Matt Rodda

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison. I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Tipton and Wednesbury (Antonia Bance) for her excellent work on this important matter. I offer my wholehearted support to the Minister and the Government for their important work tackling these terrible forms of antisocial behaviour. In the time available to me, I want to point out two examples of how serious this problem is in my community of Reading, and the really serious appalling incidents that residents have seen in recent times. In the first case, a group of riders on high-powered electric bikes clad in black with balaclavas and hoodies, with no helmets, were pulling wheelies down the Reading Inner Distribution Road. That is a major trunk road that runs round the town centre. It is full of cars and vehicles, and it has a 40 mph speed limit, so it is totally unsuitable for off-road bikes. That is extremely reckless and dangerous. It puts other people’s lives at risk along with the lives of the riders. I think that incident was appalling and action should be taken. I am grateful to the Minister for her work on tackling the problem. The second example was in some ways even worse. I saw it myself and reported it to the police. It was an example of a similar group and similar behaviour. They were dressed in the same way, riding motorbikes next to the River Thames in Caversham, which is a suburb of Reading. There is a ramp to a footbridge by the river there, and that ramp is probably 12 or 15 feet above the floodplain, with a gentle grass slope on either side. There was a group of young people clad in black with high-powered bikes using it to do Evel Knievel-style jumps through the air. They were getting about 2 or 3 metres into the air. There were families having picnics nearby and people trying to use the footbridge. That is an example of the sort of appalling behaviour that unfortunately exists around the country.