Antisocial Behaviour in Town Centres – [Esther McVey in the Chair] | Westminster Hall debates

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms McVey, and I am delighted that the hon. Member for Keighley (Robbie Moore) was able to secure this debate on an incredibly important topic. Perhaps we can forgive him for some of his colourful attacks on his Labour party colleagues because sometimes there is a direct correlation between an MP’s majority and the scale of their exaggerations against their opponents. However, the hon. Gentleman made some good points, and I agree 100% that antisocial behaviour is a plague that haunts many of our communities.

It is a shame that the Government have only recently woken up to the challenges of antisocial behaviour. I have attended debates at which Ministers have described antisocial behaviour as low level and not something they had chosen to prioritise in the past, and if Members look at the strategies that the Government have published in recent years, they will see that antisocial behaviour barely got a mention. The Labour party takes antisocial behaviour seriously. It is not low level; it is ruining lives.