Matt Vickers

One of the things we were doing was putting record funding into policing and putting a record number of police on the streets. The one thing we were not doing was taxing our police forces off the streets. We were making huge progress. I would also like to mention Sergeant Dave Catlow of the Metropolitan police, who joined us last week. He is doing great work on this issue. New clause 130 proposes three key changes. First, fines for perpetrators would equate to the cost of replacing equipment, repairing the damage caused and the loss of work. Secondly, theft of tools would be treated as an aggravated offence, meaning tougher sentences for the crooks who steal tradesmen’s vital equipment. Finally, councils would be required to put in place an enforcement plan to crack down on the sale of stolen tools at car boot sales. I will also take this opportunity to pay tribute to the hon. Member for Portsmouth North (Amanda Martin) for her campaigning on this issue. I know how much she, too, wants to see action on tool theft. As the Minister knows, my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Buckinghamshire (Greg Smith) brought the Equipment Theft (Prevention) Act 2023 through the House. It could make a real difference on this issue. Will the Minister confirm when the Government will table a statutory instrument to put it into action? I turn to non-crime hate incidents. New clause 7 would change legislation and guidance to remove the recording and retention of non-crime hate incidents. The use of non-crime hate incidents has spiralled out of all control and well beyond its originally intended purpose. The deal should be simple: if the law is broken, justice must be served. But non-crime hate incidents are a different beast—you did not break the law; you just said something daft and ended up logged on police records like a criminal. We need our police on the streets, not policing hurty words on Twitter. We have all seen the utterly barmy story of a nine-year-old who insulted another pupil in the playground. Is that unkind? Yes, of course it is. But instead of a quiet word with a teacher or a call to the parents, the police were brought in. I appeal to Members across the House—would they want that happening to their child, or would they rather give them a proper telling-off at home? This also has a bigger effect. Our police officers are being tied up documenting playground spats and Twitter comments, treating childish jibes like national security threats, while real crimes such as burglary, robbery and even violent offences are being pushed to the back of the queue. In fact, research from Policy Exchange has found that, nationally, over 60,000 police hours are being spent on non-crime hate incidents. Our police need to get back to keeping our streets safe, not policing silly words or childish playground issues. Before concluding my remarks, I would like to draw the House’s attention to some of the Opposition’s other amendment that could protect our communities and keep our streets safe. We would have been voting today on new clause 144 to secure that national statutory inquiry into grooming gangs—a scandal that is our country’s shame. Child sexual exploitation ruins lives; preying on the most vulnerable in our communities, exploiting them for horrific sexual acts and often coercing them into a life of crime. A national inquiry is what the victims wanted, so I am glad that the Prime Minister has finally U-turned, given into the pressure and joined what he described as the far-right bandwagon of people who wanted a national inquiry. As the Leader of the Opposition said yesterday, we must not have another whitewash. The national inquiry must ask the hard questions and leave no stone unturned. Criminal investigations must run in parallel to the inquiry. It must look at the whole system—Whitehall, the Crown Prosecution Service, the police and local authorities—and wherever there is wrongdoing, there should be prosecutions. Foreign perpetrators must be immediately deported, and the inquiry must be fully independent, with statutory powers covering all relevant towns. Local councils simply cannot be left to investigate themselves. New clause 125 aims to reinstate people’s confidence in policing. We have recently seen the perverse anti-racism commitment issued by the National Police Chiefs’ Council. It calls for arrest rates to be artificially engineered to be the same across racial groups. Advice to treat black and white suspects differently is morally indefensible. It is, by definition, two-tier policing. It undermines trust and confidence in our police. This new clause would give the Home Secretary the power to amend or require the withdrawal of any code of practice intended to direct policing practices. New clause 139 makes provisions in relation to off-road bikes. I know many Members across the House know the havoc being caused by them in local communities. The issue has been raised by Members on both sides of the House numerous times in Westminster Hall and in this place, and the tweak in approach that features in this Bill will simply not be enough. Using alternative legislation, the police are already able to seize off-road bikes without notice. The new clause would remove the prohibition on the police entering a private dwelling to confiscate an off-road bike and ensure that police destroyed seized bikes rather than selling them back into the market. I urge the Minister—in fact, I beg her—to look again comprehensively at how we tackle the scourge of off-road bikes. I would also like to draw the House’s attention to new clause 131, which would introduce mandatory deportation for foreign nationals found in possession of child sexual abuse images. These sick paedophiles have no place in our country and they, along with all foreign offenders, should be deported. To conclude, the British people want our police to be able to focus on putting real criminals behind bars—the thieves who nick our hard-working tradesmen’s tools—not spending time policing playground squabbles and treating them like crimes. Our Opposition new clauses are common-sense changes that I hope the whole House will get behind, protecting victims and restoring policing to what it is meant to be: tackling crime on our streets.