Riots Communities and Victims Panel Final Report

Baroness Lister of Burtersett Excerpts

Monday 28th May 2012 Grand Committee

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett]

My Lords, I pay tribute to the contribution of my noble friend Lady Sherlock to the work of the panel. Its final report challenges us to give everyone a stake in society if we are to avoid future riots. Is it surprising that so many of those involved in the riots feel that they do not have a stake in society when,

“over half the respondents to the Panel’s Neighbourhood Survey believe there is a growing gap between rich and poor in their local area”,

and we know that those brought before the courts came disproportionately from our most deprived neighbourhoods? Among the rioters surveyed in the separate Reading the Riots study, poverty emerged as the single most important perceived cause. It was mentioned by 86% as important or very important, with inequality mentioned by 70%. The study revealed a pervasive sense of injustice.

Of course, there is no deterministic link between poverty and rioting, and the panel points to the importance of good parenting and the development of character and resilience as key preventive factors. However, research illuminates the ways in which the stress associated with poverty and the survival strategies adopted by parents to cope can undermine their best efforts to be good parents.

Moreover, rampant advertising of brands often aimed at children and young people, which was highlighted by the report, makes poverty and inequality that much harder to bear, and parenting in poverty that much more difficult. When young people living in poverty can be bullied because they do not have the right trainers, it is perhaps understandable, even if not justifiable, if they grab them when they can in what the report describes as,

“opportunistic looting … very much targeted at brands”.

I therefore believe that in addition to the report’s recommendations, we need a coherent anti-poverty and inequality strategy, not to be confused with a social mobility strategy. We need to go further than the report does in its suggestion with regard to the regulation of marketing directed at children and young people.

More than four-fifths of those interviewed in the Reading the Riots study believe that the riots will happen again. Unfortunately, with spending cuts hitting deprived individuals and communities disproportionately, according to a Joseph Rowntree Foundation Study; with youth services taking a significant hit in many areas; and with family poverty forecast to rise, I fear that they could be right. Punishing rioters with loss of housing or benefits is not the answer. It would only reduce further their stake in society. We urgently need a more constructive response.