Holly Lynch
Main Page: Holly Lynch (Labour - Halifax)Department Debates - View all Holly Lynch's debates with the Home Office
(7 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Chris Philp
I welcome my hon. Friend to his very well-deserved place. Of course, the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, had planned to close down Uxbridge police station, along with many others, until my hon. Friend forced him into a humiliating U-turn before he was even elected—that is more than most of us achieved prior to coming to Parliament. I join him in calling on the Mayor of London to keep Uxbridge police station open and to add that custody suite, but also to confirm the future of all those other police stations around London that he had threatened to close just a few years ago.
Holly Lynch (Halifax) (Lab)
In my constituency, we have experienced a real escalation in antisocial behaviour and quite violent disorder in recent years, particularly around bonfire night. Last year, police had to deploy 100 officers to just one area of my constituency where local communities were being terrorised. What consideration has the Minister made of additional powers or resources for areas up and down the country that are anticipating further unacceptable disorder ahead of this year’s bonfire night?
Chris Philp
The hon. Lady is quite right to raise this issue. Antisocial behaviour concerns everyone. There are a number of powers available to local police, such as community protection notices, and to local authorities—I am thinking in particular of public space protection orders—so I strongly urge her to work with her local authority and, if she is concerned about a particular area, to put in place a public space protection order ahead of bonfire night. Our antisocial behaviour plan envisages strengthening various antisocial behaviour powers. As of next April, we will also be funding every single police force in the country to have antisocial behaviour hotspot patrols. I am not sure whether her force is one of the 10 pilot areas, but every force will have that funding from next April, and the sort of situation that she describes sounds like the ideal use for those ASB hotspot patrols.