Robbie Moore

My inbox is flooded with correspondence from concerned constituents about a string of issues related to antisocial behaviour across Keighley and Ilkley: masked people in balaclavas riding e-bikes on pavements; quad bikes doing doughnuts in public spaces; deliberately loud cars racing through the centre of Keighley and along the bypass; a group of teenagers that has made Keighley bus station somewhere people now want to avoid; laughing gas cannisters, nitrous oxide, being used illegally by those driving under its influence and then thrown out of the window. People are seeing this every single day, and it is having a negative consequence on our area. It should not continue. In areas like Dalton Mills, justice is not prevailing. In 2022, 100 firefighters attended an arson attack. Some £50 million of damage was caused, with £130,000 of impact to local businesses and lives put at risk, yet the perpetrator got a suspended prison sentence—a slap on the wrist. That only gives the green light for further attacks to take place; there is no deterrent at all. One of my constituents said to me: “I rarely, if ever, see any…form of authority addressing these issues.” That brings me to the Government’s narrative of increasing neighbourhood police numbers to 13,000. Police officers have put to me that new recruits are not coming into their force; there is simply a reshuffling of the deckchairs, where officers who are already doing a good job elsewhere within their local force are reallocated to neighbourhood police work. Can the Minister tell me how many additional new recruits have joined our neighbourhood police teams, and specifically how many have been added in West Yorkshire? Where police officers have been reallocated from their teams, what analysis are the Government doing of whether there has been a negative impact elsewhere?