I beg to move, That this House has considered anti-social behaviour and illegal use of off-road bikes. It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Dr Murrison. I am so pleased to secure this debate about off-road bikes and antisocial behaviour.

It is great to see so many Members here today standing up for their communities against the menace of off-road bikes. Across my constituency, in Tipton, Wednesbury and Coseley, residents have told me over and over again about what off-road bikes do to their lives.

Riders scramble across parks and playing fields, turning the turf into mud, disrupting sports games, dog walkers and kids playing or riding their bikes, scaring mums with prams and scattering walkers out of the way.

They then shoot off around the roads of our estates, filling the air with the noise of engines and the smell of burning oil, endangering anyone trying to cross the road or sometimes even walk on the pavement. Residents have told me time and again how unsafe it makes them feel.

I am going to share some of their stories. Other Members might have stories they wish to share, and I will happily take interventions.

Ian Carroll, the chair of Friends of Sheepwash nature reserve, told me about bikers shooting down the paths and jumping off banks with young children sat on the handlebars. Christine in Great Bridge told me about tripping and falling on the ruts left by bikes.

Kelly, a mum to a disabled child, told me about nearly being hit on the towpath. Matthew told me about bikes mounting the pavement and driving at him in Friar Park. Brendan talked to me about wheelies down Wood Green Road in Wednesbury.

Jo talked to me about walking down Princes End High Street with her child: a rider raced round the bend onto the pavement in front of them and swerved back onto the road at the last minute with a load of abuse.

Jayne told me about riders doing wheelies by Great Bridge island, riding all over the road, on the wrong side, jumping red lights and intimidating drivers and pedestrians.

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. I know from a recent walkabout with the local police in Bean in my constituency, and from conversations I have had in Swanscombe, about residents being extremely concerned about off-road biking.

I have had a lot of concern from residents about off-road biking in Darenth Woods. The police know where the hotspots are and they often know who the perpetrators are, but they lack the powers to tackle them. Does my hon.

Friend agree that the measures in the Crime and Policing Bill to make it easier for police to seize vehicles associated with antisocial behaviour cannot come soon enough?

My hon. Friend is correct. I so look forward to the Crime and Policing Bill coming forward in the next couple of weeks. It will give police the powers to seize those antisocial bikes.

My hon. Friend is correct. By working together—the police, councils and local communities—we can stop this happening.

I heard more stories, including from Terri-Ann in Hateley Heath, who told me that she is just waiting for someone to get hurt because they go so fast down Jowetts Lane and Lynton Avenue.

Paul contacted me one Saturday when there were seven illegal scrambler motorbikes at the top of Brunswick Park, pulling wheelies, ripping up the grass and destroying the football pitch. They were right up close to 15 kids who were trying to play football.

As he said to me, it does not bear thinking about what would have happened if one of them had crashed into a kid. This is a problem across Sandwell and in Dudley, but we have particular hotspots in Friar Park in Wednesbury and in and around Tipton Green.

I want to be clear that our local police, the council and our police and crime commissioner Simon Foster all know that this is a problem. Together, we are taking action on off-road bikes. In Friar Park, our No.

1 hotspot, the council leafleted every house so that people know that their tenancy is at risk if they or their kids ride illegal bikes, and it closed off the entrances to our parks and towpaths.

I will build on what my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell) said about the action that the council is taking. One of the things that residents have brought up with us is their difficulty in phoning 101 and getting a response.

The council in Stoke worked collaboratively with the police to set up a hotline number and overlayed the data with the police. This means that they get a good picture of where the activity is taking place so that they can get the drones up, follow the bikes back and seize them.

Stoke-on-Trent city council has a really good model that could be rolled out elsewhere. Does my hon. Friend agree?

It sounds like there is really good work going on in Stoke that the rest of us can learn from, and I encourage everyone to think about doing so. Back in my area of Friar Park, the police got petrol stations to report when bikers bought fuel.

They put up temporary CCTV to spot where bikes went and when they met, and the police stepped up patrols. Our police and crime commissioner sent out his new bike team officers on new Honda CRFs, funded by cash seized from criminals, so the bikes cannot just disappear off into the woodland.

All that intel meant that police could go to addresses linked to nuisance bikes, and guess what they found? Not just illegal bikes to seize and riders to arrest, but stolen goods and criminals wanted for robbery, burglary and road traffic offences.

I have three great towns in my constituency—Heanor, Ripley and Alfreton—but sadly, Amber Valley is not immune to issues with off-road bikes. My hon. Friend talks about intelligence leading to solving crimes.

Does she agree that community policing and the increased numbers of officers that the Government will provide will be central to intelligence gathering and working with our community to tackle this sort of antisocial behaviour?

My hon. Friend is completely right. It is neighbourhood policing that will make the difference, and I am so pleased that we are bringing it back. Most of the bikes in my area are stolen and are often used for other crimes, such as robbery and drug dealing.

But this sort of targeted action works, and police reports of nuisance bikes in Friar Park, our biggest hotspot, have halved this year compared with last year.

They are still not gone completely, and there is more work to do, but I want to say thank you to the police officers and the Sandwell council teams who got on this issue and kept on it.

There is still more to do to spread this approach across my constituency to all the estates blighted by illegal bikes and ASB—from Tipton Green, Princes End, Great Bridge, Ocker Hill, Hateley Heath and Tantany, to Stone Cross and Coseley, too.

We have to make sure that the police have the powers, money and kit to stop these bikes once and for all. Over the years, they have been hamstrung by huge cuts to policing from the Conservatives, meaning that we lagged far behind similar-sized forces.

When Labour was elected last summer, there were fewer officers in the west midlands than in 2010—800 fewer officers and 400 fewer police community support officers.

That is why I am so pleased that, after 14 years of the Tories, who wrote off these crimes as low-level and left our communities alone to deal with the consequences, things are changing under Labour.

Having a neighbourhood police team who know the places, faces and times to expect trouble makes all the difference.

In my constituency, illegally modified motorbikes and e-scooters are a huge problem, because of not just the noise, but the thefts, shoplifting and antisocial driving in general, as other hon. Members have mentioned.

The police are under-resourced and I agree that they need more powers to clamp down on this, but does my hon.

Friend agree that the police need to take the initiative to work more closely and co-operatively with councils’ local teams, such as the law enforcement team in Fulham and the street enforcement team in Chelsea, to crack this problem?

I absolutely agree. Chelsea and Fulham may be some way from my constituency, but councils and the police working together, and consistency of approach, is precisely what will make the difference, just as he outlined.

I absolutely agree. Digging up pavements, creating ruts, noise and disturbance, and shooting around the corner with no warning are precisely the sorts of things that may make elderly people afraid for their safety when they are out and about, which is something that none of us wants.

That is why, as we promised when we stood for election, we will recruit 13,000 extra neighbourhood police officers. Every area will have a named officer. Neighbourhood policing is coming back and we are returning funding to frontline policing, with an overall police funding increase of £1.

1 billion this year. In my area of the west midlands, that is £43 million, and I hope that there is more to come. Our new Crime and Policing Bill will give police new powers to immediately seize these bikes, which cause havoc in our communities.

I take this opportunity to thank my hon. Friend for supporting my ten-minute rule Bill about police powers on this issue, which I presented in November.

I appreciate that the particular powers that I asked for were not exactly where Ministers wanted to go, but I like to think that they have been inspired by my Bill in choosing the additional powers that they have put in the flagship Crime and Policing Bill.

I am thinking particularly of the measure that removes the need for the police to issue a warning before seizing these illegal vehicles when they are used antisocially. I thank the other hon. Members who supported the ten-minute rule Bill, and I thank hon.

Members for continuing to highlight this very important issue.

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. His work and leadership on this issue are exemplary, and I know that Ministers will have taken note of what he said when presenting his ten-minute rule Bill.

Our Crime and Policing Bill will say, “No more warnings” and “No more selling them back to the people they were pinched from”—it is time to crush illegal bikes used for antisocial behaviour.

This Government are taking real action, just as we promised at the election, to stop these bikes making people’s lives a misery, so that people living nearby can enjoy Brunswick Park, Jubilee Park, Victoria Park, the Cracker and the Railer, Sheepwash nature reserve, our playing fields, our towpaths and all our green spaces across Tipton, Wednesbury and Coseley.

At the election, I stood on doorstep after doorstep, sometimes with bikes roaring down the street behind me, telling residents that Labour would stop them. I am prouder than I can tell you to say: today we will.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Murrison. I thank the hon. Member for Tipton and Wednesbury (Antonia Bance) for setting the scene—what energy! I will set the scene by describing the situation in Northern Ireland and what we are doing there.

Last year, there were 44,020 antisocial behaviour issues with motorbikes, which is a decrease from the year before, but still a shocking number. I want to outline some of the things that we have done to help with the process that the hon. Lady is trying to find.

The real problem is that the Police Service of Northern Ireland feels that its hands are tied. That is why I welcome the new measures on the seizure of bikes, which the Minister outlined back in November, as a supreme effort that would clearly change the focus.

In Northern Ireland, we have done two things. First, my local council, Ards and North Down borough council, has taken measures to provide an area for off-road biking in Newtownards. Whitespots is a beautiful area that gives those who want to ride their bikes a controlled space in which to do so.

That has been constructive, and in my previous life as an Assembly Member and a councillor, something that I promoted in the constituency of Strangford. We had a real problem in some of the areas. Secondly, we have enhanced the influence of street pastors and the community police.

If I am spared until May, I will start my 41st year as an elected representative—councillor, Assembly Member and Member of Parliament. I believe in rehabilitation and not simply incarceration, because I believe in my heart that many young people wish to change.

They need vocations, jobs, training and something to focus on. I have seen enough examples to believe that rehabilitation can work. Antisocial behaviour can make people’s lives a nightmare; I understand that very well—those are the complaints that I am getting.

Police need the power to deal with it. I support the desire of the hon. Member for Tipton and Wednesbury to get that right and do it better.

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Tipton and Wednesbury (Antonia Bance) for securing this important debate. It is important to note that the Labour party is the party of neighbourhood policing.

People can see that when they look at the number of Government Members present and, sadly, the absence of Conservative Members.

I will not go into the entirety of my prepared speech, because I need to keep my contribution short, but I want to mention a conversation that I had on Saturday when I was out talking to residents in Haywood Village in Weston-super-Mare.

One woman, Sue, was telling me about her anxiety when taking her dog for a walk—just to the local park. She was shouted at and nearly knocked over by people on bikes who were not exercising basic consideration for others. Her companion is her small dog. She is a carer for her husband.

Her local community is so important to her, but the bikes are having the impact of constraining her existence. That is not okay. This activity is not just reckless; it is dangerous—it puts lives at risk. It isolates people from their communities and burdens our police and councils.

It chips away at the sense of safety that every community deserves. I am so proud that this Government are committed to restoring neighbourhood policing.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison. I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Tipton and Wednesbury (Antonia Bance) for her excellent work on this important matter.

I offer my wholehearted support to the Minister and the Government for their important work tackling these terrible forms of antisocial behaviour.

In the time available to me, I want to point out two examples of how serious this problem is in my community of Reading, and the really serious appalling incidents that residents have seen in recent times.

In the first case, a group of riders on high-powered electric bikes clad in black with balaclavas and hoodies, with no helmets, were pulling wheelies down the Reading Inner Distribution Road. That is a major trunk road that runs round the town centre.

It is full of cars and vehicles, and it has a 40 mph speed limit, so it is totally unsuitable for off-road bikes. That is extremely reckless and dangerous. It puts other people’s lives at risk along with the lives of the riders. I think that incident was appalling and action should be taken.

I am grateful to the Minister for her work on tackling the problem. The second example was in some ways even worse. I saw it myself and reported it to the police. It was an example of a similar group and similar behaviour.

They were dressed in the same way, riding motorbikes next to the River Thames in Caversham, which is a suburb of Reading. There is a ramp to a footbridge by the river there, and that ramp is probably 12 or 15 feet above the floodplain, with a gentle grass slope on either side.

There was a group of young people clad in black with high-powered bikes using it to do Evel Knievel-style jumps through the air. They were getting about 2 or 3 metres into the air. There were families having picnics nearby and people trying to use the footbridge.

That is an example of the sort of appalling behaviour that unfortunately exists around the country.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. She is a doughty campaigner on this issue, and exactly as she said, it is a huge menace across our county and around the country. My hon. Friend the Member for Bracknell (Peter Swallow), who is just down the road, also mentioned it. My hon.

Friend the Member for Reading West and Mid Berkshire (Olivia Bailey) is absolutely right that the police are doing some excellent work and that they need more powers, and I thank the Government for their work on this matter.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison. I thank my constituency neighbour and hon. Friend the Member for Tipton and Wednesbury (Antonia Bance) for securing this debate about the scourge of these illegal bikes.

They are a nightmare; they are intimidating; they are used for crime; they keep our residents awake at night when they tear up and down the roads; and they tear up our green spaces.

Before Christmas, we had a terrible incident in West Bromwich when some lovely football fields in Charlemont were fine one day but the next day completely ripped up. A local football club, Bustleholme FC, had spent thousands investing in those pitches.

In one night, a few people tore them all up; it was a disgrace. We have beautiful canals in the Black Country that people would like to walk along, but they cannot because they are terrorised by bikers going up and down, nearly knocking them into the water, which is outrageous.

I am glad that this Government are finally going to do something about it. I briefly want to mention the related issue of ghost number plates. They are illegal number plates that look normal to the human eye but cannot be read by police automatic number plate recognition cameras.

That means that people, including those using these bikes, can speed, run red lights and even carry out serious crimes, while evading being caught. Those number plates are currently too easy to get. If the police catch someone with them, the punishment is far too little.

I worry that, if we do not clamp down on them, those ghost number plates will end up terrorising our communities in exactly the way the bikes have been doing for far too long.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Murrison. I also thank my fellow Black Country hon. Friend the Member for Tipton and Wednesbury (Antonia Bance) for bringing this important debate.

The people of Wolverhampton North East have had it with the reckless, illegal use of off-road bikes. The problem has been spiralling for years. They intimidate residents, scare children and pets and churn up our precious green spaces, often involving additional criminality.

I have heard from countless constituents who are at their wits’ end. I am working closely with neighbourhood police teams to share residents’ intelligence, in areas where street racing plagues communities at all hours and parks are ploughed up. I can understand why people feel abandoned.

This issue has been debated in Parliament and here in Westminster Hall time and time again—February 2024, July 2023, May 2022—and yet the previous Government failed to act. Instead of strengthening laws and properly funding policing, they chose to look the other way while communities suffered.

Does my hon. Friend agree that the section 59 legislation allowed these bikers to get away with a warning the first time, which just meant that we continued to see persistent biking crime by the same people and the police felt powerless to stop them?

That was the consistent position of the previous Conservative Government; they did not listen. Does she welcome the change that is coming through in the forthcoming Crime and Policing Bill?

I absolutely welcome the forthcoming legislation, because the previous Conservative Government could not say that they were not warned; they were warned again and again, but they ignored the warnings and let down towns and cities across the country.

That is why I am working directly with our local neighbourhood police teams to make sure that the worst of these offenders are caught. However, we must be real—14 years of cuts to neighbourhood policing have left us in this desperate situation.

West Midlands police now has 540 fewer police officers than in 2010. Fewer bobbies on the beat means fewer boots on the ground, and it also means less community intelligence.

Instead of such community intelligence, the police have to rely on residents to identify offenders and to say where such bikes are stored. Many residents feel uncomfortable, even scared, at the thought of speaking out, so worried are they about retribution if their names should become public.

I welcome Labour’s plan to rebuild neighbourhood policing. I support Labour’s Crime and Policing Bill, because it will give police the powers they need. No more warnings—if someone is caught riding illegally, their bike will be seized.

This issue is not just about nuisance; it is about being safe and feeling safe.

So, I say to the people of Wolverhampton North East, “I hear you: I am with you, and we are taking action to give police the powers, the officers and the resources they need to tackle the scourge of illegal off-road biking.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Tipton and Wednesbury (Antonia Bance) on securing this very important debate.

As with everybody else who has spoken today, my constituents in Hartlepool have raised this issue with me time and time again.

Communities across our towns—such as those in The Fens, Owton Manor, Summerfield, Clavering and Hartfields—as well the community in Hartlepool town centre, have been plagued and terrorised by off-road bikes for years. This issue is personal for so many people in Westminster Hall today.

My children walk our streets and play in our parks; my elderly parents enjoy Hartlepool and its many green spaces. I worry for them and for my constituents, just as everybody else present for this debate worries about their constituents. We have to take action.

So, I of course welcome the measures in the Crime and Policing Bill, including those that will allow such bikes to be seized without warning. That is an important first step, but there is more that we can do, and I will make a few suggestions to the Minister who is here today.

We should explore providing greater legal protections for our police forces, so that they feel confident to pursue these criminals when they terrorise our communities. I urge the Government to adopt the Off-road Bikes (Police Powers) Bill, a private Member’s Bill introduced by my hon.

Friend the Member for North Durham (Luke Akehurst), which would allow the police to enter private dwellings and seize off-road bikes.

We should introduce a requirement to certificate the ownership of off-road bikes in much the same way as we do with firearms, to ensure tighter regulation of who can access these vehicles. We should be able to destroy vehicles immediately once they are seized.

No holding them for periods of time—destroy them on the same day so that they do not re-enter circulation. We should work with retailers to choke off the supply of fuel, which is so often part of the problem with these bikes. This requires decisive action.

I welcome the action being taken in the Crime and Policing Bill, but I believe we can go further to end this problem.

The hon. Member makes a really interesting point. I was reflecting on my own constituency, where, from leafy Thorpe Thewles to the infinity bridge in the centre of town, we have this issue with off-road bikes as well. Does the hon.

Member agree that no community around the country is immune from this scourge?

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.

In the last year that the Conservatives were in power, off-roads bike incidents went up by 60% in my Telford constituency. The pathetic spectacle of police officers having to issue warnings to these yobs was at the heart of it. Does the hon.

Gentleman want to apologise now for not reforming the police system to remove that?

That will teach me to take an intervention. I think, actually, one of the big problems is that off-road bike incidents are not recorded in a way that allows us to properly measure what is going on, where they are and what the response is.

I think the best thing that was done at the back end of the last Administration was putting more police on the streets than ever before. That was a good thing.

Will the hon. Member give way?

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Murrison. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Tipton and Wednesbury (Antonia Bance) on securing this debate and on her very powerful and energetic opening speech. I am grateful to her and all the other hon.

Members who have spoken this afternoon. The number who have been able to speak shows how important this issue is to our constituents. We have heard from my hon.

Friends the Members for Dartford (Jim Dickson), for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell), for Stoke-on-Trent North (David Williams), for Amber Valley (Linsey Farnsworth), for Chelsea and Fulham (Ben Coleman), for North West Cambridgeshire (Sam Carling), for North Durham (Luke Akehurst)—in particular, we heard about the 10-minute rule Bill he brought forward—for Bracknell (Peter Swallow), for Weston-super-Mare (Dan Aldridge), for Erewash (Adam Thompson), for Reading Central (Matt Rodda), for West Bromwich (Sarah Coombes), for Wolverhampton North East (Mrs Brackenridge), for Wirral West (Matthew Patrick), for Hartlepool (Mr Brash), for Stockton North (Chris McDonald) and for Telford (Shaun Davies), and of course the hon.

Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon). It just shows the geographical spread of this problem. We are all in agreement that antisocial behaviour is a blight on people and places, wherever it happens. It affects communities in different ways and comes in different forms.

In Morecambe, local organisations have come together to try to tackle antisocial behaviour. I met with Safe Morecambe to give my support and to find out more about what they are doing.

Does the Minister agree that bringing local organisations together is an effective way to tackle antisocial behaviour and these bikes, and that all police forces should be working with other local organisations?

Absolutely. Bringing together all the key partners is vital if we are to tackle this—I will say something about that in a moment. The main focus of the debate has been the antisocial use of off-road bikes and other vehicles. In her opening speech, my hon.

Friend the Member for Tipton and Wednesbury catalogued the very real impact this has on the people in her constituency—I think she must have set a record for the number of constituents and places in her constituency she mentioned.

We heard some shocking examples, and I share her deep concerns about all of them. It is unacceptable for law-abiding citizens to be left feeling unsafe and intimidated by the actions of a selfish, reckless few.

The near-misses; the noise; the damage to parks and green spaces—it is simply not acceptable. People have the right to feel safe in their neighbourhoods, town centres and public spaces. As my hon.

Friend the Member for Tipton and Wednesbury set out, the police are operationally independent and Government cannot instruct them on what to do, or instruct the local authority to take action on particular cases. However, I want to reassure her and all hon.

Members that we are very much alive to the menace and harm that antisocial behaviour, particularly through the use of vehicles, is causing to communities. We take it extremely seriously. As a constituency MP, I know very well this is a real problem in my patch, too.

Every single week, I hear about this issue from constituents in Park End, Easterside and across south Middlesbrough. Will the Minister assure my constituents that passing the Crime and Policing Bill will ensure that these bikes are seized and crushed, and that our streets are made safe again?