Contribution
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms McVey. I congratulate the hon. Member for Ashfield (Lee Anderson) on securing this important debate.
Liberal Democrats believe that everyone deserves to feel safe in their own homes and walking down their own streets, but for too many that is not something they can rely on. Antisocial behaviour can have a devastating impact on individuals, families and neighbourhoods, causing distress to tenants and landlords. Police force freedom of information requests obtained by the Liberal Democrats last April found that under the previous Government, average police response times to antisocial behaviour incidents increased by 37% from 2021. Some forces took an average of 17.5 hours to attend, if they attended the scene at all. In some ways, that is unsurprising, given that under the last Government 4,500 police community support officers were taken off our streets from 2015 onwards.
Only last April in my Taunton and Wellington constituency, we saw how the outgoing Conservative police and crime commissioner reduced PCSOs by a further 80 in Avon and Somerset, where only 19% of reported antisocial behaviour incidents are attended by the police. I am urging the chief constable to put more officers on the beat in Taunton town centre right now to tackle antisocial behaviour in that environment.
Years of ineffective resourcing under previous Conservative Governments, particularly since 2015, have left police forces overstretched, ending the kind of community policing that is so valuable in tackling antisocial behaviour. The Liberal Democrats stand for bringing back proper community policing and for a tough, evidence-based and therefore effective approach to eradicating antisocial behaviour for the benefit of all decent, law-abiding residents and communities.
Antisocial behaviour can include a range of nuisance and criminal behaviours that cause distress. Examples include noisy, abusive behaviour, vandalism, intimidation, drunkenness, littering, fly-tipping, drug use and excessively barking dogs. Whether someone’s actions can be classed as antisocial behaviour relies heavily on the impact it has on other people, so antisocial behaviour is a complex problem. It has many root causes, which means they all need to be tackled together to effectively address it.
Landlords rightly have important powers to remove tenants who are genuinely damaging property or the surrounding community, and I refer the House to my experience as a social housing landlord, as declared in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. However, those powers cannot come at the price of putting all tenants at unjustified risk of eviction for no reason. That is why we have long campaigned for an end to no-fault evictions, and we welcome the Government’s legislation to bring that to reality in the Renters’ Rights Bill. We fought hard for a fair definition of antisocial behaviour during consideration of the Renters (Reform) Bill under the previous Government, and we will continue to defend tenants against unfair eviction, which itself can be a form of antisocial behaviour.
Landlords, the police and local authorities rightly consider all the factors when deciding how best to deal with reports of antisocial behaviour. Each report is looked at individually, with consideration given to the suffering of the victims and the impact on the wider community, but just one such incident can lead to eviction from social housing—a form of “one strike and you’re out”, which is in place across the country. That is a vital tool, which landlords need and have, and the Liberal Democrats support it. I was pleased to hear the hon. Member for Mansfield (Steve Yemm) support a similar approach.
Extending the one-strike approach we currently have to three strikes would simply be a soundbite and would make the law weaker, giving comfort and credence to the most antisocial culprits. The best deterrent would be to resource the powers and police forces we already have and to make them work. Simply evicting people on to the streets will not reduce the incidence of ASB—rather, it will move the antisocial behaviour from the house to the street, where all the evidence suggests it will only get worse.
One cause of antisocial behaviour, according to studies such as that by Stansfield in the British Journal of Criminology, is housing instability itself. That is why social housing is critical, not just to provide homes for those who need them, but to create stable communities where people can thrive. Liberal Democrats are actively pushing for 150,000 new social homes per year to be built, which would not only reduce housing instability but ensure that there are enough homes for those who need them.