Catapults and Antisocial Behaviour

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the matter of catapults and anti-social behaviour.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Desmond. I am going to give this speech backwards, inasmuch as I am going to start with the end and the ask. I ask the Government to introduce an amendment to the Crime and Policing Bill, which is in Committee in the House of Lords. I would like the Bill amended to reduce the minimum age at which community protection notices can be issued, from 16 years old to 10 years old—the age of criminal responsibility in England. That was proposed under the last Government’s version of the Bill, which died when the general election was called.

Having started with the end of my speech, now let me begin at the beginning. I represent Spelthorne—I feel compelled to remind the House that Spelthorne is not in Lincolnshire or Lancashire; it is everything immediately south of Heathrow airport down to the River Thames. As well as having a decent stretch of one bank of the River Thames, from Staines to Sunbury, we are also blessed with extensive and much-prized green spaces such as Staines Moor, Sunbury Park and Leyland Park. Water is a major feature of Spelthorne, because the land has been quarried over the years—much of it for the building of the M25—and we are home to half of London’s drinking water, stored in four enormous reservoirs.

All that means that Spelthorne, for a largely suburban area inside the M25, is a good home for wildlife, particularly bird life. Indeed, every year visitors flock from miles around to witness the start of that most quintessentially English and iconic event, swan upping, which starts at Sunbury lock. We are also home to the Swan Sanctuary in Felix Lane; started in the 1980s, it now cares for injured and damaged mute swans from across the south of England.

The Partnership for Action against Wildlife Crime Northern Ireland has helpfully drawn attention to the growing misuse of catapults. Does the hon. Member agree that there must be robust enforcement of existing law, particularly article 12 of the Wildlife (Northern Ireland) Order 1985 in respect of wild animals and the Welfare of Animals Act (Northern Ireland) 2011 in respect of domestic animals?

I thank the hon. Member for his intervention, and for his faith in my knowledge of Northern Ireland-specific wildlife legislation—funnily enough, I am going to mention Northern Ireland in a moment. I certainly believe in robust enforcement of existing legislation, and I will come on to some practical additional measures that could be taken to rid us of this scourge.

When I visited Steve and his amazing team of volunteers at the Swan Sanctuary, I saw at first hand the horrible injuries to swans—and to all the other types of birds that the sanctuary cares for—caused by people firing at them with catapults. I said that I would look into the matter further, and have secured this debate in order to share what I have learned with the House.

In many people’s minds catapults have a sort of cheeky-chappie, comic-book image. As a boy growing up on Barnes common, I remember finding a good Y-shaped stick, making a catapult for myself and shooting at discarded Coke cans as target practice—but catapult technology has moved on from its Dennis the Menace days. The ones that can be bought now will fire a ball-bearing at 73 mps.

I recognise what the hon. and gallant Member says about the strength and power of catapults. As a police officer, probably my easiest investigation was in relation to thousands of pounds-worth of damage being caused to the plate glass windows of the Edinburgh International Conference Centre. The open window took me to the culprit, but I saw the power of that catapult to cause that level of damage. Does he agree that we need to look at how that technology has developed?

I thank the hon. Member for bringing her personal experience as a police officer to this debate. I thank her for her service.

These new catapults have awesome power, and could easily take out your eye, Sir Desmond, or indeed other hon. Members’ eyes, and cause life-changing injuries. In fact, in my time in the army, in riots in Northern Ireland, I had them used against me; they were a gateway weapon for kids who would later graduate to the coffee jar bomb and the nail bomb.

I commend the hon. Gentleman for introducing this debate. Every one of us can remember the stick that we cut off a tree and the inner tube of a bike that we used to make the stretch, which helped us to have the best catapult in Ballywalter—there were many people in competition. However, it seems fair to say that this specific crime goes mainly unreported; there are few records of it in Northern Ireland. Does he agree that people will ignore or walk past antisocial behaviour—not just in relation to catapults, but any ASB—because of the fear of intimidation, and that more needs to be done to encourage the official reporting of all sorts of ASB, to improve conditions on our streets and to ensure that people feel safe?

The hon. Gentleman echoes my cry. Since being elected as the Member of Parliament for Spelthorne, in all my dealings with the community, too often it becomes a conversation of the deaf, inasmuch as people think that there is no point in reporting crime because the police will not do anything about it, and the police say, “Well, no one has reported any crime, so there’s nothing for me to do.” We must unlock that conversation of the deaf by encouraging everyone to report every crime; in cases where they are worried about intimidation, they have the opportunity to use Crimestoppers, and I commend that outlet as well.

In Spelthorne, we have a serious problem with young kids using catapults on animals. I am obliged to Inspector Matthew Walton of Spelthorne police, who has helped me a great deal in preparing this campaign. The police tell me that in Spelthorne over the past year and a half crimes involving catapults have been reported to them more than once a week. The crimes happen predominantly after schools have ended, and in 90% of cases no suspect or even person of interest is identified. Spelthorne police, to their credit, tell me that they are going back to reviewing a number of these cases to make sure that they did not miss anything the first time round and to see whether any particular patterns emerge. My constituents notice the crimes happening; sadly, they too often see the wounded and killed wildlife when they are out enjoying our green spaces and river walks.

I thank the hon. and gallant Member for securing this important debate. As in his constituency, significant amounts of wildlife crime are being reported by residents of Uxbridge and South Ruislip. I recently met with the Save our Swans group and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. The horrific events that he describes in Spelthorne are also common on the canals and rivers in Hillingdon. Does he agree that prevention is better than cure, and that taking these catapults off people before crime has happened is vital? Does he also agree that there is a role for public space protection orders, which councils can introduce, to ban the possession of catapults and other items in public spaces? Does he support me in encouraging councils to adopt those public space protection orders to prevent this crime and to make it easier for councils to pass those measures?

I believe that the Green party is led by a hypnotist; it seems that the Government Benches have a mind reader, too, because the hon. Gentleman must have seen into the future and what I was about to say.

My constituents write to me in numbers to express their distress at this scourge. Spelthorne borough council has responded and has in place a public space protection order for catapults across the whole borough. Unfortunately, though, the council will not enforce a PSPO breach if the individual is under 16. That is the council’s choice, but I would prefer it to reduce that minimum age considerably.

I went out for a ride-along with the response team of the Spelthorne police two weeks ago. We had an intelligence briefing beforehand, and what was striking was the ages of the young people we were keeping an eye out for—they were all 16 and under, and had records for some very serious offences. Catapults are predominantly kids’ stuff, by which I mean children of 10 years old and up. Currently in Spelthorne, anyone committing an offence will have their catapult seized and be issued a fine by the council, while those under 16 will have their parents informed and the catapult returned to the parent. The trouble with the current powers is that they rely on someone’s being caught offending and, as I said earlier, these crimes are rarely witnessed.

When I was in Iraq and Afghanistan, we faced a lethal threat from improvised explosive devices. There was, of course, a whole raft of things that we did and drills that we learned in order to react and save life when those things when went off, but the majority of effort and ingenuity was applied to try to stop it happening in the first place—we had to do everything to the left of the bang, as the saying went. It is similar with catapults. The police would like to pre-empt this problem before it happens, and believe that reducing the minimum age of a community protection notice to 10 years would allow early intervention before bad behaviour escalates. It would also provide a proportionate civil response without criminalising children and reduce reliance on lengthy court processes.

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Ah! Like Hercule Poirot!

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Desmond, and I commend the hon. and gallant Member for securing this debate. My hon. Friend the Member for Dartford (Jim Dickson) and I were the two who went along to that meeting—it is disappointing that our names were not added to that letter. I would like to contribute to the debate, because this is a serious issue in my constituency, but I will save that for later; I will just say that it was us, and we are very glad to have this debate.

Another mystery cleared up by Inspector Jopp; I wish I had been as successful on my drive-around with the Spelthorne police the other day.

As well as my ask on reducing the minimum age at which protection notices can be served, I also want to put in a word for parental responsibility and alternative outlets for young people’s energy, competitiveness and desire to shoot and hit things.

I hear weekly in the Chamber how my party is responsible for running down youth services to the point of annihilation, so I want to raise the roof in relation to what happens in my constituency. On Friday night, I went to the extraordinary, world-leading Spelthorne Gymnastics. It has 1,600 students. At the European championships at Easter, Team GB took away five gold medals, and all five were won by people who came from Spelthorne Gymnastics.

In Shepperton, I also have a kids’ darts thing—if anyone is looking for a side-hustle business idea, this is the one. It is above what was probably a Conservative club before. It is a sports and social club, and on the top floor, there are five dartboards and they run two one-hour sessions. The first is for nine to 14-year-olds and the second is for 15 to 18-year-olds. There are five boards and five people per board. I was there for two hours, and I did not see a single one of those young people get a phone out once. They learn brilliant mental maths, sportsmanship, discipline, competition, mutual respect and understanding. I was absolutely blown away. When I went to my local barber the other day, the guy who runs the darts, and is one of the coaches, was coming out. He said, “Lincoln, you will not believe it. We’ve got 36 on the waiting list now.” On the night that I was there, I asked a parent who had driven their child there how far they had come, and they said from Notting Hill. For Members who do not get the geography, I am out near Heathrow airport. They said that it was the only place that does this. So all points in between—take a note of this Westminster Hall debate.

Order. I am imposing a formal six-minute time limit.

It remains a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Desmond. Again, I congratulate the hon. and gallant Member for Spelthorne (Lincoln Jopp) on bringing forward the debate. Further down the Thames from the idyllic picture that he has portrayed of his constituency of Spelthorne, my constituency sits at the mouth of the Thames, and we have all the same problems.

This is very much an issue of rural crime and animals being brutally injured and maimed. It is causing a large amount of fear, aggravation and disgust for a lot of people living in the villages around Sittingbourne and Sheerness. It is also a problem in the towns. The issue actually first came to my attention in Sittingbourne, where our local church hall was smashed up with catapults. We have had shops smashed with catapults, as well as other churches. Indeed, when we were mustering for the Remembrance parade on Remembrance Sunday this year, on the night before, we could see that a whole load of empty flats above the high street had been smashed with catapults. So it is an urban issue as well.

Some of what is driving the problem is shops that are recklessly selling catapults on the high street in town as an easy inducement for local kids to take them up, with no checks or controls over them. As I am sure hon. Members are aware, catapults can be fun. They are seen as a child’s toy, but they are not a child’s toy when what is being shot out of them are enormous, weighty ball bearings. I have held some of the ones that our local farmers have handed to me; they are bigger than the end of my thumb. Such a shot going at high velocity through an animal, or God forbid, a human skull could easily be fatal. We have to be very aware that this is not just an issue of maiming animals and property damage; at some point, this could easily become a human fatality. It is something that we really have to attend to.