Youth Crime and Antisocial Behaviour

Tom Hunt Excerpts

Wednesday 12th January 2022 Westminster Hall

[Tom Hunt (Ipswich) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson. It is surprising to be called so early in the debate. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton South (Matt Vickers) for sponsoring this debate, which is of relevance to many right hon. and hon. Members in this place.

Sadly, Ipswich has been at the heart of much crime and antisocial behaviour, some incredibly serious, and some seemingly less serious but perhaps connected to the most serious crime. We have had some tragic incidents in Ipswich over the last few years. Tavis Spencer-Aitkens was brutally murdered three years ago outside his father’s home, as a result of county lines and gang violence in Ipswich. Richard Day, an Ipswich man, was killed in the town centre in tragic circumstances.

There are some things we can do that some may say involve us getting tougher with crime, particularly when it comes to sentencing, to make sure that those who commit the most serious crimes are appropriately punished. From time to time Members will see me speaking to that. But it is not just about having a tough approach to sentencing. We also need to spend some time thinking about the lives that a lot of these individuals lead, to put ourselves in their shoes and to imagine that we are them, and that we are in a school where we are not successful, perhaps because we have learning disabilities—we know that the proportion of those in prison with learning disabilities is incredibly high.

If an individual does not feel like a success at school because they are not getting the success that they need, their needs are not being met, and they go back home and potentially there are problems with their home life, and there is nothing to do in their local area—no club for them to join, and they cannot get a sense of belonging from anywhere—the brutal reality is that, for some, joining a gang does give them that sense of belonging. The way to tackle that is to give them a positive sense of belonging. If we put ourselves in their shoes, we want to have the positive pulls and less of the negative pulls.

What I actually want to talk about today is the seemingly less serious antisocial behaviour. We say “less serious”, but in the minds of many of my constituents it is very serious. I lose count of the number of times that I talk to constituents—long-term Ipswich residents who have lived in Ipswich their whole life—who are critical of the town centre. Often I think they can be unfairly critical of the town centre, because we have some fantastic businesses in the town centre that work incredibly hard to make it an attractive destination. Most of the residents’ concerns are to do with antisocial behaviour and not feeling safe in the town centre.

If we are to have a conversation about regenerating our town centre, by all means let us engage in a debate about business rates reform, town deals and levelling-up funds, but we also need to have a conversation about crime and the fear of crime, because if that is deterring people—my constituents—from going into the town centre to spend money, we need to deal with that as well.

I want to touch now on an issue on which not everyone will agree, which is to do with large groups of individuals—more often than not young men—who congregate in and around the town centre, more often than not drinking alcohol, often leaving litter afterwards, and acting in an incredibly antisocial way. Constituents get in contact because they, or often their daughters, have been on the receiving end of inappropriate comments and have been made to feel intimidated while going about their business. That is simply unacceptable.

I often talk to the police and ask, “What opportunity is there to disperse these groups?”, because I think that should be part of the police’s remit, and they often say, “Unless they are clearly breaking the law and it is really obvious, there is nothing we can do.” I would personally like to see the police empowered to play their role in making our public spaces safe, secure environments in which the law-abiding majority feel safe, and that they want to go to.

There is an element here of tolerance, which is important, but I think we should be intolerant of antisocial behaviour. I do not care who it is who is forming in large groups, acting in an antisocial way, making people feel uncomfortable; I do not care where they are from. If their behaviour is not acceptable, it needs to be communicated to them.

There is a number of things that we can do, and I have touched on one of them, which is the police having more of a remit to disperse groups of young men who are having a detrimental impact on the town centre in Ipswich. We also need fair police funding in Ipswich. We know that Suffolk is one of the most unfairly funded police authorities in the country, so we need a commitment to review the national police funding formula as soon as possible. I must stop going on and draw my comments to a close. Thank you for indulging me, Mr Robertson, and allowing me to go over the time limit.