Knife Crime

Debate between Lord Cryer and Chris Leslie

Thursday 24th January 2019 Westminster Hall

[John Cryer (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered tackling knife crime.

It is always a pleasure to serve when you are in the Chair, Ms Buck. First of all, I thank the Backbench Business Committee for allowing a debate about this hugely important issue. In particular, I thank its Chair—my hon. Friend the Member for Gateshead (Ian Mearns)—as well as the other members of the Committee and its Clerk, Sarah Hartwell-Naguib, who has been extremely helpful in assisting me to put together this debate.

The main spring for the debate was, very sadly, the murder of 14-year-old Jaden Moodie just over two weeks ago. The attack took place in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy), albeit right on its boundary with my constituency of Leyton and Wanstead. The family live in Walthamstow. Both of my Waltham Forest neighbours—my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow and the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith)—will speak later in the debate.

To many people, that appalling incident in Leyton two weeks ago was a new low in a wave of violent crime that has been sweeping across and beyond London, because we are dealing with county lines and all sorts of other related issues. That wave of violent crime seemed to start some months ago and it has not abated; there is no sign that this knife and gun crime is going to disappear, and we have become quite used to it.

Before I continue, I would like apologise on behalf of two hon. Members who supported my application for this debate, but who unfortunately cannot be here today. Over the past few months, my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker) has, week in, week out, during business questions and Home Office questions, raised concerns about problems in his constituency. I also apologise on behalf of the right hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb), who chairs the Select Committee on Science and Technology, which recently completed a report on adverse childhood experiences. It covered trauma, abuse, neglect and so on, and found a clear correlation between those experiences, school exclusion and mental health problems. It also found that early intervention—on which the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green has done a great deal of work—is vital, and many other reports have come to the same conclusion.

To some extent, we have become inured to the violence on our streets. It is certainly happening across east London, but it is also happening elsewhere in the country. Every week there seem to be more news stories about stabbings, gun crime and related activities. However, what happened a couple of weeks ago seems to an awful lot of people to be a new low. To some extent—I am not talking about specific cases, but speaking in generalities—there have been profound shifts in society and profound changes in the way in which society is structured and how people live. A lot of those profound changes underlie what we have seen over the past few months or the past year. Structures that used to provide security and safety, particularly for children, have been undermined and in some cases have completely disappeared.

I have met and dealt with many youngsters who come from profoundly chaotic backgrounds and have become involved in gangs, partly because doing so provides them with some sort of security. To give a couple of examples—I cannot give too many, because I am talking about people in my constituency and they might be identified—a few months ago I remember meeting a 14-year-old whose father was in prison and whose mother had just disappeared. He was living by himself in a council flat and having to look after himself at the age of 14. A person does not stand much of a chance in those circumstances. I can remember another, slightly older but not much older, who was living in a bail hostel 20 miles from Waltham Forest and whose exclusion order meant that he could not go to Waltham Forest. I am not commenting on the rights and wrongs of what he had done—which I am familiar with but do not want to talk about—but those two cases give a sense of the gravity of the situation and the shifts we are dealing with.

There is no magic wand for youngsters in that position; there is no magic bullet that will sort it all out and make their lives so much more secure, happier and safer. However, we cannot just throw up our hands and say, “It is all far too complicated. It is all far too profound and difficult, and there is nothing we can do about it.” To even start to tackle these issues, we need to start to talk about resources, because at the moment they are simply not there to cope with the consequences—I am talking to an extent about consequences, rather than the root cause.

I will come on to the root cause in a little while, but we certainly need early intervention. We need the resources to tackle both the causes and the consequences, and the stark reality is that the resources are not there. Both Waltham Forest and Redbridge—I cover six wards in Waltham Forest and two and one third in Redbridge—have faced huge cuts in the numbers of police officers. The exact numbers are not clear, but there have certainly been profound and extensive cuts in the numbers of officers.

Police stations have also been closed. When I was elected MP for Leyton and Wanstead nearly nine years ago, there were three police stations in my constituency. Now, there are none. Every single one has closed. Wanstead police station was one of the oldest in London, and while this is slightly beside the point of the debate, its closure seems to have led to a very sharp rise in burglaries in my constituency, particularly aggravated burglaries. It seems like common sense that if a police unit has to come from Ilford—which is quite a long way away—rather than Wanstead itself, burglars are going to work out that that is the case. We have therefore seen a rise in aggravated burglary rates in Romford, with associated violence in many cases.

Waltham Forest has one of the highest rates of serious youth violence in London. To give one example, in 2017-18 the rate for serious youth violence leading to injury was 9.9 per thousand of the population. That is 18% above the London average, and with a clear upward trend over not just the past year or two, but year after year.

As an aside, it is a historical quirk that Waltham Forest has been categorised as an outer London borough. The reality is that we are dealing with virtually all of the serious problems experienced by inner London boroughs, but because of the strange decision made in 1964—the year I was born, so it is going back a while; well, not that far, but Members know what I mean—we are regarded as an outer London borough. I have always thought that the judgment made all those years ago was perverse. If Waltham Forest were categorised as an inner London borough, there would at least be some further resources available for police and other agencies.

In the 12 months to July 2018, Waltham Forest experienced the sixth highest volume of knife crime resulting in injuries—not knife crime per se, but knife crime leading to serious injury—to young people in London. At the same time, there seems to have been a rise in the number of schoolchildren, including those as young as year 6, getting involved in gang activity. Again, those are all upward trends; it is not that there has been a levelling off or that the numbers have been going up over just the past year or two. Year after year, there has been an upward trend in involvement in gang activity and in knife crime and related activities.

For some time, Waltham Forest Council has run a widely praised anti-gang strategy and a violence reduction unit, but that council has lost well over £100 million in central Government funding over the past few years. Redbridge has lost a similar sum, so across both boroughs, perhaps £250 million in central Government funding has been lost. The local police and council, among other agencies, are working together, as we are regularly and rightly told to do by Ministers. I am keen to praise those police officers, social workers, volunteers and many others who work long and hard to prevent violent crime and to tackle its consequences.

To address those fundamental issues against a background of a huge loss of resources places those agencies, volunteers, officers and social workers in an impossible position. Sometimes it is an actively dangerous position. That is why it is becoming increasingly difficult to recruit social workers, particularly for youth services. The physical danger is obvious. They have had a pay freeze and they have not got the support, so it is no wonder that they are not joining the service. Between 2011 and 2017, Waltham Forest’s youth service budget suffered cuts amounting to 67%. We have reached a stage where we have hardly any youth social workers left in Waltham Forest, which is one of the biggest boroughs in London in terms of square footage or acreage. We have a youth service today that has been decimated by the cuts.

[Mr Chris Leslie (Nottingham East) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am sorry to interrupt my hon. Friend, who is making a powerful speech. In Nottingham, we face a similar situation to the one he faces in London. He mentioned my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker). Resources for youth services are crucial for diversionary activities for, let us face it, young boys in particular, so that they can go into positive, productive activities—music, sport and so forth—that absorb their energies and take their attention away from perhaps less productive activities. He is absolutely making the right point. I hope he will extract some change in policy from the Minister.

[John Cryer]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. We are talking about prevention rather than cure, and it is always better to engage in a policy of prevention. I will say one thing that slightly contradicts what he said, which is that, increasingly, girls are getting involved in gang activity. At one time it was very much male-dominated. To some extent that is still the case, but there are increasing numbers of female gang members getting involved in related criminal activity. We are certainly seeing that across east London, at least.

As well as youth services being cut to the bone in Waltham Forest, mental health services are also being cut. Many Ministers have said over the years that mental health services have been seen as a poor relation in the national health service, and that has to change. There is little sign of that changing when mental health facilities are closing on a regular basis, including in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow, when budgets are being squeezed and when posts are being left open. We are talking about prevention, rather than cure, and mental health services are doing that right on the frontline. It is better to start there, rather than tackling the consequences when things have gone completely wrong.

It is worth mentioning some of the Mayor’s initiatives, including the London-wide violent crime taskforce, the Young Londoners fund and increased investment in the London gang exit service. The Young Londoners fund is £45 million, which sounds like a large amount of money—actually, it is—but that is spread across one of the biggest cities on the planet. It does not go very far per borough, despite the best efforts of the Assembly and the Mayor. City Hall has a London-wide programme to provide knife wands to every school, but, again, that deals only with the consequences. When we get to a stage where we are using knife wands in schools, including primary schools, we are in a pretty desperate area. We have to deal with the causes, not use knife wands, which are hardly a magic bullet in anyone’s analysis.

We desperately need joined-up policy approaches and joined-up working between the various agencies. Ministers regularly and rightly talk about that, but we also need a properly resourced range of agencies. It is not just about the police; there are the local authorities and the voluntary services, many of whose budgets are being cut or have even disappeared. People are working increasingly long and hard to prevent the sort of problems under discussion. I will mention for a second time the efforts of social workers, police officers and others who put in a tremendous effort to try to make our society better, but it is an uphill battle because they do not have the resources any more, given the profound cuts.

We are getting to the stage where there needs to be an inquiry into youth crime and related activities. Perhaps that should be a Select Committee inquiry, but we have had those in the past. My hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Vicky Foxcroft) is leading a violent crime inquiry, but I wonder whether we could have an inquiry under the Tribunals and Inquiries Act 1992. Such an inquiry could subpoena people and force them to appear as witnesses, which Select Committee and other bodies are unable to do. A public inquiry could also listen to young people on the receiving end of criminal activity, the attentions of gangs and all the other related issues. In Select Committees, it is more difficult to hear the reality of what is going on out there. A public inquiry could listen to the voices of young people, as we heard to some extent on last night’s BBC programme, but we need a proper inquiry that will come to conclusions and be conducted by someone who understands the causes and consequences of what we are dealing with—that wave of crime sweeping across London.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham East (Mr Leslie) said, the wave is also sweeping across other parts of the country. The midlands, the north, the south-east, Essex and Kent are all affected by the issue. County lines are reaching out further and further, and they are causing mayhem, often in areas that do not have a history of that kind of criminal activity. I would like a public inquiry, and I am interested to hear the Minister’s response.