Antisocial Behaviour: Hull and the East Riding of Yorkshire

Victoria Atkins Excerpts

Tuesday 9th October 2018 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Victoria Atkins)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I congratulate the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy) on securing this debate about a matter that I know is of huge importance to her and her constituents—particularly those who are suffering in the way she so eloquently described. She made a wide-ranging speech, and I will try to respond to as many of her points as I can. I hope she understands that I do not have the details of those that concern other Departments immediately to hand, but I will ask the relevant Minister to write to her about any points to which I do not manage to respond.

Anyone who represents a constituency knows just how terrible antisocial behaviour can be. The hon. Lady will never hear me diminish its impact. Individual incidents sometimes have the most extraordinary effect on communities. So-called low-level behaviour may not seem that significant, but if it develops into a pattern of behaviour it becomes incredibly wearing for those who have to live with it day in, day out. Antisocial behaviour can be anything from people running amok, swearing at people or frightening residents to drunken and drug-related harassment, intimidating behaviour, and noisy and abusive neighbours. All those things can have a profound and debilitating effect on the people we were elected to serve.

That is why the Government gave the police, local authorities and local agencies a range of flexible powers to keep the public safe through the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014. We fully agree that antisocial behaviour is not just a policing issue, important though policing is in this context. Solutions must often be part of a holistic approach that draws in local authorities and other agencies. We expect those agencies to respond and use those powers flexibly to protect their communities from all types of antisocial behaviour. However, where antisocial behaviour tips over into far more serious offending that is clearly criminal—the hon. Lady will know that serious violence and other forms of criminal behaviour fall within my portfolio—we expect the police and others to use the full force of the law to bring people to justice through the criminal justice system.

The 2014 Act provides six flexible powers, which are designed to enable the police and local authorities to respond quickly to antisocial behaviour in their communities and stop it reoccurring. Those powers include court orders to stop the behaviour of the most antisocial people, powers to close premises that are a magnet for trouble, and powers to stop antisocial behaviour in public places. They also include measures such as civil injunctions, which are interesting because they do not just prohibit people from engaging in certain behaviour but can place positive requirements on perpetrators to address the underlying causes of their antisocial behaviour.

Sadly, there are themes that run through the backgrounds of many of the young people who fall into my portfolio. Domestic abuse is a particularly strong theme, and I am concentrating on protecting direct victims of domestic abuse and on the ramifications for young people who are vulnerable to being ensnared by criminal gangs of witnessing domestic abuse in the home and being desensitised to violence outside the home. The Government and I are looking at many themes to address the background factors that feature in the lives of many young people who behave in an antisocial or indeed criminal way.

Other types of order, such as community protection notices and criminal behaviour orders, are directed at the most harmful behaviour. Local authorities also have the power to impose public spaces protection orders to protect public spaces from antisocial behaviour and nuisance, and the police can use their dispersal power to direct any individual who engages in antisocial behaviour away from a particular place.

[Emma Hardy]

Those powers have been used effectively in Hull, but the Minister will recall—I have spoken about this previously—that they just move the problem somewhere else in the city. We can use only so many of those orders, and they just seem to make the problem appear somewhere else. It is like a game of whack-a-mole—we do not seem to be able to whack them all down at the same time. I was heartened to hear her mention looking at the causes of domestic violence. I wonder whether she will say a little about what we are doing to prevent antisocial behaviour from happening in the first place—not just to deal with it when we see it through criminal convictions, but to look at its causes and how we can stop them.

[Victoria Atkins]

I was about to come to that, so I apologise for incorporating my answer into my speech. We want to give people on the ground the ability to use those powers as they feel is appropriate in their local community. The hon. Lady will understand that the challenges in her inner-city area are very different from those in my area of Lincolnshire, which is just down the road from her area but is very rural. Although we have antisocial behaviour, I suspect it takes a different form from that in a city centre, given the local geography and so on.

The Government want to give local people the powers to respond in the most effective way in their local area. Indeed, in December last year we published refreshed guidance on the use of those powers by councils, police officers and so on—we understood that some councils were using PSPOs in particular in a way that was perhaps not intended by Parliament, so we refreshed the guidance to help local councillors. A couple of months ago I spoke to local councillors at the Local Government Association to help them with that.

The hon. Lady asked me about a community response. She will know that as part of the serious violence strategy we are pulling together across all Government Departments, along with local government colleagues, the Mayor of London, police and crime commissioners and Mayors across the country, to try to have a more joined-up approach to serious violence. That will have a beneficial effect on lower-level offending behaviour as well, because if we can help young people with issues at home, mental health issues and so on, as she described, that will have an impact on their behaviour generally. That is why I am delighted that not only are we helping the Vulcan Learning Centre, a local charity in Hull, through the knife crime community fund, which will help local children who are perhaps falling into crime. There is also a bigger, national effort through the early intervention fund for young people announced in the serious violence strategy as well as the endowment fund that the Home Secretary announced last week—£200 million that will be invested in long-term projects to help young people across the county. A great deal of work is going on.

The hon. Lady rightly mentioned concerns about children who are not in full-time education but are perhaps in alternative provision. The Government have commissioned a review by Edward Timpson, the former Care Minister, who has a great understanding on a personal and professional level of the issues facing looked-after children or those in alternative provision. He is looking at alternative provision through the schooling system to see what is working, what is not and what we need to improve. Again, through my work in other areas, I know that that can have an enormous impact on children’s behaviour and their ability to lead productive lives.

If I may, I will let the hon. Lady know about the ability of victims of antisocial behaviour, or someone acting on their behalf, including a Member of Parliament, to request a formal antisocial behaviour case review—I do not know whether she is aware of this—which is called a “community trigger.” I like talking about it, because colleagues should be aware of it and they can use it if requested by their constituents. It enables victims of antisocial behaviour to ensure that their voice is heard when they believe they have not had a satisfactory response to repeated complaints of antisocial behaviour, and it forces agencies to act. The relevant bodies in a local area must agree on and publish their case review procedures. Therefore, if she believes that the relevant agencies in her constituency have not acted on reports of antisocial behaviour in Hull and the East Riding, that is a possible solution for her constituents. I note that her police and crime commissioner cited tackling antisocial behaviour as a priority in his policing plan, so perhaps she can ask him what he is doing to fulfil that pledge to the electorate.

The hon. Lady mentioned the police station in Hessle. Again, that is a decision taken by the PCC, so I hope she will forgive me if I do not comment on it. She also mentioned funding, and I think she said that we “relish” austerity. We really do not. I am always careful not to revisit history in too much detail because, apart from anything else, we should be forward-looking, but the situation in 2010 was that as a country we had run out of money and we had to start to live within our means. That meant we had to take very serious, tough decisions on funding. She will know that the then Home Secretary—now the Prime Minister—insisted that police funding be protected from 2015 onwards, and that last year, as part of the preparations for the police funding formula exercise that happens at the end of every year, the Minister for Policing and the Fire Service spoke to every constabulary in the country to ask them what they needed. Through that process, with the help of PCCs, we are able to put a further £460 million into policing this year. I am pleased that that means an increase of £4 million for Humberside constabulary, and it has managed to add 153 officers to its cadre since March last year.

[Emma Hardy]

I am sure the Minister recognises, as everyone out there does, that the number of criminal incidents is increasing, and the cuts have not stopped yet. She talks about the Government giving with one hand, but they are surely taking with the other, because there is still another £14 million to £17 million of savings to be found in the next few years. That will result in job losses for our PCSOs, which will have an impact on antisocial behaviour. I am sure she recognises that.

[Victoria Atkins]

I invite the hon. Lady to speak to her PCC—she is not just entitled to do that; it is part of all our duties to hold our PCCs to account. As of March last year—the last figures I have available—her police and crime commissioner had reserves of £34.3 million. To put that in context, the reserves as a percentage of total cash funding for 2017-18 were 20%, which is 5% higher than the average for England and Wales. She could ask her PCC what he is doing with that money.

[Emma Hardy]

The Minister has been generous in giving way. In fact, I meet with the PCC regularly and talked to him about the reserves only last week. They are currently being used to try to increase the number of police officers we have, to mitigate the cuts seen since 2010. I am sure by next year the reserves will not be there any longer.

[Victoria Atkins]

That is a matter for the police and crime commissioner. We brought in police and crime commissioners in 2012 precisely to give a local person the power to hold the police and chief constable to account and to spend the police budget in ways they feel are priorities for their local electorate.

As I say, we are injecting more money into policing this year. The Home Secretary has very much listened to the chiefs and police and crime commissioners across the country. We know that policing is changing and that pressures on the police through different crime types are developing. Ten years ago, online child sexual exploitation did not feature, but now, sadly, as the Home Secretary laid out in his recent speech, it is an incredible pressure on policing.

I am conscious of the time, Mr Hollobone, and I do not know whether the hon. Lady wishes to sum up. If she does, I will sit down in a moment. Again, I invite her and colleagues around the House to speak to their local councils about innovative ideas on how to engage young people and help young people who are at risk of falling into trouble.

Yesterday, we had the first of the Home Office’s national programme of engagement events on the serious violence strategy here in London. We had a fantastic turn-out from councils across the capital, including the deputy Mayor for policing in London. I listened carefully to the chief executive of Islington Council, who gave some really interesting ideas on what it has done to protect youth services—what it is doing is really innovative. I urge all colleagues to engage in that conversation with their local councils, because there are some really innovative ideas.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

Order. I am afraid that the Minister has been badly advised by her officials. In a half-hour debate, I am afraid the Member in charge does not have the right of reply. This is now the second time I have been in this Chamber when the Minister has been badly advised. We are going to have to get some advice to Whitehall Departments that in a half-hour debate the Member in charge does not have the right of reply.

[Victoria Atkins]

Mr Hollobone, I feel honour-bound to say that it is my mistake. Please direct your understandable consternation towards me, not the officials. That is my fault, and I apologise profusely.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered anti-social behaviour in Hull and the East Riding of Yorkshire.