Dame Diana Johnson speech on tackling anti-social behaviour

Good morning, it is a real privilege to be speaking at this event and to be amongst a group so incredibly passionate about addressing anti-social behaviour at a national and local level.  

I can see we have a variety of professionals on the call and wanted to take this opportunity, firstly, to express my sincere gratitude for your continued efforts to tackle and prevent anti-social behaviour. Each and every one of you is equally important to this government’s mission to crack down on anti-social behaviour and to take back our streets.  

Having spent a lot of time asking the department challenging questions on how the government is tackling ASB as Chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee, it is an honour to have the opportunity of working with you now to deliver real change across the country and ensure that communities feel safe, secure and are able to thrive.  

Anti-social behaviour is not merely a low-level nuisance. It hits the poorest and most vulnerable communities hardest and, if left unchecked, leads to more serious offending – and I know this very well as a constituency MP in Hull. 

Everyone involved in this conference has a wealth of knowledge, insight and expertise that will help us deliver this mission. 

I’d now like to set out how I envisage this approach, the strategies we will be implementing and the importance of restoring public trust in both policing and local partners to create real, impactful change.  

Cracking down on anti-social behaviour is a top priority for this government, and a key part of our Safer Streets Mission.    

Too many town centres and high streets across the country have been gripped by an epidemic of anti-social behaviour, theft and shoplifting, which is corroding our communities and cannot be allowed to continue. 

Currently, the powers in the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014 do not go far enough to tackle anti-social behaviour. We will crack down on those causing havoc on our high streets by legislating to ensure that anti-social behaviour powers are as effective as possible to tackle repeat offending, in addition to tackling the plague of shoplifting that blights so many areas.  

This is why we will be introducing Respect Orders to tackle the worst ASB offenders and stamp out issues such as public drinking and drug use to ensure that our communities are free from harm and nuisance.  

The Respect Order will help ensure that persistent adult offenders of ASB are banned from public areas where they are causing harm to our communities. 

It is, of course, for local areas to decide how best to deploy these powers depending on the specific circumstances. They are best placed to understand what is driving the behaviour in question, the impact that it is having, and to determine the most appropriate response.  

Shoplifting is at a record high and continues to increase at an unacceptable level – and I saw this for myself when visiting my local Co-op in Hull, while I was in store shoplifting took place, with a holdall being filled with meat and the thief then walking out. 

More and more offenders are using violence and abuse against shopworkers to do this. It’s damaging business and hurting our communities. It’s vital people feel safe out in their local shops and on their high streets.  

And I welcome operational commitments that police made in the Retail Crime Action Plan last October, and there are positive outcomes already. But there is much more to do.    

So we are going to bring back neighbourhood policing, ensuring thousands of additional officers are out patrolling towns and communities as part of our mission to make streets safer.  

We will also end the effective immunity, introduced by the previous government, granted to low level shoplifting of goods under £200 to remove the perception that those committing low value shop theft will escape punishment. We will introduce a new offence of assaulting a retail worker to protect the hardworking and dedicated staff that work in stores. This is long overdue.   

Now turning to anti-social behaviour involving vehicles such as off-road bikes, motorbikes and e-scooters – they cause untold nuisance and misery for communities. We want to make it easier for the police to take illegal, dangerous and vehicle-related ASB off the streets for good, and quickly destroy vehicles that they seize from offenders.   

I want to just turn to recent trends in anti-social behaviour. 

In the year ending March 2024, the Crime Survey of England and Wales showed that around 35% of respondents personally witnessed or experienced anti-social behaviour in their local area.  

Groups hanging around on the streets, vehicle-related ASB and people using or dealing drugs were the most common types of anti-social behaviour reported.  

Now this is a statistic that we must aim to significantly reduce through consistent join up of police and local partners.  

​We also know that ASB is under reported to the police and other agencies. Either because people don’t know how to report it or because they feel it will not be taken seriously or addressed.  

A survey conducted in 2023 by YouGov on behalf of Resolve found that over 58% of victims or witnesses don’t report anti-social behaviour.   

The most common reasons for not reporting an incident was a feeling it was too trivial, not worth reporting and not thinking that it would be taken seriously, and I know, because my constituents have told me, that they often don’t report incidents because they feel that nobody cares and nothing is done. 

We need to change that. No victim of anti-social behaviour should feel that their issues will not be taken seriously or isn’t worth reporting.  

And I look forward to the annual ASB Awareness Week run by Resolve that is taking place from 18-24 November. The theme is ‘Making Communities Safer’. This will be a brilliant opportunity to raise awareness of what anti-social behaviour is and to promote the ASB Case Review, a mechanism which gives victims of repeated ASB the ability to request a formal case review where a locally defined threshold is met.  

It is vitally important that we place focus on helping the victims of ASB. 

ASB often affects the most vulnerable in our society, and we will work to ensure that the police, local authorities and local agencies, in addition to the tools and powers available to them to tackle ASB, are also aware of the support available to victims of ASB.   

I now want to turn to national strategies to invest in communities and prevent ASB from occurring in the long-term. 

The Home Secretary and I have been clear that we see neighbourhood policing as the bedrock of restoring public confidence in policing. The Neighbourhood Policing Guarantee will be a crucial part of that. 

Neighbourhood police officers are at the forefront of the fight against anti-social behaviour and for many years neighbourhood policing stood as the bedrock of that traditional British model of policing by consent.  

However, the last decade has seen the decline of neighbourhood policing to such an extent that many of the bonds of trust and respect between the police and local communities have been lost.  

And that’s why we will implement a new Neighbourhood Policing Guarantee, restoring patrols to town centres, recruiting thousands of additional police personnel, and ensuring every community has a named local police officer to turn to.  

As part of this we have agreed funding to support the College of Policing to roll out a specialist new training programme for neighbourhood officers across the country.   

The training will help equip neighbourhood officers with the knowledge they need to tackle anti-social behaviour, problem solve and engage effectively with the communities they serve. It is essential that our neighbourhood officers have the skills, knowledge and confidence to build local relationships and to tackle the issues that damage communities the most.  

Every community deserves local officers who understand what is needed to keep them safe. With this new training, and our Neighbourhood Policing Guarantee, we will deliver the change our towns and villages are desperate for.  

I understand that no single agency holds all the levers to tackle anti-social behaviour. Effective multi-agency working is crucial to reducing ASB and ensuring safer communities. 

That is why the strategies we are implementing are going to focus on preventing ASB in the long term and we are committed to intervening earlier to stop young people being drawn into crime.  

An essential part of achieving this will be the Young Futures programme.  

This will consist of the creation of prevention partnerships across England and Wales to map existing youth provision and at-risk individuals. These partnerships will work to ensure children and young people receive the support they need to stop them being pulled into a life of crime.  

These will be accompanied by a network of Young Future Hubs, which will bring together local services to deliver additional interventions for young people, including mental health support. 

And, during the election campaign, we committed to cracking down in particular on vehicle-related ASB to deal with the associated noise, nuisance and dangers which communities experience.  Our proposals will make it easier for the police to seize and dispose of vehicles, including e-scooters and e-bikes, that are used anti-socially. 

And in addition, we are working on progressing research and development on a novel technology solution to safely stop e-scooters and e-bikes and enhance the ability of the police to prevent them from being used to commit criminal acts. 

Now I will finish by saying how grateful I am to everyone at this conference for the work that you do. It really matters.   

And I look forward to working together as we tackle anti-social behaviour and make communities up and down the country safer.  

Thank you very much for your time, and I very much hope you enjoy the conference.