Clive Efford
Main Page: Clive Efford (Labour - Eltham and Chislehurst)Department Debates - View all Clive Efford's debates with the Home Office
(5 years, 5 months ago)
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Victoria Atkins
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for mentioning the work of Redthread. The Home Office is investing in Redthread’s projects in Nottingham, Birmingham and London hospitals, and I have seen its work at close hand. I am very impressed by what Redthread does.
We will, of course, look at rolling out the project further, but I hesitate because some A&E departments thankfully do not see the levels of knife crime that perhaps London, Nottingham and Birmingham do. We have invested in those hospitals because we are targeting funding at hotspot areas, but we will look at where the project could assist by being rolled out further.
Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)
The Minister should not selectively use statistics. Violent crime is significantly up, and we warned the Government when they were cutting police numbers that it would have an impact on crime. We were told that it is not about numbers but about the effective use of our police forces. She must now regret cutting 20,000 police officers, which must have an impact on what we are discussing today. What we want to hear from the Government is not about projects but about how much they will put into the police and how many of the police officers we have lost will be replaced.
Victoria Atkins
I am not selectively using statistics. I referred the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson) to the Metropolitan police statistics precisely because of the action that the commissioner has taken in London, including setting up the serious violence taskforce, which, as I said earlier, dedicates 300 officers to hotspot policing across the capital. The commissioner has said that the recent figures show a decline in the increase, which is what I was talking about. It was not selective at all. I am just looking at the most recent evidence we have.