Antisocial Behaviour and Off-road Bikes

Sarah Jones Excerpts

Thursday 26th May 2022 Westminster Hall

[Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Fovargue. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Grahame Morris) on securing this important debate, which covers the whole country, including both rural and urban areas.

Many constituents have come to me about the disruption caused by off-road bikes being used on patches of land in my local community. The issue affects people everywhere, so this is an important debate to have. My hon. Friend painted a picture of the impact the issue has had on his constituents. He has been brought here to be a voice for those constituents, and he is a strong voice for them on this issue. We all understand the pain that they have gone through and how much he has done to champion their right to a more peaceful life.

We also heard loud and clear the message from the police that my hon. Friend had spoken to. I have had similar, very strong messages from the police about their need for more support. We need to ensure that they have the right powers and the tools they need to tackle the problem.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bradford South (Judith Cummins) has a lot of experience in this area and a lot of good ideas. It would be interesting to hear from the Minister why those ideas cannot simply be put into practice, as they seem to be very sensible. We need to do something in this area and I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say about my hon. Friend’s suggestions.

Before Christmas, I travelled around the country to get a sense of the breadth and scale of antisocial behaviour more broadly, as well as how it affects people and what is being done about it. The problems caused by off-road bikes came up time and again. Feeling safe in our communities and our homes is a basic right, and I am afraid that after 12 years of Conservative Government our streets have become less safe.

Since the last Government came to power, crime is up 18% and prosecutions are down 18%. Violence against women and girls is at an alarming level. The police are struggling to do all the things we ask of them, while a mental health crisis rages through our country and they end up spending large proportions of their time dealing with some of those issues, which should be prevented elsewhere.

Every day, the impact of noise, graffiti, fly-tipping, drug dealing and misuse, vandalism and antisocial behaviour blights people’s lives. My hon. Friend the Member for Easington mentioned Sean Ivey, who I met when I went to Horden. His house was attacked by arsonists after he reported antisocial behaviour. His life was ruined—his house was burned down—and he is campaigning for change, as well as having to rebuild his own life. He wants to fundraise for youth centres, which I will come on to, and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Easington mentioned, they are a really important part of the picture.

New figures show that rates of arson are spiralling out of control. According to the latest crime survey, arson and criminal damage have risen by over 90,000 incidents compared with 2019, despite the country being in lockdown for the first three months of the year. The proportion of offences leading to a police charge is just 4.3%, down from 8.3% in 2015. Some 58% of investigations are closed without the police identifying a subject, equating to over 280,000 cases. These figures reflect a truly shameful record on crime. Arsonists cause huge damage to local communities, ruining not just people’s property but their sense of safety and pride in their community. I am sure the Minister understands the scale of the problems that we are talking about and will perhaps qualify her earlier remarks about antisocial behaviour being low-level crime. I do not think it is, and I know that our constituents do not think it is either.

Turning to off-road bikes specifically, there is clearly a problem. These vehicles are often driven loudly and illegally on roads at great speed, muddying the roads and ruining green space. Often they have been stolen from farmers in rural areas, and I talk to the police about this issue. Another issue, which we will have to talk about another time, is to do with insurance. It is quite technical, but the police are very frustrated because insurance claims on off-road bikes are paid out even if the key is in the ignition, so people can just turn up and steal them. There is work to be done there, but that is more of a matter for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and I will raise it elsewhere.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Easington talked about, action is being taken by Labour police and crime commissioners around the country, who have a grasp of the importance of dealing with this problem. In Gwent, represented by Jeff Cuthbert, 135 off-road bikes have been confiscated in the past year, which is quite some number. In Northumbria, where Kim McGuinness is the Labour PCC, bike and quad seizures have been informed by the use of long-lens cameras to identify offenders, and the police have been working with Crimestoppers to help people anonymously report those using bikes to carry out antisocial behaviour. Northumbria police are also cracking down on garages selling petrol to underage buyers and those with unregistered off-road bikes.

My hon. Friend the Member for Easington talked about the good work being done in his area, and I thank him for his kind words. I very much enjoyed visiting his constituency; such visits are an important part of trying to understand the issues that people face every day and what we need to do when we are in power. I met constituents and local groups at Horden Hub House in his constituency, and I saw the excellent partnership work that Horden is doing to help vulnerable people, who often have complex needs. I also met the Labour PCC, Joy Allen. As my hon. Friend said, Durham constabulary have introduced higher charges to keep dangerous vehicles off the streets and out of the hands of criminals. On seizure, there is an instant charge of £150 and then a £10 per day storage fee to reclaim the bike. On average, the amount paid to get the bike back is around £200, but only roughly 40% of bikes are reclaimed. If the rider does not have a valid licence to ride the particular class of vehicle or has no insurance, the only way they can get their bike back is to insure it and get a valid licence before paying the fee.

[Grahame Morris]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent point, particularly in relation to my constituency. May I point out—I am sure she saw this at first hand—the problems that we have in a constituency that is part-rural, part-urban? The organised crime gangs are making use of cycle paths, quad bikes and off-road bikes to distribute drugs. It is difficult for the police if the individuals who are involved in criminal activities refuse to stop. Often the bikes are stolen, and tracking them requires the use of drones and specialist police units on off-road bikes. It is an incredibly difficult problem, and we need a commitment from the Government and policies to support the police and their actions.

[Sarah Jones]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. We had quite some debate during the passage of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022, where some changes were made to what happens to police when they are chasing people on roads. There was acceptance that the current situation was unacceptable and that the police were putting themselves into potentially very difficult positions by doing the right thing. The same applies here: we need to ensure that the police can do what they need to do, and stop people when they can, without facing the problems that my hon. Friend talked about and that Ken Marsh commented on, in his usual robust fashion. My hon. Friend makes a clear point. The fact that PC Edwin Sutton had to spend two years waiting, and then go through a tribunal to overturn the IOPC, shows how the rules need to be looked at properly. Everybody got into a tangle over his case. It was not just his life that was put on hold; everybody was obviously struggling with the rights and wrongs of the situation. We do not want to have an entirely John Wayne attitude of, “Police gotta do what police gotta do,” but we do need to make sure that police can be confident that by doing the right thing they will not suffer negative consequences.

In Durham, lots of work is under way to tackle some of those issues. There has been some success. I congratulate the police and crime commissioners, who are making a difference, but they need support from Government to go further. We have talked about the need for enough police resources. My hon. Friend the Member for Easington talked about cuts to police, and made an interesting and important point that is not made often enough about the lack of experience that is the result of the loss of those 21,000 police officers. We have also had a 50% cut in the number of police community support officers. There is no plan from Government, unless the Minister wants to mention it today, to put those levels back to what they were. PCSOs are in our communities and neighbourhoods as the eyes and ears of the police force; they do the job that they do so that our police officers can deal with the more serious issues that we are talking about today. There are over 7,000 fewer neighbourhood officers on the frontline now than there were 12 years ago. Over 7,000—that figure is a woeful record for this Government.

I would be very interested to hear what the Minister has to say to my hon. Friends the Members for Easington and for Bradford South, who both asked for perfectly sensible policy changes. They asked, in particular, for a strategy around how we tackle off-road bikes. I would be interested to hear how that fits into the Minister’s wider plans on antisocial behaviour. We know there are many problems with the way that is tackled at a national level, not least the fact that the data on antisocial behaviour is not collected nationally in a proper way. It is very hard to get a full sense of the picture. I would be interested to know whether the Minister has any plans to increase the number of PCSOs—they help our police officers to do their job.

We have made commitments to put police back into our neighbourhoods by having neighbourhood hubs. Neighbourhood hubs mean that everybody knows where to go to interact with the police. It is not just about police; it is also about our local authorities, our enforcement officers and our youth services. As my hon. Friend the Member for Easington said, police can only do the job with the infrastructure that they need around them. All the diversionary tactics that he talked about—youth centres, sports and activity for our young people—are absolutely at the heart of his constituency. I saw that when I visited his constituency, and all the other constituencies I went to. Without the underpinning of useful things for our young people to do, the police will struggle even more. I thank my hon. Friend for his excellent speech, and I look forward to the Minister’s response.