Public Disorder

Part of Deferred Division – in the House of Commons at 7:08 pm on 11 August 2011.

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Photo of Andrew Selous Andrew Selous Conservative, South West Bedfordshire 7:08, 11 August 2011

When I was asked this morning why I had made a 2,000 mile round trip, leaving my family to be here, even though my constituency is not affected, my answer was very simple. It is because I care for this country, like every Member here, and I am deeply upset and angry at what has happened.

My constituents have said to me clearly that they want to see the rioters made to clear up and pay for the damage that they have caused, as well as being punished. They want to see the police move more swiftly, being deployed when needed and acting more robustly when necessary. I have a concrete proposal to make tonight. I do not want us to use the term “shoplifting” any more; I think that we should rename it “shop theft”. Let us call it what it is. At the same time, an £80 fine for stealing up to £200 worth of goods is simply inadequate. We need tougher sentences for shop theft, as I believe we should call it. Many of my shopkeepers in Leighton Buzzard and elsewhere have talked to me about the problems of shop theft—indeed, it is a problem for us all—so I would ask the Government to act on that.

I praise the broom armies that we have seen in Battersea, Hackney, Liverpool and other areas. There is good in this country. Many people have praised Tariq Jahan from Birmingham, and I join them. I also wish to praise Pauline Pearce from Hackney, who told a mob of youngsters that they were doing wrong and that they should not riot. Good on her! Let us have more decent British citizens like her standing up and doing the right thing, because then we will have less trouble. We all have a stake in this, not just the forces of law and order. Every one of us—Members of Parliament and members of the public—can play our part in stopping these rioters getting their way.

Of course our young people need hope for the future and a stake in our society, a home of their own, a job, support when they get married and help with saving and loans to start up a business. The Prime Minister said that he hoped this debate would look at changing the culture in our country. In my own small way, I want to play a little part in doing that this afternoon.

Where do we learn right from wrong? We learn it from teachers and from the police, but above all we learn it from our parents. Being a parent is a really tough job if there are two of you, but it is particularly tough if there is only one of you. I salute single parents, many of whom do a fantastic job, but if there were more fathers around fewer people would join gangs. I salute Tony Wright, a former Labour Member, who said a few years ago:

“When some other hon. Members and I were children, the cry would sometimes go up, ‘Wait until your father comes home.’ For many children in this country, there is no father to come home.”—[Hansard, 24 May 2005; Vol. 434, c. 650.]

He was right. Let us unite around the need for more fathers to help bring up our children and teach them right from wrong. That is what the Prime Minister called on us to do when he spoke earlier today.

There are things that we can do to strengthen families, such as community family trusts—there is one in my constituency. The “Let’s Stick Together” course is being piloted by the Department for Education in an excellent initiative. It started in Bristol and is spreading around the country. It is a small start, but let it spring up in every constituency. We can also reduce the couple penalty in the benefits system, and the Work programme will be a big help in that area too. We all have a part to play by acting responsibly. Being a parent is the most important thing that any of us will do, and that is part of the solution.

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john tandy
Posted on 7 Sep 2011 10:42 am (Report this annotation)

Regretfully 13 years of Nu Labour has spawned a society which believes that they are 'entitled' to whatever they want (not need) without first having to work and save for it. It is the big 'i know my rights society' minus the 'i recognise my responsibilites' society of old. Broken families, planned single parent children, poor educational standards and even poorer parental example, breeds the kind of lawlessness which we witnessed recently throughout the country. Courts and judges can only clean up 'after' the mess. Government must take the bull by the horns and champion marriage as the ideal state in which to raise future generations and work must be made to pay instead of a life on benefits where even Somalian refugee's can claim up to £8000 a month in housing benefit paid for largely by lower paid responsible workers, who usually inherited the necessary work ethic from their parents. We desperately need a fundamental change in how we approach social welfare in the Uk today,. As we all know 'the devil makes work for idle hands' and there are too many idle hands in the UK today with no less than 6 million households where nobody has ever worked !!!!