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Antisocial Behaviour

I shall make a little progress, if I may, because I am in the first paragraph of my speech. It would be fair to say that in most of the Don Valley communities that I represent, antisocial behaviour is still one of the biggest concerns that my constituents raise with me. We have heard again this afternoon about its impact on our poorer communities, but it crosses communities and it is not only adults and young people from poorer backgrounds who cause problems. I spent some time with safer neighbourhood teams in my constituency this summer and was told by police officers, as I was by those in other parts of the country when I was a Home Office Minister, that one thing that they find galling is parents turning up to a local park and unloading their kids from their 4x4s with alcohol to amuse themselves for the evening. That is not acceptable, and the need for parental responsibility applies to all parents, no matter what their level of income. In Don Valley and Doncaster, I have seen some real progress compared with 10 or 11 years ago, when it seemed that the criminal justice system did not really care about or understand the impact of antisocial behaviour. Some 13, 15 or 20 years ago, the police were short-staffed and ran from crisis to crisis. If a neighbourhood had a community police officer, that officer was pretty much on their own. In the police service, that sort of policing was not seen as valuable to future career prospects. Now we have seen some positive changes. At that time, antisocial behaviour went largely unrecognised and the police often did not have the time to come out and deal with complaints about youth nuisance, harassment or intimidation. Even when members of the public reported incidents of antisocial behaviour, the reports were not collected and often went into a black hole. The police would then say, "Well, nobody's complaining to us", and the community would say, "We are complaining, but nobody is gathering the intelligence and using it effectively." That failure to address antisocial behaviour undermined public confidence in local police, but it was also a failure of Governments past. It was a failure of leadership, resources and the will to address the underlying causes of such behaviour. It became clear, particularly to Labour Members, that we needed to respect the families who faced harassment and intimidation outside their front door day in, day out. We needed to take on a criminal justice system that did not understand and was not really interested. Tackling antisocial behaviour is an example of a public policy originally advocated not by the professionals but from the grass roots in our communities, and supported by elected representatives who were determined to get action. The Labour Government got it and sought to improve the situation. New resources have been provided to rebuild communities such as mine, coal mining communities savaged by the loss of traditional employment, and a focus on education standards has meant that we have gone from only 34 per cent. of young people getting five GCSEs at A to C in 1998 to 71 per cent. in 2009. There have been extra community funding, home security initiatives and youth funding. There are more police officers—13,500 more nationally—and new police community support officers to supplement their work, which has been central to turning the antisocial behaviour problem around. I am pleased to say that across South Yorkshire, like many parts of the country, we now have dedicated safer neighbourhood teams, with police officers, PCSOs and community wardens working with other agencies and accountable to the neighbourhoods that they cover. We have identified the power gaps and bureaucracy that got in the way of action, and we are putting the situation right. There is always room for improvement, and policies and practices are always worth reflecting on and changing if necessary. There is no doubt that the Government have got a lot right in tackling crime, but there is more to do. We are the only Government to have reversed the rising trend of crime not for one year but year on year for more than a decade. Crime is now a third lower, and in Doncaster it has fallen by 10 per cent. in each of the past two years.