County Lines Drugs Gangs

Baroness Browning Excerpts

Wednesday 8th January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

The noble Lord and I go back many years on this issue and we do not disagree. I shall certainly get my noble friend Lord Younger to update him on some of the child protection issues, because if children are staying in unregulated bed and breakfast accommodation, for example, which is something I remember from the past, that situation needs to change. But I will give him an updated position on that.

[Baroness Browning (Con)]

My Lords, I had the privilege of representing a Devon constituency for 18 years and I support the view of the Chief Constable of Devon and Cornwall on this matter. May I respectfully remind my noble friend that I represented 650 square miles of Devon—a very sparsely populated area? When we look at national solutions, what is very often needed in rural areas is a very different approach from when you are looking at large urban conurbations. There are pockets of deprivation in rural counties that reflect exactly what one sees in inner cities, but they are on such a small scale and so disparate that they never qualify for grants and support. I ask my noble friend to make sure that we do not fall into the one-size-fits-all trap.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My noble friend raises two very important points there: the spread-out nature of county areas and the distances people have to travel to get support. I do not know whether she recalls—I recall it only vaguely from two or three years ago—the rural sparsity fund that was designed to address precisely such an issue. Of course, she also brings to mind the fact that county lines are specifically designed to cross from town areas into country areas and vice versa. So she raises the really important point that, wherever children are, their vulnerability is equally important.