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Labour Party
Latest entry 4 Nov 2026
Conservative and Unionist Party
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Liberal Democrats
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Reform UK
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Green Party
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Showing every spoken contribution, including 12,832 under 12 words. Hide short remarks
We all recognise the concern about the illegal use of e-bikes and e-scooters. We have taken action through the Crime and Policing Act 2026. Police no longer need to issue a warning before seizing vehicles that are being used antisocially. We have also reduced vehicle disposal timeframes to seven days, so we are taking action, but we are very much in the market for seeing what else we can do.
I thank the hon. Member for her thoughtful question. We hear what she says about e-bikes. We are having conversations with the College of Policing and others about how we can ensure that the police can respond in the way that they want to. In a big operation last month, the Met arrested 187 people and seized 157 vehicles in a crackdown on e-bikes, and Met police are using Sur-Ron bikes in that operation, so we are very much having conversations with colleagues to see what more we can do.
I thank my hon. Friend for her work on this issue. We are talking to the Department for Transport about exactly what we need to do to tackle the scourge of e-bikes and e-scooters. Every MP in this place will be facing the same challenge, and I hope that everybody would agree that we cannot allow this kind of behaviour to continue. We are looking at what else can be done. We have changed the powers in the Bill to move us in the right direction. I am talking to the police about what more support they need, and we will continue to have those conversations across Government.
This Government are determined to tackle antisocial behaviour across England and Wales. From today, we are calling time on persistent offenders of ASB with the introduction of respect orders, honouring our manifesto commitment and cracking down on ASB.
I am very happy to work with anybody who is committed to tackling antisocial behaviour. The Government have introduced not just respect orders, but extended dispersal directions. We have raised the maximum fixed penalties for public spaces protection orders from £100 to £500. We are passing legislation, putting neighbourhood police into our neighbourhoods and tackling antisocial behaviour.
My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I suspect that a lot of similar conversations are happening on Pride in Place boards across England and Wales. In north Wales we have seen an increase of some 60 officers in neighbourhoods since 2015, which will make a very big difference. I have talked to every police force across the country, written to all the chief constables and met all the different agencies that are part of respect orders, and everyone is lined up to do this work. Guidance has been published, and I look forward to seeing the first court cases—hopefully this week.
I went last week to Newcastle-under-Lyme, Southall and Hemel Hempstead, and I have been talking to all the police forces across the country. I expect my hon. Friend’s police force to take these powers in the manner in which they are intended—as a useful tool to help the police, local authorities, housing associations and other agents to tackle antisocial behaviour and introduce respect orders. We are increasing funding across the country. Importantly, we are also reforming policing to put local policing at the heart of everything we do, so that the public get the service they expect.
I am happy to look into whether respect orders might cover the crimes that the right hon. Member talks about and help in this space. Of course we need to ensure that we have more police in our communities, and we will always look at the legislation to see whether there is more that we can do to come down hard on these kinds of behaviours, which make our constituents and our communities really not feel safe in their own environment. We will continue to work on that.
I recognise what the hon. Member describes. I have talked to the police about what more we can do in this space. I encourage everybody to report crimes as soon as they see them, because the police can put automatic number plate recognition cameras in place to retrospectively give people fines if they are breaking the law by car cruising. I know the police are looking for the resources to ensure that they can tackle these things. More neighbourhood policing, looking at shift times, and all these things can help.
Of course that comment is racist. We know that race and religious hate crime is rising and we are very concerned about that. We have taken some legislative action when it comes to protests, around things like cumulative impact and places of worship. We have our social cohesion plan, “Protecting What Matters”, and we have invested record amounts of money—sadly, we have had to do so—to protect religious spaces for the Jewish community, the Muslim community, and those of other faiths including Sikhs. We have put in £250 million to protect our Jewish communities. There is more to do, but we are certainly in agreement that that was racist, and we need to tackle all forms of hate crime.
My hon. Friend is right that statistics are not the answer to everything, but gun crime has gone down in the last year in the new stats that have come out, so we are making progress. She is right, of course, to be concerned about the awful incident in her constituency. I am always happy to meet her and others to talk about such matters. We are putting funding into tackling county lines, into knife crime concentration funds and into our violence reduction units. All that funding is helping us to make progress when it comes to both knife crime and gun crime.
The hon. Member cannot ask the Secretary of State, but he can ask the Minister for Policing. He raises a legitimate problem. We recently had a roundtable on catapults and the harm that they are doing, and we are looking at what more we need to do. Respect orders will work in this space as well, and it is worth him talking to the police on that front, because we want to ensure that we are doing everything we can. We have seen some particularly nasty catapult attacks in particular areas of the country, which we want to see an end to. Respect orders might be an answer.
It was a pleasure to visit my hon. Friend’s constituency and see the good work being done and the partnerships being forged. She asks what more respect orders can do. They are there to help tackle vandalism, public drunkenness, aggressive begging, irresponsible dog owners—I think all of us agree that is very irritating—and noisy or abusive behaviour. The Environment Agency can also use them for fly-tipping and persistent fly-tippers, so there is a whole raft of measures for which we can use respect orders. I look forward to seeing the results.
It is very early days, so I am unable to give the hon. Member the numbers at this point, but they will be collected by constituency. I encourage him to keep in touch with his local police to see what the numbers are. He is absolutely right that the power to seize a vehicle without giving warning is a powerful tool.
My hon. Friend is a persistent campaigner on this issue and I salute him for his work. We are committed to a review of the funding formula. We have started internal work on it and I will be updating the House as soon as we have considered the recommendations from the independent review of police force areas.
I thank my hon. Friend for his question. It was a delight, as a Minister, to get a letter from the Cabinet Office saying, “You don’t have to do as many consultations as you used to.” Hopefully, we can get things moving a bit quicker than the previous Government managed. I think they promised police reform for over 10 years and never delivered, so I hear what he is saying and we will keep working as fast as we can.
I meet the commissioner regularly and we talk about these issues all the time. I should point out to the House that this Government are funding the police to record levels. Hundreds of millions of pounds extra are going to the Metropolitan police, with £2 billion extra going into policing since we came to power. The National Police Chiefs’ Council has just agreed rules on abstraction rates, which I know is a big challenge. I have had a lot of conversations with the commissioner about managing the risk of protests and maintaining officers in our communities. I think he has got the right balance at the moment, but we will, of course, continue to monitor that.
The hon. Member knows of, and shares, our horror at what happened to the two Cleveland police officers recently—it was an honour to attend their funerals, which I know he did as well—and I will therefore not respond with a political point. We have been talking regularly to both the chief constable and the police and crime commissioner in Cleveland. Following that incident, we agreed to give an extra £2 million to contribute to tackling serious and organised crime, and today we agreed to provide a further £3.2 million to meet the additional costs that have been incurred. We are also considering Cleveland’s application for exceptional funding. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will welcome that additional funding for Cleveland and will work with us to ensure that it has the resources it needs.
Our police reform plans will embed highly localised policing. We have already delivered 3,800 extra neighbourhood police to our communities, and in Avon and Somerset we have delivered 71 since 2025.
As I have said, neighbourhood police numbers in Avon and Somerset have risen by 71 since 2025. We are also introducing a raft of measures to deal with shop theft, such as the removal of the £200 threshold, and investment in new technology to help the police and retailers to work together so that crime can be reported and people can then be charged. There has been huge progress in many parts of the country where retailers and police are working together. During the two years in the run-up to the general election, shop theft went up by 60%, but it is now on the turn, falling by 2% this year. We are making progress with those extra police, but there is still a great deal more to do.
We are delivering more neighbourhood police to our communities, and we are encouraging the police to use data as much as they can to determine where they go, which means that, as often as possible, they go to the areas where crime is occurring. The purpose of our police reforms is to answer some of the challenges that the hon. Lady has raised. At present we have 43 forces who are having to look up towards serious and organised crime, international and national fraud and online crime, and having to look down towards their local communities, and they are doing neither very well at the moment.
I join the right hon. Member in recognising the important work that our police do in rural communities. It is exactly because we want to tackle these problems that we are introducing police reform to embed highly localised policing in our rural areas as well as our urban areas.
I thank my hon. Friend for bringing these awful cases to my attention. We have changed the law to make it easier to seize those bikes, and we are looking at what more we can do. We are working with the Department for Transport to see what changes it needs to make, and we will continue to do that.
We support the police with the powers that they need. I am looking at training to make sure that enough people are being trained in what we need.
I have noted that piece of work. We support drug diversion schemes, which are part of the respect orders that we have announced today, part of our rough sleeping programme and part of lots of the work we do to help people get off drugs, but they are not a substitute for the right punishment where necessary.
We will make sure that there are more neighbourhood police in our communities and in his communities. We will make sure that the legal powers are there for the police to take the action that they need, and we are working to see what else needs to be done about the scourge of e-bikes, of which everyone in all our constituencies feels that we have had enough.
The right hon. Lady asks a very good question, and we are grappling with this issue. I have asked PoliceAI to do a piece of work on how we can look for and act on stolen goods across all the different second-hand sites. It is very much a live issue in the Home Office.
My hon. Friend raises a good point that has not been mentioned yet, which is the power of drones in this space. Using more technology to ensure that we can go after the people who are using those illegal bikes is a good idea.
I thank my hon. Friend for the numerous conversations we continue to have about this issue, which are important. We have confirmed the extra funding, and we are looking at the funding for next year as part of an exceptional request made by Cleveland. We have sent the request to the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy, which will go through the figures to ensure that we have a robust response for the next year. We will then prioritise the funding formula, which my hon. Friend is right to say is no longer fit for purpose.
I thank my hon. Friend for the many conversations we have had about this issue; he certainly has a strong view, and we completely agree that there is a problem. Police officers deserve to have high-quality representation, and I hope to update him soon.
We have committed to introducing consultation, which we will do. Most deaths from legal guns are from shotguns, so we are always in the market to consider what more we can do. As the hon. Gentleman knows, we have had lots of conversations and lots of debate about the value that gun use can bring to our sporting industry, our farmers and others, so we will get the balance right.
I agree with my hon. Friend; those residents should, of course, vote for Caroline Reid. We are putting more police into our neighbourhoods, and my hon. Friend’s area has received increased funding for the police. We understand the priorities of the British people, which include tackling the epidemic of everyday crime in our communities.
I thank my hon. Friend for the work he has done to support his community in Peacehaven. We need to make sure that the right policing is in place. Our £40 million fund for mosques is there to protect those buildings, but we also need to bring back cohesion to our communities, and our social cohesion plan “Protecting What Matters” is designed to do that.
We are increasing funding to police and introducing more neighbourhood policing. We are also reforming a lot of the structures within policing to ensure that we have good quality leadership. Lord Blunkett and Lord Herbert did a big piece of work for us looking at how we ensure that we have good leadership across all our forces. We will be looking at their recommendations and bringing them forward.
I was pleased to visit my hon. Friend’s constituency last week, where I saw for myself the struggles that those rough sleepers are having. We are trying to go through the piece of work to update the creaking infrastructure that was left to us by the last Government. I have certainly taken that issue away.
We are increasing funding and putting more neighbourhood police into our communities. I have seen some really good examples of town centres where retail crime has plummeted because the police and retail are working together to target persistent offenders. We are also looking at introducing a new pilot on persistent offending. I would be happy to talk to her more about that.
I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. We have introduced an offence of assaulting a retail worker, which was deliberately and intentionally narrow. There are other crimes that these people can be charged for, but he is absolutely right to call it out, and we all should.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Murrison. In 2017, my constituent Tony Collier was training for an ultramarathon. Tony was 60, fit and otherwise well. He was the kind of man who rarely sat still long enough to think about his own health. He thought he had a groin injury from his training. He went to the doctor and was diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer. He was told that his cancer had been developing for around 10 years. In that moment, Tony’s life changed forever. Tony did not ignore symptoms; there were not any until it was too late. I met Tony through his dedicated campaigning for earlier diagnosis. Along with another of my constituents, Paul, he set up the Warrington Area Prostate Cancer Alliance to support other men from Warrington living with prostate cancer. Tony is working with national cancer organisations to make the case for change so that more men like him and those at high risk can get this lifesaving test. Tony believes that if he had had regular PSA tests from the age of 50, there is a good chance he would have been diagnosed earlier, when his cancer was still curable. Tony does not campaign for sympathy; he campaigns so that other men do not have to rely on chance to find out that they have cancer. I hope the Minister listens to Tony’s story and acts on the recommendations from Prostate Cancer Research, including by publishing a timetable for reviewing screening evidence by January 2027 and providing six-monthly updates on the model and clear decision points for black men, tied to stage one of Transform; by funding new research into who currently receives PSA tests, why and with what outcomes; by allowing independent experts to scrutinise the UK National Screening Committee’s model on terms equivalent to NICE; by publishing a protocol for confidential and emerging evidence applied consistently to every test and trial; and by confirming that a man aged 50 or over or at higher risk who has discussed the pros and cons with his GP remains entitled to a PSA test now that the PCRMP has been withdrawn.
I thank my hon. Friends the Members for Lichfield (Dave Robertson) and for Redditch (Chris Bloore) for securing this important debate. Last year, Royal Mail, which is now owned by a Czech billionaire, was fined £21 million for failing to meet its delivery targets. In the same financial year, its chief executive received a £7 million bonus. That is a third of the cost of a fine paid while the service was failing the people who depend on it. The consequences are felt by my constituents. One resident in Hockley missed multiple hospital appointments because his letters were not delivered, and a resident in Shenstone village missed an insurance claim deadline because essential documents never arrived. Those are not minor inconveniences; they are barriers to healthcare, financial security and everyday life. Rural communities are particularly badly affected, with some of my villages lucky enough to receive post twice a month, yet Royal Mail dismisses complaints, claiming that there are no problems in the relevant area. That is a stock response I receive that bears no relation to reality. Royal Mail divides areas into 118 overarching postcode areas, which mix dense urban centres with vast rural areas, meaning that the high delivery rates in town centres can hide issues and completely change the way in which we view the figures. We cannot allow Royal Mail to hide behind statistics that fail to reflect the lived experiences of residents.
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We can infer that there is definitely a baked-in position here, and that is a big problem, as we will hear from many Members. I hope that the importance of Ofcom being able to regulate better will be a crucial part of what we hear from the Minister. As a member of the Business, Innovation, Science and Trade Committee, I took part in our inquiry into Royal Mail’s performance. We exposed a frustrating cycle of pass the parcel: the Government say that they will strengthen Ofcom’s powers if asked, and Ofcom says that changes are for the Government to make. Meanwhile, Ofcom has admitted that fines against a loss-making company are entirely ineffective in improving services, yet its proposed response to continued failures is more fines. Those statements seem rather at odds with each other. Our Committee has recommended that if Royal Mail fails to improve within six months, the Secretary of State should consult on changing Ofcom’s powers and duties. Five months on, meaningful improvement is yet to materialise.