Police and Children

Debate between Annette Brooke and Tim Loughton

Thursday 12th March 2015 Westminster Hall

[Tim Loughton]

With the leave of the House, I would say that we have had a good debate, but in my case it was a 45-minute uninterrupted soliloquy, which is a first in my 18 years in the House. I am pleased and grateful that we have had the opportunity to air the really good points from our inquiry, which were published in the report. There was a good degree of consensus from both Front Benchers that we need to recognise these issues, which we can and must take up and progress for the good of our children and the good of policing in this country.

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey), and strongly recommend that he organise some football in his part of Birmingham —either at midnight or another time of day—and get the police involved. Members can be part of the solution, working with children and the police.

My hon. Friend the Minister mentioned street pastors: I have been out with my local street pastors and police, and I shall be going out with the police again in a couple of weeks to see their new triage system, which includes a mental health nurse. The last time I went out with the police in Worthing, before Christmas, far from it being young people causing problems, those causing the most antisocial behaviour were the off-duty members of the police force having their Christmas dinners in various establishments around the town. In many cases, young people can give advice to police officers as well.

I urge the Minister to disseminate the good practice that the report flags up, particularly the really good initiatives in Sussex resulting from the energy, enthusiasm and good services of our police and crime commissioner. It also helps that we now have a really good chief constable, something with which we have not previously been blessed in Sussex.

My hon. Friend was absolutely right when she reinforced the importance of early familiarity. If we can get it right in the early stages and recreate the much more friendly, natural, empathetic relationship that school kids had with the police in my time at school—the same is probably true for other Members—when we naturally trusted the police, we will have a far better chance to avoid children falling into greater crimes and child sexualisation. We might also be able to avoid the more recent problem of radicalisation, because the police could share the intelligence gained from working with children to keep them on the straight and narrow.

I am grateful to all Members who have taken part in this exercise—it was not so much a debate—and urge others who have not attended to read the report and take it back to their own local police forces. Along with local authorities, their local forces must do their utmost to ensure that policing is fit for purpose and has the sensitivities and sensibilities required for dealing with vulnerable groups of young people. It is a false economy not to do that.

I am grateful for the opportunity to reinforce those points. I hope that, beyond this Chamber, a wider audience has taken note of our work. The all-party group’s report is one of the best examples of how, through cross-party, consensual work with experts, the House can produce really decent research that will benefit us all.

[Annette Brooke (in the Chair)]

Thank you very much, Mr Loughton, and to all the contributors to that debate. Officially, we must keep going and move on to the next debate, but we are going to try to accommodate a large number of young people in the Public Gallery, so it would be sensible if Members waited a moment while we try to get people in.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Annette Brooke and Tim Loughton

Monday 15th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Tim Loughton)]

The hon. Gentleman has only half the story. We will introduce a competitive sport ethos in schools which has been missing. We need to get much better bang for our buck than we get by spending £2.4 billion so that one in five secondary school age students can indulge in competitive sport against other schools. We want them to be doing much more, but we are not getting that at the moment.

[Annette Brooke (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)]

What advice would Ministers give someone wishing to apply to become a trainee educational psychologist, bearing in mind not only the current freeze on recruitment, but the great need for an adequate supply of educational psychologists to improve education for those with special educational needs?