Knife Crime

Clive Efford Excerpts

Thursday 7th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

The right hon. Gentleman is right to raise the matter of exclusions. As I have said, we are awaiting the report from Ed Timpson. Instinctively, I would want to give headteachers the flexibility to exclude if they feel that a child is a danger to the wider school community, but I accept that this is for headteachers to decide, so we are very much listening to the evidence. The decisions on the borough command unit set-up are taken by the commissioner. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman has made representations to the Mayor if he is concerned about this issue, because obviously the Mayor is the police and crime commissioner for London.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

The Government were warned about cutting police numbers. Had the 20,000 police officers we have lost still been in place and enabled one stop and search per week, there would have been 1 million stop and searches. Had there been one a day, which is not a lot to ask, there would have been over 7 million stop and searches. If we add to that the intelligence-based use of resources, would that not have had a major impact on knife crime?

[Victoria Atkins]

The hon. Gentleman rather highlights the reason we changed the voluntary guidance for police officers, in that we do not believe that a one-size-fits-all approach helps. Listening to communities where young people have been stopped and searched without reason—as they see it—we are very conscious that that can harm relations between the police and the community. That is why we have encouraged the use of intelligence-led, targeted stop and search. I refer to the answer I gave earlier about the huge benefit of body-worn cameras in this space, because the public and the police have that extra reassurance that searches being conducted are in fact lawful.