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Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Victoria Atkins)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher. I congratulate and thank the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Florence Eshalomi) for bringing this debate to the House. It is an incredibly important and emotive subject and one that I do not think is discussed often enough: indeed, we all agreed this during the debate today. All Members who have contributed today have referred to the hidden aspect of these crimes. Much of what happens in gangs is hidden from view by definition—it is the modus operandi of gang leaders—but this is a particularly hidden and pernicious aspect of gangs’ ways of operating, as we have all acknowledged, so I am grateful to hon. Members for raising the subject today.
I note also, with some regret, that although there are only five of us in the Chamber, two of the three largest exporting areas for county lines are represented—London and Merseyside—so hon. Members have brought their own personal constituency experience and expertise to the debate. I want to reassure colleagues that tackling serious violence and the exploitation of girls and women is an absolute priority for the Government. I do not use these words lightly. Hon. Members have been kind enough to indicate the interest and the attention that I have paid to it personally, but this goes across Government. I hope that, in a moment, I will be able to lay out some of the steps we are taking to tackle serious violence, but particularly the victimisation of girls and young women in gangs.
By way of demonstration, we have invested £119 million this year alone to provide extra police resources to drive down the scale of violent crime that we are seeing on our streets, to fund violence reduction units in the 18 force areas most affected by crime and violence, and to fund specialist county line operations. We have also spent over £200 million on early intervention to ensure that those most at risk are given the opportunity to turn away from violence and lead positive, safe lives. But it is, of course, critical that the investment works for girls and young women. We are, after all, half the population.
When hon. Members refer to the different experiences of girls and young women in gangs, I could not agree more. We know that girls and young women are subject to serious and appalling harms, ranging from threats to themselves and their families to sexual exploitation and abuse. Their experiences are often different from those of boys and young men in the very same gangs. The hon. Member for Vauxhall referred to evidence from Redthread, an organisation that the Government are pleased to support and work with. Girls present with different injuries when they come into hospital from those with which boys tend to present, which shows the nature of the harms faced by girls and young women in gangs.
There is evidence that girls and young women are playing a more active role in the drug markets, mirroring the operations of their male counterparts not just in London but across the country. We are hearing reports of that, and it has been referred to during the debate. My hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Nickie Aiken) used a line that sums up the experiences of these young people on our streets: these young people in gangs “walk different streets” from us. As a Minister but also as a Government, we are keen to try to get the message across to our constituents that it is a matter for all of us to have open eyes, to watch and listen, and to see if the young people we live next to in our communities are safe and well, or if in fact they are being groomed in the ways described this morning.
On 3 June, I held a virtual meeting with a number of charities and organisations that provide vital support to young people affected by county lines exploitation. That is part of our day-to-day business. Frontline workers at the meeting, including those from Abianda, reflected on the specific challenges faced by girls and young women who are drawn into county lines activity. One very powerful advocate told me that young women were being used not just for their physical capabilities in terms of moving drugs around, but also to launder the proceeds of those crimes. Those young women’s bank accounts are being used by gang leaders and that has huge repercussions, not just in the short, immediate term, but also in the longer term. Once those women have escaped the gangs, their credit ratings, for example, may well still be affected by the activities. We know that those young people face terrible harms, but we must understand that there are long-term implications for their experiences as well. I wish to assure the House that those insights and those of all the organisations we work with—St Giles Trust and Redthread, to name just two—inform our policy response to those issues.
Rightly, there has been attention on Government investment. We have invested some £176 million through the serious violence fund to address the drivers of serious violence at local level. That includes the vital investment in violence reduction units. The point of those units is to provide a localised understanding to reduce and prevent serious violence within local communities and to tackle its root causes. We have been very keen to ensure that the units have the freedom to develop policies that work in their local areas. As such, what may work in a particular part of London—not even across London—such as Westminster may not be appropriate for Vauxhall and similarly, may not be appropriate for Liverpool, Riverside, so we are keen that the units have freedom and flexibility. However, the objective of those units is to drive down serious violence. The role of the violence reduction unit, as pointed out by the hon. Member for Vauxhall in her report, for which I thank her, is critical in identifying the local risks and drivers of that violence, as well as the local response to those drivers.
We are beginning to see violence reduction units taking important steps to commission the support and interventions that people at risk need, including girls and women. For example, the West Midlands violence reduction unit is working with the St Giles Trust to embed a senior youth violence and exploitation worker in Birmingham women’s and children’s hospital to provide guidance and support to girls and young women who have experienced violent crime or potential gang exploitation. Violence reduction units are also delivering interventions to support healthy relationships and to prevent domestic abuse.
In my work on the Domestic Abuse Bill, I hope I have made it clear that, if we can tackle domestic abuse, that will have many ramifications outside the home, including violence on the streets. For example, the Northumbria violence reduction unit is delivering interventions targeted at women and children experiencing domestic abuse during the covid-19 pandemic. The South Yorkshire violence reduction unit is using cutting-edge technology to role-play challenging scenarios to assist frontline practitioners in their response to domestic abuse. I think that line means that we are trying to help frontline practitioners get a practical grasp on how they deal with situations in cases as they arise.
In addition to local action, my Department is funding gender-specific, tailored services to support girls and young women experiencing exploitation related to gangs and county lines. Young people’s advocates in London, Manchester and the west midlands provide dedicated, one-to-one support directly to gang-affected women and girls, especially those who have been victims of, or are at risk of, sexual violence. With Home Office investment of up to £860,000 this year, the St Giles Trust will be delivering one-to-one support in London, Merseyside and the west midlands—the three largest county lines-exporting areas—which will help over 200 vulnerable children and young people who are criminally exploited by county lines gangs, including with specialist support for girls. We continue to fund Missing People’s SafeCall service, which is a specialist helpline providing advice and support to children, young people and families who are concerned about county lines, criminal exploitation and gangs. In addition, we are investing more in rape and sexual abuse support services, with £24 million being made available over the next three years to provide advice, support and counselling.
The hon. Members for Vauxhall, for Liverpool, Riverside (Kim Johnson), and for Enfield, Southgate (Bambos Charalambous) all referred to the grooming of girls and young women, particularly the classic grooming example—if I may call it that—of the boyfriend-girlfriend model, whereby the boy or young man draws the girl or young woman into his world by forming a relationship, and she is then much more vulnerable to him when he suggests that she does things that she feels utterly uncomfortable with, or indeed scared by. My hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster called for relationship education for girls and boys, which is really important: we want young women and girls to be resilient and to have the confidence to say no, but we must also ensure that boys and young men have a good understanding of what a healthy relationship is. I remember meeting a harmful sexual behaviours youth worker—just having to have someone with that job title is incredibly depressing, but that very good youth worker recounted to me that a young man he was working with at the time thought that it was normal for girls and young women to cry during sex. We need to take a step back and think about what has gone wrong, not just in that young man’s life but in the lives of those girls, and why some of our young people believe that that is an acceptable way in which to conduct themselves.
We are very conscious of the importance for girls and boys, young women and young men, of understanding and building healthy relationships. That is why we have made relationship education compulsory for all primary-school pupils, and relationship and sex education compulsory for secondary school pupils. Health education has been compulsory in all schools since last month, September 2020. These subjects will ensure that children understand that violence and abuse is never acceptable, and know what positive, healthy and respectful relationships should look like, which in turn will help to prevent abuse. We want girls to know that it is important to report abuse and share concerns that they have about themselves or others, both online and offline. To help them do so, we have provided £6 million to develop a programme of support for schools, which will include tools to help schools improve their teaching practice, training support and high-quality resources. That programme will also include information on parents’ rights and involvement in the curriculum.
However, we can do more, and we are doing more. We have introduced new knife crime prevention orders as an additional tool to help the police to steer young people and adults away from knife crime and serious violence, and we have launched an eight-week public consultation on the design of new serious violence reduction orders, which will make it easier for the police to stop and search those previously convicted of knife-crime offences, but we also need longer-term action to prevent vulnerable young people from being drawn into crime. That is why, as I said at the beginning of my speech, we have invested £200 million in the 10-year Youth Endowment Fund to ensure that those most at risk are given the opportunity to turn away from violence and to lead positive lives. Importantly, that helps in evaluating schemes across the country to see what works and what does not, so that we can help local commissioners understand where their money is best invested.
All hon. Members raised the point about data—it is a fair point. I spoke at the beginning of my speech about the hidden nature of girls and young women’s involvement in gangs. Following today’s debate, I will engage further with the violence reduction unit network to ensure that all VRUs are actively considering gang-affected girls and young women when identifying the drivers of serious violence acting in their local area and ensuring an effective response. We are already working on that, but I will very much take that point forward. VRUs are doing really good work in bringing together local partners to tackle violence and the drivers of violence together. We will very much use our learning from the progress to date, including those units that are already delivering support to girls and young women in their areas, to make sure that no young people affected by violence are forgotten.
I thank the hon. Member for Vauxhall for raising the issues in this debate, and all hon. Members for their contributions. As always, I pass on my sincere thanks to those who are working right now to protect and support victims of serious violence. We know that serious violence is evolving and there is a threat from county lines activities and from sexual exploitation and abuse—much of that leads to serious violence. That evolution requires us to be flexible and to keep looking for new responses to the changing dynamics. We are absolutely doing all we can to support victims of serious violence and abuse, including young women and girls, but we understand that, although we have made some progress in setting up VRUs and so on, we are absolutely committed to a truly comprehensive response to protect our young people from these horrific crimes and to help end the harm that they cause.