Contribution
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich North (Alice Macdonald) for securing this important debate.
I will start with a quick stocktake of my constituency and the region. I am immensely proud of my community, as I know everyone in this room is of their own, and I do not want to be accused of doing my town down in any way, but we undoubtedly have some important challenges with antisocial behaviour. In January 2024, we were the worst major town in Hertfordshire for antisocial behaviour, with more than 200 reported incidents. The town centre, which should be—and is—a great place to meet friends and loved ones and do some shopping, is now one of the most dangerous in the county. Dacorum has the highest number of vulnerable children at risk of exploitation by drug dealers and county lines in Hertfordshire. Indeed, we have a long-standing issue with drugs. I do not talk about this often, for obvious reasons, but even members of my own family have in the past been affected by drug addiction issues due to scumbag drug dealers peddling horrible drugs.
In Hemel Hempstead, the overall crime rate in 2023 was 95 crimes per 1,000 people. Damningly, between 2014 and 2024, the crime rate doubled. I am proud of my community, but we cannot allow the thugs to win. People often ask why we are in this mess, and it is impossible to ignore the indisputable fact that, in the time that the Conservatives were in power—14 years nationally and longer locally—local crime skyrocketed. They ignored antisocial behaviour, cut our police force by 20,000 officers nationally and took 60p out of every £1 from local authorities. Objectively, that is why we are where we are; this is their mess, and people in my patch are the ones who have to deal with it.
However, there is light at the end of the tunnel. I was delighted to speak last night on Second Reading of the Government’s Crime and Policing Bill, and to vote in favour of it. It is at the heart of our Government’s safer streets mission, and I want to briefly touch on some aspects of the Bill that will help to combat antisocial behaviour in my patch and in the region.
Clause 1 will provide the police, local authorities and other agencies with a new power to tackle antisocial behaviour: respect orders. Like a stuck record, I will once again suggest that Hemel Hempstead should be considered for a respect order pilot. I believe that the orders will make an incredible difference to the hard-working local police force.
Clause 4 will make life tougher for criminals and thugs by increasing the upper limit for fixed penalty notices from £100 to £500. We must make sure that victims are prioritised and criminals face the full force of the law. There must be enough of a sting that they think twice before behaving in this manner.
Part 3 of the Bill will address retail crime, as others have mentioned. I will not repeat what I said in the Chamber yesterday, except to highlight the need to ensure that we are not letting people wander into our shops and steal what they want with impunity.
Clause 14 will introduce a new crime of assaulting a retail worker. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for South West Norfolk (Terry Jermy) for highlighting this point and I agree with him. I also put on the record my thanks to both USDAW and the Co-operative party for their hard work and campaigning on these issues over many years. We saw during covid that retail workers are not just hard-working, outstanding members of our community, but essential to our very survival, and I welcome the fact that the Labour Government will reflect that in law.
Labour is taking seriously the blight of antisocial behaviour, but so too have our police. As I have said before, I have been out with bobbies on the beat through a ride-along scheme. If any Member of this House has not taken part in such a scheme, I recommend that they do so—indeed, many police forces allow individual citizens to do so—because it is an eye-opening demonstration of the tough challenges that our police face. They are true heroes of our community.
Thanks to local police in Hertfordshire, we have seen some progress in tackling the blight of antisocial behaviour, despite the resource pressures that they have faced. I thank them again for their service. The force’s Operation Clear Hold Build in the Grovehill area of my town and Operation Hotspot in the town centre have brought significant uplifts in patrols and prevention.
I also thank the Minister for her engagement. I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to meet her recently to discuss some of the specific issues in my constituency, including antisocial behaviour hotspots such as Hosking Court, Livingstone Walk, Swallowfields. For too long, people in Hemel Hempstead have been let down, but this Labour Government are showing leadership. I look forward to continuing to do all that I can locally to ensure that the national changes that we make are felt in my town.