Alex Norris

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms McVey. Christmas may be over, but I have been visited by the ghost of Christmas future, who has shown me what my life might look like in 2030. I have to say that I would be amazed if I am still a Minister in 2030, but it would be a privilege to have had a long career serving my country. I would love that. I thank the hon. Member for Ashfield (Lee Anderson) for securing this debate. I am in this Chamber a lot, as are a lot of other hon. Members here, and my favourite debates are not the ones in which individuals bring up very interesting issues that they are interested in— I have done that myself with things that I have a long, enduring interest in—but those that are really rooted in the lives of our constituents. This is one of those. Colleagues of different political persuasions from different parts of the UK have the same challenge, and we get a lot of correspondence about it in our mailbags. More importantly, people in our communities deal with it every day. They do the decent thing—they go to work, work hard and bring their kids up—and they do not want much other than to be able to get on with a quiet life, but they have to go home to disturbance, noise, aggression, smell or whatever it is. It is so unfair and unjust that they have to live their lives that way. It is right that the Government and the Parliament of the day believe that this issue is important and that we have a role in changing it. Antisocial behaviour is not merely a nuisance but has devastating personal consequences. It corrodes people’s freedom, makes them not want to leave the house, damages their mental health and ultimately undermines their sense of home. That is why tackling antisocial behaviour is an important priority for this Government through our safer streets mission. We have committed on the record to put thousands of neighbourhood police and police community support officers into local communities so that residents have a named officer to turn to when things go wrong. Hon. Members have talked about the existing powers, which we think need to be augmented through respect orders. We need tough sanctions and proper penalties. Crucially—this is a significant gap at the moment—we need serious and growing penalties for those who persistently offend. The hon. Member for Ashfield said that social housing is a gem, and I agree. The bedrock of my community is good, decent homes where people can grow up, go to work, thrive and live their lives. It makes it doubly painful when a small number of individuals who have this gem—this thing that many others on the waiting list would be desperate to secure—choose to perpetrate antisocial behaviour and make their neighbours’ lives a misery. It is a double insult. I will address his three strikes point a little later, but I will give a clear response on that. The hon. Member also talked about the important relationship between central Government, local government, the providers and the police. This is an all-sector approach to try to tackle these individuals and to assemble the right powers, whether through tenancies, the effectiveness of the courts, or providers themselves doing their jobs. Those are points that I will cover. Any debate that starts with Clement Attlee is a good debate. If we look around the country we can see the impact of his Labour Government and subsequent Labour Governments. Whether it is social housing, our national health service or the minimum wage, we built the basic standards that make people’s lives better and help them thrive. This Government will govern in that spirit, and I look forward to the support of the hon. Members for Ashfield and for Boston and Skegness (Richard Tice).