Emergency Summit on Knife Crime
Debate between Victoria Atkins and Louise Ellman(5 years, 8 months ago)
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Victoria Atkins
I am delighted to hear about the activity in the hon. Lady’s constituency. She is absolutely right: what is so worrying about the growth of county lines is that criminal gangs that have exploited the drugs markets in large urban centres are now filtering out to rural and coastal areas.
Part of the reason for setting up the national county lines co-ordination centre is to help law enforcement and those who safeguard to co-ordinate better and share best practice. We are also hosting regional events across the country, bringing all the agencies together to discuss exactly how to get best practice. We have just had one in Birmingham, which is probably the nearest to the hon. Lady’s area, but I will happily write to her about other events in the future.
Dame Louise Ellman (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab/Co-op)
The Minister read out a list of proposals to combat knife crime, but when will these help the situation in Merseyside? The recent funding the Government have announced for Merseyside police is a one-off, and very small compared with the funding that has been lost. Cuts in local services, because of savage reductions to Liverpool City Council, continue remorselessly.
Victoria Atkins
What the hon. Lady mentioned are not proposals, but things we are doing. I was delighted to hear from the chief constable of Merseyside and also its police and crime commissioner in the last two weeks. The chief constable was urging the Home Secretary and others to assist with surge policing, and I am delighted that in the spring statement we secured that extra funding for Merseyside.
Last week, the police and crime commissioner for Merseyside gave her views on what can help. The reason we are focusing on the seven metropolitan forces is that they account for a great deal of the knife crime that we are seeing at the moment. If we can share their best practice with other forces that are seeing the county lines phenomenon, that will, of course, help those forces get up to speed quickly too.