It is a great pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster), and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley South (Mike Wood), who is the proud son of a west midlands police officer. I know from my dealings with him on matters to do with West Midlands police and fairer funding that he is a strong advocate for law and order and justice in the west midlands.
I commend and support the Bill. The right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy), who is no longer in the Chamber, made a powerful speech in the shadow of the 2011 riots, which were obviously a great shock. What started as a local, limited protest burst into rank criminality. Ordinary individuals going about their daily lives found themselves embroiled in terror, violence and damage to property on an unprecedented scale in my lifetime. Even in daylight hours, ordinary people were being abused by feral elements in our society.
At the time, the police cautiously and correctly went about extinguishing those four days of violence in our society. Following on from that, the Prime Minister made many telling remarks, including that we would hunt down those responsible and bring them to justice. That is exactly what happened. I was pleased that the judiciary listened to the public voice on that occasion and handed out some exemplary sentences to those who had rioted. There was much talk in the newspapers about people being sent to prison for stealing relatively small items such as bottles of water, but it was the aggravated nature of the criminality that counted in this respect. Our authorities did their job and correctly followed through on what they had promised. The only area where there were problems—this has been mentioned by many hon. Members—related to compensation and delays to compensation. One of the main reasons for that was that they were acting under the auspices of antiquated and outdated legislation.
The Bill, which I hope will proceed to the Committee stage, correctly defines “riot”. It gives it a much more modern, telling and understandable definition. It tidies up much of the antiquated language used in the late 19th century. As the right hon. Member for Tottenham mentioned, it is difficult for people who do not have English as their first language to understand what constitutes a riot and to apply for compensation under the 1886 Act.