That this House has considered the matter of antisocial behaviour in town centres.
It is a privilege to serve under your chairmanship, Ms McVey, in a debate on an important issue. Antisocial behaviour is a plague that haunts many of our town and city centres, our villages and our countryside. We all feel passionately about the issue, and I am sure we all receive much correspondence about it. Therefore, we all need to get on top of it. If we are to deliver real, positive change for our constituencies, it is important that we tackle antisocial behaviour in all its forms.
As Members of Parliament, we like to sing from the rooftops about the positives in our communities—how well our businesses are doing, how safe it feels to go around our town centres—but we need to tackle darker issues such as antisocial behaviour, fly-tipping and physical assaults taking place on our streets. I want to use the debate to outline some of the challenges that I unfortunately face in Keighley and in Ilkley, as well as some of the positive work that the Government are doing and further work that I would like them to do.
According to the Office for National Statistics, the police recorded 1.2 million incidents of antisocial behaviour in the year ending June 2022, which is a 16% decrease compared with the year ending March 2020. Antisocial behaviour, while decreasing, remains a problem for us all to face, and I want to describe some examples of antisocial behaviour in Keighley. There is a huge problem around the bus station. Young people are being approached and mobile phones taken off them. Assaults are taking place in the centre of Keighley where people are coming and going, and wanting to access businesses. Sometimes, the environment is intimidating and unsafe. I receive a lot of correspondence about that particular hotspot.
There are various hotspot streets, particularly around the Lund Park area of Keighley, and I have received correspondence about Westburn Avenue. The incidents that take place are localised micro-incidents. Nevertheless, they build the fear factor that we all associate with antisocial behaviour.
We have had some darker incidents as well, such as vehicles being targeted, and petrol being poured on vehicles and set alight. That happened only a couple of weeks ago outside a location in Keighley that I know well. We have also had speeding and the antisocial behaviour associated with it, extreme speeding and cars with loud exhausts going up and down particular streets in Keighley, such as North Street, Cavendish Street, Oakworth Road and Fell Lane. I have received a lot of correspondence about drivers purposely accelerating way beyond the speed limits that have been put in place. The police have been doing their level best to try to tackle those incidents.
Another issue in Keighley is cars being driven without insurance and parked cars that are way beyond having passed their MOT test. Some of those cars are parked at the roadside, particularly where drug drops and distribution take place.
My hon. Friend is making a good speech and giving us an A to Z of road names in his constituency. Does he agree that tackling the list of problems he faces in Keighley, which I also see in south Devon, is about enforcement, police visibility and ensuring that young people have things to do—options and opportunities to go out and achieve?
My hon. Friend makes a good point. I want to paint a picture of the challenges that we all face as MPs and describe the nature of the correspondence that is arriving in our inboxes, whether it is about speeding, antisocial behaviour or physical assault. We have to get to grips with why such incidents take place. It is predominantly those of a younger age who are participating in them, whether because of boredom or a lack of activities on offer to them.
One of the things that I have been doing—I believe that my hon. Friend has been doing this as well—is engaging in dialogue in community meetings. I hold large constituency surgeries and invite the police along, so that the issues can be raised. It is always fed back to me that police prioritisation relies on data collection. How many meetings do MPs go to and hear that, while residents know that these issues are happening on their streets, they have not necessarily been reported via the 101 system or email, or to the community police station so that data is collected and police enforcement targeted in specific areas?
On the outskirts of Keighley, the Utley safer streets group holds regular meetings. It is organised at community level by local residents and provides me as the MP, district councillors and the local police with the opportunity to go along, receive information and provide feedback on what the local police forces do, while also serving as a means to hold them to account.
I congratulate the hon. Member on securing today’s debate. A pub in Rutherglen in my constituency has faced awful harassment from teenagers who loiter and drink on the street outside, spoiling for a fight, and they have actually physically assaulted customers coming out of the pub. The pub has spent tens of thousands on preventive security measures, but the presence of a bouncer actually exacerbated the problem. The police have done a lot in this case, but a cross-agency approach is needed. Does the hon. Member share my concern about the lack of funding for these teams?
The hon. Member makes a valid point: street drinking is a big problem. It is one that we have in Keighley, particularly around the Church Green area, where groups hang around, causing issues for local businesses that want to grow, thrive and improve their customer base. However, street drinkers are putting people off going to those businesses. In my constituency, the police are doing a lot to try to alleviate the issues, including engaging in dialogue and correspondence. Sometimes it is up to the pubs and venues themselves to address the drink-related issues that spill out from them and the issues caused by some wishing to access their facilities. It is very much about having a joined-up approach, which I will come on to later in my speech.
My hon. Friend is being gracious in giving way again. I have set up a police hub initiative in my constituency where the police use local spaces to enhance visibility. That ensures that they can get out into the community more readily, rather than having to go back to HQ each time. It has been very effective in driving down crime and antisocial behaviour in local areas, at no extra cost to the state. Does my hon. Friend approve of that model?
It is an exceptionally good idea. Before I became an MP, the police station was in the centre of Keighley, but, frustratingly, our previous Labour police and crime commissioner decided to move it to an industrial estate just outside Keighley, which is not a good location. Everyone in Keighley knows that the police station is now out of the town centre as a result of that bad decision by the previous Labour PCC. I want that police station to be moved back to the centre of town.
We all suffer from the closure of police stations. Will the hon. Member also condemn his own Government, who have overseen the closure of nearly 800 police stations across the country?
Our police station was not closed. The Labour PCC decided to move it out of the town centre to an industrial estate outside Keighley, making it less accessible to many of my constituents.
In addition, in the run-up to the 2019 general election, the then Labour PCC, the then Labour MP for Keighley and the Labour leader of Bradford Council gave false hope and false promise that the police station would be moved back to the centre of town. That false hope just happened to be announced in the run-up to the general election, but what happened? All those plans are now off the table as a result of our new West Yorkshire Mayor deciding that we cannot facilitate that move. I hope we will get an instruction, or as much help from the Government as possible, to move the police station back into the centre of Keighley, from which it should have never been moved in the first place.
On the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Anthony Mangnall) made, police hubs are an excellent idea. In many rural parts of my constituency, facilities such as village halls have been used for community-wide engagement. A police officer, a sergeant or the neighbourhood policing team can go along and have dialogue with residents, and communicate and provide reassurance at a micro-local level. We can use such facilities across our constituencies to enable dialogue and better reporting of issues and concerns.
On drug taking, I am very pleased that the Government have taken a stance on nitrous oxide—laughing gas—cannisters, which I have been campaigning to ban since being elected. In the summer months, and particularly on bank holiday weekends, a lot of people get the train from Bradford and Leeds to Ilkley to sit at the riverside and enjoy the sunshine, but sometimes the area is used for antisocial behaviour, and that is not fair for Ilkley residents.
We all face many, many issues with antisocial behaviour. I will quickly touch on fly-tipping. I represent an urban fringe-type constituency, and we have a lot of fly-tipping, particularly in the Worth Valley ward, where Councillor Rebecca Poulsen has been fighting incredibly hard, working with the police, to deal with fly-tipping-related incidents. We must not forget that dumping used construction material, or whatever else it might be, in our beautiful environment is a form of antisocial behaviour in its own right. It was horrifying that, at the back end of last year, our Labour-run Bradford Council decided to close the Keighley tip—a ridiculous decision that would have resulted in more fly-tipping across the constituency. I am pleased to say that after I brought a petition to this House, signed by more than 7,000 people, which Laura Kelly and Martin Crangle heavily campaigned for, Labour-run Bradford Council finally listened and overturned that ridiculous decision. It has now decided to keep the Keighley tip open.
I remind Members that they need to bob if they wish to be called in this debate. I will not put a time limit on speeches, but be mindful that we will go to Front Benchers at 10.28 am, and that Robbie Moore will have a couple of minutes at the end to wind up.
I wish I had prepared my contribution as a response to the hon. Member for Keighley (Robbie Moore), because some of the outrageous statements he made were frankly unbelievable. Anyone would think that the Conservative party had not been in office for 13 years. Is it just me, or would anyone think there is an election around the corner? He hit back at the democratic processes in his constituency about who is elected. It is the people who elect their representatives. The MP does not select councillors—it is the people who do that. Criticism of the people in his own constituency might not go down well.
However, I seriously thank the hon. Member for bringing this timely debate on a massive subject, though it is shame he used it simply to try to attack the Labour party. That is extraordinary, to be honest. His closing remarks were along the lines of, “Thank you, Minister, for the wonderful robust approach that the Government have taken to antisocial behaviour on the high street.” If they are doing a great job, what is there to debate? There is either a problem that needs to be dealt with, or everything is okay. He cannot have it both ways, I am afraid.
The common denominator to the huge issues that I describe as high street anarchy is that the Conservative party in 2010 reduced the police by 20,000 officers.
As always, my hon. Friend is making a powerful contribution. I was in Northfield Primary School in South Kirkby on Monday, where there is a serious antisocial problem. The policing is lacking because of the cuts that he just referred to. I do not think we should be demonising a whole generation of young people. The Tories cut £1 billion or more of funding for youth services, so there is no youth provision in the villages I represent—there are no youth clubs—and all sorts of other facilities simply closed down as a result of those cuts. Does he agree that the backdrop to this problem of antisocial behaviour is, first, inadequate policing because of poor funding and, secondly, cuts to services upon which so many people depend?
Absolutely. I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention, because it is so true. Are these young people bored? Perhaps it is boredom, but the hon. Member for Keighley should recognise that it is because of the reduction in youth provision and the withdrawal of funding to local authorities, charities and lots of other organisations that used to fund youth networks right the way through our communities. They are gone. That does not mean to say that, because people are bored, they can create havoc on the high streets, because that is not acceptable at all.
If we look at Northumbria police, I have to place on record that the police in my constituency do a marvellous job—every one of them—and they know that they are really under-resourced. That is the real issue on the high street: the police are under-resourced, and they have to assess and deal with crimes as they happen in real time. Do the police go to where the assaults are happening, or do they go to where somebody is pulling plants out of flowerbeds on the high street? I do not want to trivialise what is happening on the high street, because it is very, very important. There is theft taking place in the shops. There is vandalism. There is antisocial behaviour, and there is unruly behaviour. We have also noticed in my constituency an increase in racist abuse.
I put a survey out to retailers in Ashington, Newbiggin, Morpeth and Bedlington asking them about antisocial behaviour, and I got a fantastic response. They all have huge criticisms, and they all have different issues. We then had a meeting with the police on Friday night, and the sad fact of the matter was that very few people turned up, because there is absolutely no confidence at all in the criminal justice system. There is a recognition that the police do what they can, but there is a bigger recognition that they are not doing anything that is addressing the huge issue of antisocial behaviour on the high street.
Let me give a few examples of what is happening in my patch. We have people going into the bigger stores on the high street—into Boots and Co-op—and stealing stuff, and they are basically stealing, first, items to sell on, and secondly, items to keep themselves healthy and clean. People never used to go pinching to keep themselves clean and keep their babies’ clothes well washed, but that is one of the things that is happening now. There are people walking into some of the bigger stores on a daily basis and just picking up what they want and walking out. The people there are instructed by the management, and rightly so, that they cannot stop people stealing, because it is not their role—and if they do, goodness knows what the consequences might be.
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Ms McVey. I thank the hon. Member for Keighley (Robbie Moore) for securing this important debate.
For many of my constituents, the sad reality of living in Tory Britain is that antisocial behaviour is increasing in our town centres, and there has been a loss of confidence in the police. The Government have hollowed out neighbourhood policing, allowed vulnerable young people to be drawn into crime, and let confidence in the police and the criminal justice system collapse. Criminals are being let off, and victims are being let down. In my constituency-wide survey, the main concerns raised were policing and tackling crime, which constituents tell me is a massive issue. We need more police on our streets to make us feel safe. Young people no longer have faith in the police, and one of my constituents told me that a lot of people do not report crimes because they do not think the police will even bother to come out.
Antisocial behaviour is increasing in my communities in Erdington, Kingstanding and Castle Vale. A constituent told me that Erdington High Street at times feels lawless. Another told me that his 70-year-old father carries a personal attack alarm when he goes on his morning walk. A third is scared to walk with his dog in the local park. It is shameful that, after 13 years of Conservative Government, anywhere we look in Britain, nothing is working.
Erdington High Street is the beating heart of my community. Last August, Birmingham City Council and I put in a bid to the Government levelling-up fund for £11 million, which would have totally transformed our town centre and gone a long way to reducing antisocial behaviour in our area. But the Tory Government let us down yet again, rejecting ours and the four other Birmingham bids. While Erdington will not receive a single penny from the Government’s £2.1 billion fund, despite ranking in the top 10% of deprived areas in the country, the Prime Minister’s own affluent constituency received £19 million.
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I very much welcome the Government’s plan to put more police officers on our streets. As a Conservative MP, at the last election I campaigned to get 20,000 police officers back on to our streets, and West Yorkshire police has recruited more than 1,000 since I was elected. I want to ensure that they are prioritised in dealing with the many concerns that my constituents across Keighley raise. I urge the Mayor of West Yorkshire, Tracy Brabin, to ensure that as many as possible of those police officers are on the streets of Keighley, Ilkley, Silsden and Worth Valley to tackle antisocial behaviour and give our neighbourhood policing teams the means that they need.
It is a complete myth that Labour is the party of law and order, and that it actually cares about clamping down and being tough on those who commit offences that cause harm to others and try to rule the streets through fear. I can categorically say that that is not the case at all. Labour will not pull the wool over the eyes of residents across Keighley and Ilkley. It was so determined to secure power in Keighley a couple of years ago that it actively selected as a candidate for Labour-run Bradford council Mohsin Hussain, who only seven years earlier had been given a 12-month sentence, suspended for two years with 250 hours of unpaid community work, after being convicted of an armed street assault in Keighley with a pickaxe handle, causing bodily harm. Another of his gang used a baseball bat. When that individual was released on bail, he was caught accelerating to 77 mph in a 30 mph zone in Keighley, driving through a series of traffic lights at speed and going around the wrong side of a roundabout. Those are the types of antisocial behaviour issues that I get contacted about time and time again. These are unfortunately the very issues that are still happening in Keighley today—physical assaults and extreme speeding. Yet Labour’s answer to all of that is to select and actively campaign for a candidate who a few years previously had been handed a two-year suspended sentence. What is worse is that our West Yorkshire Mayor, Tracy Brabin, who is in charge of implementing our local police and crime strategy, John Grogan, who wants to be the next MP for Keighley, and the current Labour leader of Bradford Council all came to Keighley to campaign, knock on doors and deliver leaflets to get that individual into power. And now, unfortunately, he is a district councillor on the Labour-controlled authority.
What does that say to the victims of antisocial behaviour, the victims of street crime, those who have to put up with physical abuse and those who live near the streets where extreme speeding regularly takes place? My view is that Labour does not care about implementing a strong and robust police and crime strategy. Labour will use any means possible to secure the votes to secure power, taking the votes of people in Keighley and Ilkley for granted.
I say to the Minister that I appreciate the work of the Home Secretary and her predecessors in taking a robust approach to antisocial behaviour. It is an issue that impacts all our constituencies time and again. It is probably one of the biggest issues to fill my inbox. We cannot sing from the rooftops about the good things in our constituencies and promote our businesses without tackling the plague that continues to haunt our town centres. On that, I will hand over to other speakers, as I know that many want to take part in this debate.
We had a situation in my constituency where someone was stabbed trying to prevent somebody else from stealing from the shop. We have security guards in the bigger stores, but then we have the smaller retailers. We had a chap who mentioned that somebody just walked in last week, picked 24 cans of beer up and just walked out. They rang the police, and they got a response four days later. The response was: “Well, can you explain which direction the gentleman went in?” That was infuriating. The police might have had good reason to ask such a question, possibly for CCTV, but if someone just walks into a shop—into someone’s else business on the high street, which they depend on for themselves and their family—pick something up and walk out, the owner will want some action, for heaven’s sake. They want the police to come, not to ring four days later.
I would imagine that, at the very same time, there were other crimes assessed by the police to be a priority compared with what is happening on the high street. We have all sorts of issues on the high street. They have mentioned racism. I live in a constituency that I think is roughly 99.1% white, and racism has never, ever been an issue, but it is becoming an issue. The people themselves are asking the police to deal with the racial abuse—and again, it is not a priority. I mentioned the 20,000 police being taken off the streets in 2010, and we should never forget that. It really galls me, by the way, when we hear the Conservatives, time after time, saying, “We are putting police back on the street.” They should not have taken the police off the street in the first place. Since 2010, Northumbria police has lost 1,000 police officers. Because of the inflationary crisis, next year it will have to find a further £12 million, which will cause extra pressures.
People do not just want their crimes to be recorded and for somebody to perhaps ring up and say, “We will look at this,” or, “We’ll look at that”; they want to see the police on the high street. I have seen videos—Al Vaziri, who has been a businessman in Ashington in my constituency for decades and a pillar of society, showed us CCTV videos only last month of young people throwing a brick at his window. Everybody knows who the individual was; it is on CCTV. We need convictions. Mr Vaziri took the decision to retire, because he cannot put up with it any more—racial abuse was also a contributing factor. He has decided that he and his wife will retire, away from what they see happening on the high street.
We must realise that the system is entirely broken. On one side, we have the retailers, the hard-working people and the businesspeople, on high streets in different towns and villages in the community, who are suffering as a consequence of this unruly anarchy from young people who think they can do whatever they want—because they can do whatever they want, because they are not being challenged at any stage. Then we have the many retailers who are being forced out of business. This fella told me, “They come in, Mr Lavery, pinch these things and walk out. It’s robbery—they’re robbing me and robbing my family.” It is just not acceptable.
Retailers and people on the high streets are suffering greatly from abuse, bad behaviour, unruly behaviour, theft and robbery, and it is the police’s job to remedy the situation and tackle these issues. I give full praise to the police in my constituency for the fantastic work they do, but they simply do not have the resources. They have not said this to me, but I feel that they understand that they are having to undertake a tick-box exercise. They realise how broken the system is, because they say that they have to prioritise other issues. A startling fact that the inspector told me on Friday night is that just above 50% of the call-outs in my constituency are connected to mental health issues. The police are not social workers; they are there to tackle the issues I have raised, which will surely also be mentioned in other contributions to the debate.
Is it too much to ensure that the police are properly resourced to walk through communities, so that people see them? We very rarely see police officers on the beat. Again, I am not criticising the force; the police have had to face under-resourcing from the Government. It isn’t any wonder that if we take 20,000 police officers off the streets, there will be an increase in crime—that is logical. It is not really difficult to come to terms with or understand. The system is completely and utterly broken. This is about how we put that right.
To conclude, I simply praise police officers. We have to think about how we can address the huge issues affecting small and bigger businesses on the high street, because they are facing a ridiculous situation. This is going to be very difficult, but we need more police, we need more youth provision, and we need people to be held to account for what is happening on our high streets. Only when that happens will we begin to see a reduction in antisocial behaviour.
At the same time, I have been campaigning relentlessly alongside local residents to oppose an application to open an eighth betting shop on our high street. Sadly, the Government decided to back the gambling bosses and overturn local wishes. I am helping thousands of constituents with casework; I am holding meetings with local retailers concerned about antisocial behaviour on the high street; and I supported two great bids to the Government levelling-up fund that Ministers shamefully rejected. Sadly, Erdington feels left behind.
Councils are committed to tackling antisocial behaviour in town centres, but it is essential that the Government adequately resource policing and community safety officers to enforce restrictions put in place. It is no good saying the Government have put 20,000 police back on the streets when, 13 years ago, they literally hollowed out those services. I am doing my bit. Can the Minister tell me why the Government are not doing theirs?