Olivia Bailey
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Olivia Bailey (Reading West and Mid Berkshire) (Lab)
I thank the hon. Member for Chichester (Jess Brown-Fuller) for securing this debate.
I am the proud daughter of a police officer, and one of the things my dad always instilled in me was the importance of community policing: people knowing who their local neighbourhood officer is, building a relationship with them, and seeing them out and about in their local streets. My constituents also share that view.
I am really pleased that as a result of the actions that this Labour Government have taken, there are now more neighbourhood police officers in my community and they are making a big difference. I say a big thank you in particular to Inspector Betsy Palmer, PC Joe Meritt, Sergeant Andy Murray and PCSO Fraser Sinclair, who I met recently and who do a brilliant job, day in, day out, to keep our communities safe. However, they told me that one thing they spend far too much of their time on is tackling the scourge of illegal bikes.
I am fed up, and my constituents are fed up with having to pull children out of the way in a park when a bike or a Sur-Ron zooms past them at 30mph, or having to slam on the brakes while driving down the street because someone in a balaclava is doing a wheelie in front of them It is simply not good enough. I was very grateful to the Minister for her recent correspondence with me on this issue and I am grateful to the Government for giving the police additional powers to seize and destroy those bikes, but we need to do more.
I ask the Minister—if she would not mind—to think again and to tell me today both how we can do more to regulate the sale of those bikes and close the loopholes that mean those Sur-Rons can be ridden by people gleefully around the streets of my constituency, and how we can support our local police to tackle this problem.