Luke Taylor

I completely agree. It is about the feeling of powerlessness, as a resident—as a citizen—just standing on the high street and seeing these things whizz past, not being able to do anything about it, and knowing that that person could be long gone by the time the police are able to respond. It is clear, from all the words spoken around this hall today, that the Government must urgently restore proper community policing. To do this, we must get more officers out on the streets, funded partially by scrapping the costly police and crime commissioner experiment and investing the savings directly into frontline policing. We must also, as I have said, reverse the disastrous cuts to PCSOs and to safer neighbourhood team officer numbers. On the specific point about the illegal use of off-road vehicles, I know that many forces have made some great initial efforts, from increasing patrols in hotspots, to using drones—as we have heard from the hon. Members for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell) and for Stoke-on-Trent North (David Williams)—to the use of trackable forensic sprays, but we need more. I hope the Government will bring forward effective measures on this issue in the Crime and Policing Bill—I look forward to scrutinising it in greater detail on Second Reading next week—but it is also important that everyone in this place urges forces to feel confident in using the powers that are already available to them, despite the flaws with the legislation that have been commented on already.