Gove targets vandals with ‘you break it, you fix it’ plan

VANDALS who damage war memorials and other local landmarks will face having to repair them as part of Michael Gove and Rishi Sunak’s crackdown on antisocial behaviour.

The Levelling Up Secretary has been tasked by Mr Sunak with tackling disorder in communities as the Conservatives seek to make the issue a political priority.

Mr Gove offered the first indication of what the Government’s imminent action plan would look like during his keynote speech at the Convention of the North conference in Manchester yesterday.

“The unoccupied and unloved become the disused and derelict and where care in every sense is absent chaos finds an opportunity,” Mr Gove said. “This is why we will shortly publish an action plan on anti-social behaviour. Our determination and ambition is high.

“We will have stronger, tougher enforcement, swifter delivery of immediate justice with those who damage local assets deployed to repair them, and investing in young people and the activities available to them.”

His remarks are likely to cover bus stops which are targeted by graffiti, as well as tributes to the war dead as mentioned by Mr Sunak in his New Year address to the nation.

The Prime Minister took aim at a “small minority” who “spray graffiti on war memorials, discard needles and nitrous oxide canisters in children’s playgrounds and gang together and cause disorder and disruption”.

Mr Gove also used his speech to argue that the state should follow Margaret Thatcher’s lead by taking an “active” role in levelling up as he defended last week’s second round of funding allocations to local projects.

“The experience of successful economic transformation demonstrates that growth is not secured by the absence of government but by active government – a government that plays a strategic role, irrigating in the soil for growth, as Mrs Thatcher did specifically in the Docklands,” he said.

Mr Gove said the Treasury’s original plan to rejuvenate the south-east London area, which was overruled by Mrs Thatcher, was “to just cut taxes and deregulate and hope 1,000 flowers would bloom in the dusty and contaminated soil”.

In a rebuke to those who have criticised the billions being spent by the state on levelling up, he added: “While lower taxes and smarter regulation are certainly powerful ingredients in any great package, they just weren’t enough.”