Antisocial Behaviour and Off-road Bikes

Sarah Jones Excerpts

Tuesday 11th July 2023 Westminster Hall

[Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr Pritchard; it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. I will probably not take all the time that we have—you might be pleased by that.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Stockton South (Matt Vickers) on securing this important debate. I thought that he spoke a lot of sense. We have been here before, talking about this issue. He asked the Government to get a grip of the problem in his speech, which the Minister who is now present, the right hon. Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp), missed. I am sure that the Minister will respond to all the points that hon. Members made.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stockport (Navendu Mishra) is worried about the antisocial behaviour that will arise in the summer months, and the hon. Member for Darlington (Peter Gibson) raised similar issues. My hon. Friend the Member for Batley and Spen (Kim Leadbeater) is so active in her community that she had an event last week on this issue and is having one next week, which shows her commitment to her constituents. My hon. Friend the Member for West Lancashire (Ashley Dalton) gave a harrowing story of how people feel when antisocial behaviour is rife, and how they think that they cannot report it because there will be reprisals. Such things are often completely hidden because those crimes never get to the point of the police being involved and are therefore not covered by the statistics.

In both this Chamber and the main Chamber, Ministers have described antisocial behaviour as low level, and the Government have not taken the issue seriously to any degree for a long time. It was only after Labour Front Benchers put forward tough antisocial behaviour plans earlier this year that the Government published their underwhelming and unambitious strategy, with lead responsibility transferred from the Home Office to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities.

We know there is huge underreporting of antisocial behaviour, but the latest stats are awful. There were 1 million incidents of antisocial behaviour last year—more than 2,700 every single day—but that is just the tip of the iceberg. We know that criminal damage to a building other than a dwelling has risen by 20%, and “arson not endangering life” is up by 21%. Over a third of people say they have personally experienced or witnessed antisocial behaviour in their local area, and 72%—nearly three quarters of the population—think that crime has gone up in the past few years.

There is a big problem with antisocial behaviour statistics, because the Government do not do proper data collection. The freedom of information requests that I have submitted show huge variety across the country in how antisocial behaviour is reported and dealt with, and data on the use of new powers is not centrally collected. The Government could choose to address that if they wanted to, but they do not, so will the Minister look again at how antisocial behaviour is recorded? Will he recognise the impact of antisocial behaviour?

Our colleagues have been debating the Victims and Prisoners Bill in Committee over the last couple of weeks, and one of the amendments put forward by Labour Front Benchers was designed to treat victims of antisocial behaviour as victims in law. The Government voted against that proposal, which is a real shame, because until we recognise the impact of antisocial behaviour and that it involves victims too, we will not start to get serious about dealing with the problem.

People across the country raise the issue of off-road bikes, which has a pernicious impact on communities. The vehicles are loud and driven at great speed, causing great danger to other people and to those riding them. They spray mud and dirt, upset communities and ruin green spaces. It is a problem in the north-east, which I visited with Joy Allen and Kim McGuinness, Labour’s excellent police and crime commissioners there. There are also real problems with stolen bikes, and the police are concerned that not enough is being done to help them attack that crime. It appears that off-road bikes are easy to steal, and police tell me their frustrations about the fact that claims on off-road bikes are paid out even if the key is in the ignition. It is quite a niche, technical issue, but if people can leave the key in the ignition and get paid the insurance, it is quite easy for people to steal the bikes, which seems to happen in a lot of areas.

We have seen examples of good work. Simon Foster, the West Midlands police and crime commissioner, has funded three additional off-road bikes for the police—they now have six—and he is increasing the number of trained off-road officers in Northumbria. Kim McGuinness has had great success in clamping down on stolen motorbikes, including by using overhead drones.

[Kim Leadbeater]

In Batley and Spen, police officers have received the off-road bike training that they need to chase perpetrators, but I was informed recently that officers are now being told that if we want to get more of them trained, they will have to pay for their own licences, which seems wrong. I wonder whether the Minister could look into that and get back to us.

[Sarah Jones]

I thank my hon. Friend for her helpful intervention. I am sure the Minister will address that in his speech.

If the people are good enough to put their trust in us, the next Labour Government will put 13,000 extra neighbourhood police and PCSOs on our streets as part of our neighbourhood policing guarantee.

[Chris Philp]

I hear this 13,000 number a lot. Will the hon. Lady clarify whether that is a redesignation of 13,000 existing police officers, or new police officers in addition to those currently employed?

[Sarah Jones]

I am sure that the Minister could read our press releases, which explain where the funding will come from, but there will be 3,000 new police officers, 3,000 from the uplift, and the rest will be PCSOs and specials. But the point of our policy—it will not just be about neighbourhood policing—is that we need to have police on our streets, where people can see them. Given that half of all our PCSOs across the country and large numbers of police staff have been cut, officers who should be in our neighbourhoods are now answering phones, dealing with back-office functions and not doing the things that we need them to do.

[Peter Gibson]

I am all in favour of extra police on the streets, and I welcome the 168 extra officers we have in County Durham, but our Labour police and crime commissioner has closed the custody suite in Darlington, thereby stockpiling millions of pounds and starving the force of officers we could have had in previous years, and in effect turning our officers into taxi drivers to take people to a brand new £20 million custody suite in the centre of a gigantic county. That is a Labour decision in my county.

[Sarah Jones]

I understand where the hon. Gentleman is coming from. No one wants anything to close. Indeed, it is a great shame that nearly 700 police stations have been closed under this Government. What does that do to a community? Sixty were closed by the previous Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, when he was Mayor of London. Extraordinary figures.

Labour will crack down on repeat offenders with our new respect orders. We will introduce new town centre patrols and a mandatory antisocial lead for every neighbourhood. We will bring in fixed-penalty cleaning notices and tough penalties for fly-tippers. We will establish clean-up squads in which offenders will clear up the litter, fly-tipping and vandalism that they have caused.

I do not want to go on too long. I ask the Minister to go back to his colleagues about not including antisocial victims in the Bill. Will he look again at recording the data on antisocial behaviour, because the picture is hard to see? What are his views on off-road bikes and does he think we should be going further in helping the police to tackle that problem? Does he support Labour’s new respect orders? And does he support our policy to put more police in our neighbourhoods and on our streets.

Antisocial behaviour is a difficult thing to measure. Our job as politicians is not to find a stat that can prove our point, but to try to make people’s lives better. It is undoubtedly the case that many people’s lives are blighted by antisocial behaviour, and it is undoubtedly the case that we can do more. I hope that the Minister responds in that frame.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Philp]

What the hon. Lady is saying is that there is limitation in the police recorded crime figures. That is why the crime survey is considered the authoritative source of data. It does not rely on the public reporting a particular offence; it is essentially a public opinion poll on an enormous scale. The methodology has been the same over many years, which is why the crime survey figures are considered the most reliable.

I was going on to say that even though those ASB figures are going down, whether measured by the crime survey or by police recorded crime, this is a serious issue, as the hon. Lady and Government Members have said. People feel that more needs to be done and that there is too much ASB, and the Government agree with that assessment. That is why, just a few weeks ago, the Government launched their antisocial behaviour action plan, which included £160 million of new additional funding.

Among other things, that extra funding pays for antisocial behaviour hotspot patrols, which will target areas of particular antisocial behaviour. Those hotspots could be in town centres, but they could also be in areas where there is quad biking or trail biking going on. That is being piloted in 10 force areas. I think Lancashire is one of those. I was in Chorley, in Mr Speaker’s constituency, last week, out and about with the very first ASB hotspot patrol in Lancashire. There are going to be 14 other hotspot patrols in Lancashire as it rolls out, as well as in 10 other force areas. In April of next year, every single police force in the country—all 43 of them—will have ASB hotpot patrols funded with over £1 million per force.

We are also funding immediate justice, where those people caught perpetrating antisocial behaviour, including on quad bikes and trail bikes, will within 48 hours be made to do some kind of restorative activity—it could be cleaning graffiti or cleaning up the streets—in branded, high-vis jackets, to make clear to the public and the perpetrators that there are consequences when people commit ASB. Again, there are 10 pilot forces, and by April next year every single police force in the country will have about £1 million each to deliver immediate justice.

The plan has a lot of other elements. It strengthens the provisions in the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014. There will also be a statutory instrument shortly to ban nitrous oxide, which is a driver of ASB and a serious matter.

[Sarah Jones]

Out of interest, where has the consultation on nitrous oxide got to? The Minister said that the Government are banning it, but have they gone through the process of consultation?

[Chris Philp]

There are a couple of stages. The first was to consult the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs. We commissioned it back in the autumn and it reported in March. It actually advised us not to ban nitrous oxide, but, unusually, we decided to ban it anyway. It is about the fourth time a Government have disregarded its advice. The last Labour Government disregarded it a couple of times, and this Government have disregarded it a couple of times because we thought it was that serious. In a Westminster Hall debate a few months ago, both Conservative and Labour Members raised concerns about nitrous oxide being a driver of antisocial behaviour. It is genuinely the case that that Westminster Hall debate prompted us to get this done. I know that sometimes these debates are not hugely well attended, but they do lead to change, and that is an example of a Westminster Hall debate actually leading to a substantive change.

Having decided to ban nitrous oxide, we consulted on how to go about doing that with the ACMD and others, and we spoke to various stakeholders. We will create some exemptions for legitimate commercial use, because it is genuinely used for catering purposes and semiconductor manufacture. Clearly, if it is being used for a legitimate commercial, technical or scientific purpose, possession is lawful, but personal consumption and supply for the purpose of commercial consumption will be banned under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971. There is a lot in that antisocial behaviour action plan. The Government are taking this seriously. There is money behind it, and we are determined to clamp down on it.

Off-road bikes, trail bikes and so on are obviously a scourge. We heard hon. Members earlier and more recently talk about that. The police already have powers to deal with this, particularly under section 59 of the Police Reform Act 2002, which confers a power to seize off-road bikes and vehicles if they are used in an antisocial manner. The definition of an antisocial manner is quite broad, but it could include, for example, using the vehicle in a careless and inconsiderate manner contrary to the Road Traffic Act 1988 or in a manner that causes alarm, distress or annoyance to members of the public.