securing this important debate, which is timely and very pressing. My first job after university was working for the former Member for Redcar, Mo Mowlam, so I know his area a bit, and some of the challenges that he talked about were similarly challenging back then.

Anti-Social Behaviour Awareness Week is a good initiative. There are lots of groups that I could pay tribute to, but I will highlight ASB Help and Resolve in particular —two really good organisations that work year-round to tackle this blight on our communities. Hon. Members who made contributions have spoken about the lack of a co-ordinated approach to tackling antisocial behaviour. The hon. Member for Redcar said that it was one of the most pressing issues in his inbox, and I think that is probably the same for all Members of Parliament, whether their constituencies are rural, urban or a mix of both. His call to return to a common-sense policing approach to antisocial behaviour is the right one.

My hon. Friend the Member for Islwyn (Chris Evans) talked about all of the issues with off-road biking, as did others, and that is something that particularly affects people across the country. I did not know that he had written two books, but I do now—I will make sure that I read them. The hon. Member for Darlington (Peter Gibson) talked about people feeling imprisoned in their homes, and had some good suggestions on off-road biking, which have been mentioned in this place many times before. There is a package of measures on off-road biking, and various Bills have been suggested by Members across the House, so there is agreement there and I hope the Minister is listening to those suggestions.

We are all aware of the real misery that antisocial behaviour causes. Before Christmas, in the autumn, I made trips across the country, in my role as shadow Policing Minister, to try to understand the scale and diversity of antisocial behaviour: how it affects different communities, the impact it has on them and what is being done about it. Those were eye-opening trips. Although each area was unique, everywhere I went it was clear that antisocial behaviour is not low-level crime; it is massively underestimated and massively under-prioritised in the way that policing is done in this country. It ruins lives, makes people feel unsafe and worried, and creates division in communities.

[Peter Gibson]

I would welcome the hon. Lady’s suggestions and ideas as to what she, her party or any of us could do to encourage and improve the reporting of antisocial behaviour.

[Sarah Jones]

That is an important question. Several things are linked to the reporting. First, people do not believe that anything will be done. Sadly, that is partly because twice as many people as 10 years ago now perceive that they never see a police officer on the streets. People do not feel that it is worth reporting, because they do not think they will get a response.

Secondly, at a national level, the Government do not collect data on antisocial behaviour. There was a debate in this place a few months ago where a Conservative Member made the case for the Government to record antisocial behaviour nationally, because it is not part of the metric so everybody reports and records it differently. Everybody has different approaches—some people use some interventions and some people use others—and there is no consistency across the country. In answer to the hon. Member’s question, people are loth to report it because they think that nothing will be done, and they do not see it as something that is prioritised at a national level.

[Peter Gibson]

I am truly enlightened by the hon. Lady’s response to my intervention, and truly shocked that we do not have national statistics and that there is not a level playing field across the country to assess and deal with that. I wonder whether the Minister, when she sums up, can address that problem and perhaps suggest what more we can do to drive forward that change, from which we would all benefit.

[Sarah Jones]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. The Minister has obviously been in her position for only a short time, so we will all be gentle with her today, but there is a good conversation to be had about how we measure these things, which I will come to.

It is a hidden epidemic. Any constituent will say that antisocial behaviour is an important issue, but the stats do not bear that out. Polling by YouGov found that a third of the UK public had experienced an increase in antisocial behaviour in their area, with just 1% believing that the problem had decreased a lot.

Crime and its causes are complicated and we do not have time to go into all of them now. Antisocial behaviour tends to be localised—whether it is noise, fly-tipping or graffiti—and there is a correlation between antisocial behaviour hotspots and deprivation. The rolling away of some parts of public services has had an impact on the support that is given to people with mental health issues and on youth services, which we have talked about many times, and that has had a knock-on impact on the prevalence of antisocial behaviour. Where antisocial behaviour is rife, other crime follows. We know that it can be the starting point for real issues building up in communities.

Since the 2019 Government came to power, crime overall is up 18% and prosecutions are down 18%. Rates of arson are spiralling: incidents are up by 90,000 compared with 2019 but the charge rate is just 4.3%, which is down from 8.3% in 2015, and nearly 60% of investigations—more than 280,000 cases—are closed without a suspect being identified. Arson does huge damage to local communities. It ruins property, of course, and it ruins people’s sense of safety and pride in their community, so the vicious cycle continues. When I was in the north-east, there was a particular issue with arson that local people were very concerned about.

On the sense that nothing will be done if these issues are reported, that is sadly now the case when it comes to some crimes. Recent figures on car theft, for example, show that just one in 100 thefts of cars resulted in a charge. If someone’s car is stolen, and only one in 100 get a charge, the chances of them reporting antisocial behaviour and thinking that something could be done are quite low. Recent figures showed that in nearly half of neighbourhoods in the country, no burglaries had been solved by the police in the last three years at all, which is truly shocking and shames us, and speaks to some of the struggles that the police are having in doing the common-sense policing that we all want them to be doing.

In this context, the presence of neighbourhood police officers is very important. There are over 7,000 fewer neighbourhood officers on the frontline now than there were 12 years ago. There is only one neighbourhood officer for every 2,400 people in this country now, whereas 10 years ago there was one per 1,600 people. That does make a difference.

For the first time, the Government have introduced a new metric for measuring neighbourhood crime, which is a combination of four other crimes: vehicle-related theft, domestic burglary, theft from a person, and robbery of personal property. It is an interesting measure. The Government will say that neighbourhood crime has fallen in the last year, but the metric does not include any level of antisocial behaviour and it does not include bike theft, criminal damage or arson, so it is not a clear and complete picture of what neighbourhood crime is. I ask the Minister to look at that issue in her new role.

We know that a third of 999 calls are now about mental health emergencies and the police just cannot cope; they are responding to mental health issues and not to the crimes that they should be investigating. They spend significant time dealing with other crises in the community, and the impact of noise, graffiti, fly-tipping, drug dealing and vandalism is felt more and more acutely.

Good work is being done in patches, and I am sure that all of us would pay tribute to the police and crime commissioners who are working hard to make a difference. When I was in Northumbria, I saw the rural crime network with police and crime commissioner Kim McGuinness, which seemed to be working really effectively. When I was in Cardiff, I learned of a reduction in antisocial behaviour through the Step into Sport programme; my hon. Friend the Member for Islwyn mentioned the importance of sport earlier. In Merseyside, there is a youth diversion fund, which more than 6,500 young people engage with. These are pockets of good practice. Sadly, because the police simply do not have the resources to do what they want to do, they are only pockets and not the norm.

I hope that neighbourhood policing will be a real focus for the Minister. Last week, I had the pleasure of welcoming some police community support officers to Parliament to celebrate the 20 years since PCSOs were introduced. That was under the last Labour Government and Lord Blunkett, who was there to talk to them. Those PCSOs’ insights were really interesting: they knew their patch inside out, they had built up relationships with local people, and they were able to intervene to de-escalate and tackle some of the issues of antisocial behaviour in a really effective way. Some of them told me stories of how they had dealt with kids who had been antisocial who then, later in life, came up to them in the street and told them how proud they were of what they had become, in part because they had a good relationship with a PCSO.

However, the number of PCSOs has been cut by nearly half since 2010. The peculiar thing about that is that it has not been a Government policy; it has just happened because of cuts to services. It was not deliberate. I ask the Minister to look at PCSOs and consider whether we need to restore their numbers. I think that we do, because they are the eyes and ears of the police.

As I have said, hard data is not collected properly. I have made a series of freedom of information requests across the country about how forces deal with antisocial behaviour. They all do it in different ways. The issue needs gripping at the centre, with some good measurements in place.

[Peter Gibson]

The hon. Lady makes an important point about the value of our PCSOs and the work they do in our community. In Darlington, we have seen 136 new officers recruited to Durham constabulary, and some of those new recruits to our police force were directly recruited from among existing PCSOs. The skills, talents and abilities that those PCSOs learned in their job have not been lost to public service, as those PCSOs have gone on to work in the police.

[Sarah Jones]

That is a really interesting point. The same has happened with specials, but there is then a shortage of PCSOs and specials, because they go up to become officers. Alongside that, we have lost the experience of all the police who have been cut over the last 10 years. Although we have the new recruits coming in, some of whom are PCSOs and specials, the experience of local communities and the knowledge that the police have built up over many years has gone, and it will take some time to bring that back.

Labour has made commitments to put police back into neighbourhoods through police hubs. That way, there will be a space in every community where people can interact with the police, but with the infrastructure around them of local authorities, enforcement officers and youth services. Such neighbourhood prevention teams, as it were, could work collectively to try to crack down on some of the antisocial behaviour and its causes in the community. We think that would have a big impact on presence, problem solving and focus on antisocial behaviour. That is really needed, as are some of the measures hon. Members have mentioned, such as changing legislation around off-road biking and similar issues.

We also think that there should be a recruitment drive for special constables. I was with the south Wales special constables last night, who have won a Queen’s award for volunteering. They give up their time for free and it is quite extraordinary how proud they are of the work that they do. Their numbers have also fallen by about 50% over the last 10 years, and it will be interesting to see whether the Minister has any thoughts yet on specials and whether those numbers need to increase.

There is much to be done. We talk about antisocial behaviour often in this place, particularly in Westminster Hall, where Members often feel the need to come and talk about it because it is such an issue. Sadly, we do not get the response from Government that we would like. I ask the Minister to think about PCSOs and specials, about measurements of antisocial behaviour and about how we grip the issue nationally and really understand it.

I also ask Conservative Members to think about these issues when they are considering who to vote for to be the next Prime Minister. The right hon. Member for Richmond (Yorks) (Rishi Sunak) wrote in The Daily Telegraph yesterday that he would ringfence child exploitation teams from any future policing cuts. Does that mean he is planning future policing cuts? That is a question that hon. Members should ask him and others, because it is an important issue for the next Prime Minister.

The Home Office has a key leadership role to play, and I ask the Minister to make sure that is happening. Criminals cannot be given free rein. When low-level antisocial behaviour is not tackled, it leads to greater and more significant crime—drug running and all the other issues that have been mentioned. That is not good enough for our communities; they need more support and reassurance. I hope the Minister will take these issues seriously.

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[Amanda Solloway]

The reasons why antisocial behaviour occurs are incredibly complex. The hon. Lady will know that I am a great advocate for mental health and how we support mental health issues in the community. That is why we continue to keep the issue under review through the Home Office-chaired antisocial behaviour strategic board, which brings together a range of partners and representatives from key agencies and other Departments.

The Government are providing significant funding to drive efforts to tackle antisocial behaviour. An important scheme in this space is the safer streets fund, which was established to help local areas put in place measures designed to prevent crime and improve safety. Earlier rounds of the fund had a secondary focus on tackling antisocial behaviour through initiatives such as improved street lighting, increased CCTV and training. We are now taking the emphasis on this problem a step further, with antisocial behaviour one of the primary crime and issue types to be targeted in the fourth and fifth rounds of the fund.

In addition, crime and antisocial behaviour form part of the prospectus for the £4.8 billion levelling-up fund. The Government are also funding diversionary interventions to help safeguard young people away from crime. We have invested £200 million over 10 years in the Youth Endowment Fund, a charity whose core mission is to fund interventions to identify what works in reducing and preventing serious violence. It was a great pleasure to listen to the hon. Member for Islwyn (Chris Evans) talk about how interventions such as boxing and sport can help in these situations. I, too, will have a look at the book—I will be very pleased to look at it.

Most Members mentioned off-road biking. We know that the inappropriate use of off-road bikes can have a significant impact on individuals and communities. I listened very carefully to the suggestions by my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Peter Gibson), and I will look at those more fully. Reckless use of these vehicles can cause people to feel intimidated and fearful. Enforcement of road traffic law and decisions about how to deploy available resources are rightly the responsibility of chief officers.

A suitably trained police driver may undertake a pursuit of a motorcyclist. The decision whether to undertake a pursuit is an operational one, taking account of risk and proportionality in each situation. It is worth noting, however, that the police have the power under section 59 of the Police Reform Act 2002 to seize vehicles, including off-road bikes, being used in an antisocial manner.

[Peter Gibson]

I am grateful to the Minister for highlighting section 59 notices, which, as she will have heard in my speech, are having an appreciable impact in Darlington. The specific problem my local force has is the cost of disposing of the vehicle, to stop the merry-go-round of seizing the vehicle and auctioning it to cover the cost of disposal, which ends up with the perpetrator getting their vehicle back and continuing to perpetrate the problem.

[Amanda Solloway]

I would appreciate a longer conversation and would, therefore, love to take up the offer of visiting my hon. Friend in Darlington. The police can also use the powers in the 2014 Act to deal with antisocial behaviour involving vehicles.

On the point about motorcycle noise outside schools, the Department for Transport is trialling noise camera technology to understand whether it can be used to automatically detect when vehicles are excessively noisy. The objective of that is to provide local authorities and police with effective enforcement tools capable of capturing sufficient evidence to support successful prosecutions of offenders. That will further enable local areas to enforce against vehicles that have been modified or driven in a way to create excessive noise.

In closing, I thank all hon. Members for their contributions to the debate. It is clear from speaking to constituents and others just how important this issue is. I echo what my hon. Friend the Member for Redcar said about how important it is to report these crimes. Antisocial behaviour matters a great deal to constituents and, therefore, to us as their representatives. It strikes at the heart of how decent, law-abiding citizens want their neighbourhoods and communities to feel. We will not tolerate a situation where people have to suffer because of the actions of a selfish minority. Antisocial behaviour is a blight. We are determined to tackle it wherever, whenever and however it rears its ugly head.