Melanie Onn
Main Page: Melanie Onn (Labour - Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes)Department Debates - View all Melanie Onn's debates with the Home Office
Town and City Centre Safety
Melanie Onn Excerpts(1 day, 12 hours ago)
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Baggy Shanker
My hon. Friend makes a valid point. The police need to work with local authorities to tackle these issues sensitively.
Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes) (Lab)
My hon. Friend mentioned dodgy shops. I have been running a campaign against dodgy vape shops and others on the high street. Safety is so important, and these shops, which sell goods to young people, erode confidence in the high street. Does he agree that commercial landlords must be given more powers so that they can understand exactly who they are renting to and shut such shops down?
Baggy Shanker
My hon. Friend is absolutely right: such shops do not help other businesses and residents, and do not make our city centres a safe environment, so more measures are needed to tackle that.
Last year, there was another really difficult day for our city. Gurvinder Singh Johal, also known as Danny, was tragically murdered as he was going about his business in a Lloyds Bank branch on a Tuesday afternoon. It was utterly devastating for his family. When crimes like that happen in plain sight, in places that we use regularly and consider to be safe, it is not surprising that public confidence is shaken. Communities are left wondering whether the towns and cities they know and love really are the places that they see in front of them. Public safety is not just about law enforcement; as my constituent Tirath puts it, it is also about preserving the character of the places we call home.
Constituents up and down the country, in towns and cities from Stoke-on-Trent to Somerset, share the same feelings. We are here today because we want to take our constituents’ concerns seriously. We are here because when they tell us that more needs to be done for them to feel like crime is being taken seriously and tackled, we want to listen. Most importantly, we are here because although austerity damaged our towns and cities, it did not break them. We want to crack on and make changes so that everyone can enjoy our town and city centres as the brilliant and buzzing places that we know they can be.
That is why I want to talk about what comes next. We know that keeping our communities safe is not about warm words; it is about action. That means working hand in hand with the police and our partners to ensure that people feel welcome and secure spending time in our towns and cities.