Labour announce plans to silence noisy off-road motorbikes

Labour has announced plans to crack down on nuisance off-road motorbikes terrorising rural communities.

The policy will be part of manifesto pledges to tackle antisocial behaviour.

Police will be given new powers to scrap noisy dirt and quad bikes within 48 hours, instead of having to keep them impounded for two weeks, if Labour wins the General Election. 

Sir Keir Starmer‘s party also wants to hike on-the-spot fines for using off-road bikes or ignoring officers’ instructions to stop, which are currently as low as £100.

The Labour leader and shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper are expected to promote the plans on a visit on Sunday. 

Shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper speaks on day three of the UK Labour Party annual conference in Liverpool in October 2023

Police will be given new powers to scrap noisy dirt and quad bikes within 48 hours, instead of having to keep them impounded for two weeks, if Labour wins the General Election (file pic)

Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said that if Labour wins the General Election, police will get the powers to take the bikes that are a ‘nightmare for communities’ off the streets for good.

Other plans being put forward by Labour include extending closure notices for drug dens from 48 hours to 72 hours, giving police more time to get them shut down at court.

Data-driven hotspot policing would target the most prolific antisocial offenders under the party’s proposals.

Ms Cooper said: ‘Noisy off-road bikes speeding round local streets and neighbourhoods, deliberately disturbing and intimidating local residents, are a nightmare for communities. 

‘Yet too often the culprits get away with it again and again, and even when the police take action, the bikes still end up back on the streets.

‘Cracking down on antisocial behaviour will be one of next Labour government’s first steps because everyone should feel safe on their streets.

‘Labour will give police the powers they need to take illegal, dangerous and antisocial bikes off the streets for good, as well as tough measures to close drug dens.

‘We will also rebuild the neighbourhood police that has been dismantled by the Tories and put police back on the beat where they belong.’

Labour’s manifesto this week will also promise laws to crack down on violence against shop staff.

‘Labour is determined we will pass a new law to make a specific offence of assaults and abuse against shop workers and to make sure it’s taken seriously by the police,’ the Labour frontbencher told The Mirror.

Sir Keir Starmer ‘s party also wants to hike on-the-spot fines for using off-road bikes or ignoring officers’ instructions to stop, which are currently as low as £100 (file pic)

She also vowed to end the ‘shoplifters’ charter’ under which police will not press charges unless the value of stolen goods is more than £200.

The party also promised to deliver 14,000 more prison places as it blamed Conservative inaction for the prison estate ‘bursting at the seams’.

Classifying prisons as sites of national importance so ministers can take control of planning decisions would stop the ‘powder keg waiting to explode’ behind bars, shadow justice secretary Shabana Mahmood said.

The Tories hit back that they are already ‘overseeing the largest expansion to the prison estate since the Victorian era’.

Labour’s manifesto this week will also comprise pledges to set up 80 new specialist rape courts across and England and Wales, introduce specialist rape units in every police force, and introduce laws to crack down on violence against shop staff, according to Sunday newspapers.

And in a bid to kill off the Tories’ much-disputed claim that Labour would hike taxes by £2,000, Sir Keir will include a cast-iron pledge in the manifesto not to raise income tax, national insurance or VAT for five years, The Sunday Times reported

The Tories meanwhile are set to tout a Tory pledge to halt the rising costs of welfare by reforming the benefits system.

The party claims it would help save some £12 billion a year by the end of the next parliament, although the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) said this ‘looks difficult in the extreme’ as the measures have been previously announced and have therefore already been incorporated into the Budget forecasts.

Those already floated measures include a £700 million investment in NHS mental health treatment, a pledge to reform the disability benefits system and a tightening of the criteria for work capability assessments.