Lola McEvoy

I agree wholeheartedly with my hon. Friend. The funding formula is not in Durham police’s favour. We need funding formula reform, and we need it soon. I would also say that it is all well and good funding neighbourhood policing, which will act as a deterrent, but we simply do not have the resources to tackle the organised and very serious crime that is often masked as antisocial behaviour. I would argue that the scourge of balaclava-clad people on electric battery-powered bikes and dirt bikes on our roads is encouraging a more blatant flouting of the law in other areas. I ask the Minister to address the fact that although communities are making a comprehensive attempt to report the use of these off-road bikes, by the time the police turn up, the culprits have obviously fled on those vehicles wearing a balaclava, and go completely unidentified. I therefore ask for some investigation into tracking the sale of these bikes or into other ways we can identify the wearers, who are blatantly dealing drugs in the town and surrounding areas. I know that the Minister will be meeting the Department for Transport to address lots of these issues in a cross-departmental approach, but I ask that the Durham and north-east police forces, which are on the frontline, are seen as a pilot for any interventions. We have been given drones by our police and crime commissioners, but they are only as good as the police officers on the ground who follow them. It is all well and good seeing where the bikes are going, but if officers cannot then go and identify those using them, because it is seen as too little of a crime to drive one on the road, then it is not in their interests to use those resources to follow them. It is also not in the police’s interests to engage in a very dangerous high-speed chase down the main roads, because they know that that will endanger pedestrians. I ask the Minister to understand some of the challenges we are facing in Darlington and the surrounding areas. I urge her to see what I have said not as an MP clutching her pearls and saying, “We are a lovely town”—which we are—“and we deserve better,” but as a canary down the mine for what criminals think they can get away with. If it is happening in Darlington in the north-east, you can bet your bottom dollar that it will happen right across the country.