Gangs

David Lammy Excerpts

Tuesday 11th October 2011 Westminster Hall

[Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to raise this important issue in the Chamber this morning, and I am grateful to my good and hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Mr Umunna), who had the original idea for this debate, and brings such issues to the House regularly. You will recognise, Mr Caton, that in August we saw some awful scenes of social unrest in this country that we had not seen for a considerable time. Following those riots, much has been said about gangs in our society.

As the MP for Tottenham, it is important to say that although I recognise that gang members were certainly caught up in the violence, the evidence made available to me by local police, the arrest sheets and the issues arising from the riots suggest that it would be wrong to infer that those riots were orchestrated by gangs, or at least that gangs were central to them. The issues are complex and many, and include policing. The riots involved not just people who do not have a stake in society, but those who got swept up in the social unrest and found themselves doing unimaginable things.

We have an opportunity this morning to reflect on gangs and gang membership, how we are tackling the problem, the other crime and violence issues relating to gangs, and some of the underlying causes. The starting point is that gangs are not new. We probably all recall reading “Great Expectations” at school, and recognise that gangs are not a new phenomenon in British cultural life. Indeed, in other periods of hardship, young men in particular have clustered together and caused mayhem and havoc for those around them.

A particular phenomenon has developed in London, and has accelerated over the last decade. Associated with the gang profile are members who are increasingly younger and often teenagers, and a growth in knife crime. The figures for knife crime rose last year, as did those for violent crime among young people, and those of us who represent London seats suspect that we are seeing a rise in knife crime as we speak. Drug-related activity is also associated with gangs.

The issue is of tremendous concern. I am aware of four knife crime victims in the London borough of Haringey in the last two weeks alone. During the summer, one gang member was stabbed twice on two separate occasions in as many months. That is the toxic and worrying nature of the issue. When trying to understand the problem in the context of what success looks like for young people in a constituency such as mine, I usually boil it down to five issues: education, employment, community, aspiration and parenting. I want to touch on those five issues in relation to gangs and why young people in constituencies such as mine are being seduced into gang membership.

Constituencies such as mine and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) are often described as inner-city constituencies, although I have never liked the phrase because it suggests that it is acceptable to have an inner city when I would like to live in just one city. Some crimes are associated with seats such as ours, but the profile of youth violence throughout London has changed. The face of gang membership is diverse, and seems to be associated as much with the inner city as with suburban London. Parochialism is manifest in gangs, and I constantly find it peculiar to see the turf wars that go on between one gang in the N17 and N15 postcode and another in the N22 postcode in Wood Green.

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

Many incidents of gun and knife crime relate to conflicts between Tottenham-based gangs and Hackney-based gangs criss-crossing the border between the two boroughs.

[Mr Lammy]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. In days gone by, she and I have had to discuss attending funerals and memorial services for gang victims because of the sensitivities between those on one side of a street and those on the other side. In the Stamford Hill part of my hon. Friend’s constituency a wonderful young man, Godwin Lawson, who was an aspiring footballer, lost his life when he was brutally stabbed in the street one evening. His family have been so honourable in the tragedy that befell them. I remember walking with my hon. Friend in Stamford Hill where one side of the street was in her constituency, and the other was in mine. It seems that poor Godwin had simply strayed into a different patch, and died as a consequence. My hon. Friend has great experience of that, and we have seen hyper-parochialism develop throughout London.

Hon. Members in the Chamber will have similar experience of the obsession with postcodes. Many young people are worried that when they leave school, particularly secondary school, at 3 or 4 o’clock in the afternoon or travel on the bus to and from school they may cross postcodes and go into other areas. Parents who attend our surgeries say, “I don’t want my daughter or son to go to that school. I have to get to work, so they go to school on their own, and I am worried. They say that there are gang members on that bus, and that because they come from the wrong postcode there will be problems.” The local authority is co-ordinating and staggering school exit times to try to avoid such problems, but there are areas of London where young people who come from different postcodes meet—as one would expect—and things flare up. Gang activity is at the centre of that.

Over the past few years there have been gains in education, particularly secondary education, but all London boroughs have seen an increase in the number of children in care following the cases of baby P and Victoria Climbié. When I visit pupil referral units and look at the issues faced by children in care, I see a pattern that still prevails for young people in such circumstances. I am concerned that pupil referral units and help for children out of school remain, to some extent, a Cinderella service. Frankly, it should be a Rolls-Royce service if we are to support young people when they are at their most fragile, and prevent them from falling into trouble during those initial stages.

I have been clear that the rioting that we saw across London was of a complex nature. One important issue, however, is unemployment, and it falls to national Government to do something about that. The Northumberland Park ward of my constituency has Tottenham Hotspur football club at its centre, but it is also the ward with the highest levels of unemployment in London, with 20% of young people claiming jobseeker’s allowance. In some communities—I think of the Somali community and parts of the black community—that figure is double, and such unemployment stretches out for months and months. I am from Tottenham which, I remind the House, saw similar levels of unemployment during previous recessions in the 1980s. It is a tragedy that the parents who were unemployed then now have children who are unemployed—whole families who have not seen employment.

The issue is simple. As my mother used to say, “Idle hands make the devil’s work.” We need a firm grip on growth in our economy, and we must look at where jobs are and how we can get them to those families and young people. Most of my constituents who were in employment worked in the public sector—it has always been that way in the borough of Tottenham—but many of those jobs have been cut. Those employed in the private sector often work in retail and the service economy but, as the House will have seen from the latest figures, that sector is shrinking and no one is anticipating a boom Christmas sale period. It is hard for those twenty-somethings to get a foothold in employment and the economy. We have seen a growth in apprenticeships, but it is not clear that we have seen the scale of growth that is necessary, particularly in London and constituencies such as mine.

Despite all that we may learn from American senior police officers, unless they come with a growth strategy in their back pocket it will be pretty hard for my constituents to believe that staying off the street and in meaningful employment is a genuine prospect. One can knock on any door in the Northumberland Park ward and what people say is simple: why are there so many young people on the streets with apparently nothing to do? That is how people get caught up in gangs. As I have said, this is not a new subject; Dickens wrote about it—the Artful Dodger was effectively in a gang. A bit of petty theft here and a bit of small drug running there; that is how people get caught up in criminality, and before they know it they are carrying a knife for protection or, if really serious, a gun. That is the pattern we see.

[Ms Abbott]

I agree with everything my right hon. Friend has said about employment, but one aspect of the way that some young people are caught up in gang culture means that if they were offered a decent job tomorrow they would not take it, because they have grown accustomed to easy money and an easy life, and do not know what it means to get up and go to work at 8 o’clock in the morning, as our parents did. I do not want to take away from what he has said, but how to wean a generation away from a semi-criminalised subculture and into the world of work is a complex question.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Lammy]

My hon. Friend is exactly right. That brings me to the other ingredients of the debate—aspiration and community. It is clear that too many young people are losing all contact not only with work, but with what I call character-building activities, such that they can engage in that work. We live in hyper-materialistic, consumer-driven times. That affects us all, but I believe that it can affect the poorest most harshly. Middle-class families can introduce all sorts of things into the home, such as scouts, football or ballet classes, which will ameliorate some of the other possibilities in their children’s lives. That is not the case for many of my constituents, and youth services in the London borough of Haringey have been cut by 75%.

For a parent—I say parent, because it is often a mum struggling on her own—it is a challenge to create aspiration and compete with the drug dealer on the other side of the street who offers a quick way to get easy money, particularly while she is trying to hold down a job. Often, it is not even one job, but two, because we all know that here in London it is virtually impossible for a constituent such as that single mum to earn a living wage with just one job. That returns us to the issue of how to be there for our young people and what it means to be family in London: it is about not only absentee fathers who do not take their responsibilities seriously—something I have raised many times—but how hard life is for those who want to take their responsibilities seriously.

I think of a family who were challenged in court this summer because their 15-year-old daughter was caught looting. The parents did not turn up to court, and the judge said, “Where are the parents and what are they up to? This is typical.” I know the parents; indeed, the family have been known to me for many years. Dad is a minicab driver, and as a consequence works irregular hours to make ends meet. Mum has a small business. They are churchgoers. They are struggling with a large family and doing the best that they can, but they are a classic family working all hours just to make ends meet and are not able to be entirely on top of everything that their young people are doing because of what is required to make a living wage in the London economy.

Hon. Members know me well enough to know that it would be very unusual for me to make excuses for young people who, in the end, have moral choices and choose to pick up a knife and use it, or choose to deal crack cocaine. However, our economy is important. That is why I raise the issue of unemployment. The culture that surrounds our young people is important. That is why I raise the issue of hyper-materialism and how quickly and easily a young boy can get caught up in it. Before we know it, he is off with a gang, even though he has parents who are doing their best.

In the end, we are centred on how we deal with the issue. There are innovations that I want to see in the system. I congratulate the London borough of Waltham Forest—no doubt my good and hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) will draw on this in her contribution—on the development of the Connect model. The measures to which I am referring involve getting around these young people in a co-ordinated way, intelligence sharing across the different stakeholders—the local authority, the health authority, the police, social services, youth services and others—intervening in chaotic families and saying to young people who we know are caught up in crime, violent crime and gang membership, “We will give you a chance if you take the services available to you. We won’t lock you up. If you take that chance, we’ll help you to get out of the gang, but if you don’t take that chance, we will be very heavy-handed through the arm of the law.” I am talking about giving them that possibility and, as a consequence, seeing the numbers fall from the dire and very concerning level in Waltham Forest of just a couple of years ago.

In Haringey, we look forward to applying the Connect model to how we begin to deal with gangs and gang membership in our borough, but we are doing so against a backdrop of a 50% cut in our youth offending service. I recognise that we are living in times of austerity. I do not want to rehearse the debate in the House about cuts, cutting too quickly and all the rest of it, but I do want to say that some services need to be immune to some of what is happening and the youth offending service must be one of them.

[Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)]

Some of the networks that are available and could be used in inner-city and urban areas throughout the UK are, of course, school networks. That is not a cheaper option, but one that should certainly be resourced. I am thinking of school breakfast clubs and post-school clubs, where young people are encouraged to stay on and become involved in activities that are more positive than some of the things to which the right hon. Gentleman has alluded.

[Mr Lammy]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. If a young person lives on the 15th floor of a tower block on one of my local estates, an after-school club is vital for their mother in seeking employment—if she is tempted to seek employment, who will take care of her child when school finishes? A breakfast club is essential if she has a cleaning job and Dad drives a minicab. In those circumstances, the young person getting to school early and getting a good breakfast is not an add-on; it is essential, but it is not clear that that is happening.

Let us examine the figures. Last year, knife crime rose by 8% in London. In addition, 43% of 11 to 13-year-olds and 50% of 14 to 16-year-olds said that knife crime and street violence were their No. 1 issue. Against that backdrop, we needed a youth offending service. We needed people to get to these young people early and work with them on intervention, prevention and persuasion. The service was developing, not mature, and was, in a sense, fairly new. I am alarmed that in the London borough of Haringey the budget has been cut by 50%.

In addition, some essential co-ordinated activity is not going on in a statutory way. Members of the voluntary sector often get together and debate these things, but it is not clear that there is any statutory obligation at all for the various services to be sat around a table, co-ordinating activities, profiling these young people and sharing intelligence.

Beyond the local authority, the activity that I have described is not happening London-wide. The border between Haringey and Hackney is porous, and the border between Haringey and Waltham Forest is porous. I am talking about co-ordinating intelligence. What is happening with these families? Which older brother went to prison last week? Which father found himself in trouble? Did domestic violence take place last week? It is essential that the various professionals have the ability to talk to one another and therefore know what is happening and or can predict what will happen, but that is not happening across London.

The Minister needs to examine that issue and needs to press the Mayor of London on it. There has been a lot of rhetoric and talk, but not a lot of action. The Mayor ran for office and won the election on the basis that he would reduce knife crime, so all of us must be very concerned that that is not happening. If anything, the problem has accelerated and got worse. Co-ordinated activity is essential. I am not saying that all this can be driven from the top, but it is possible to press for best practice, understand what is happening and see different professionals speaking to one another about those families and young people. That is not happening across London; it needs to happen, and much more purposefully. I hope that the Minister will say something about the youth offending services and teams that have been cut, and about what co-ordinated activity is planned across and beyond boroughs London-wide.

It is also clear to me that we are not sharing best practice and intelligence across the country, because I have been to other cities that are beginning to struggle with gang crime in their communities and they feel behind the curve in relation to some of the things that we have become familiar with in London.

[Mr Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

It is important to put it on the record that there have been improvements in some statistics for some areas of serious crime, whether knife crime or gun crime, in recent years, although I accept that there is a tendency now to move in the wrong direction. We all know that just to bandy around statistics is not a sensible route forward. I very much take on board the idea that there needs to be far more co-ordination within London. The right hon. Gentleman referred to his own local authority perhaps being behind the curve compared with the neighbouring authority of Waltham Forest, which has put in place the Connect programme. It is important that, rather than getting into a sterile debate on statistics, which I accept happens on all sides in political discourse in London, we acknowledge that the Mayor and his predecessor have recognised the importance of dealing with gang crime and, in particular, the terrible statistics for knife and gun crime. Whether there is a slight reduction or not, any deaths that take place because of knife or gun crime are terrible tragedies, as the right hon. Gentleman pointed out.

[Mr Lammy]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. The point I am making is that, two years ago, the assistant borough commander, the head of the youth service and her representatives, and representatives of social services, health services and schools were sat around the table—routinely, every month—discussing the group of young people who were getting caught up in this situation, and that funds were coming through to support that activity. I am afraid that they told me last week that that has ended. They are engaged—meeting voluntarily, every six weeks—because they are so concerned, but there is no statutory framework for that activity, and neither is there the support and diversion activity that needs to happen.

The hon. Gentleman will appreciate from his long experience that what those young people need is diversionary activity and intervention. That requires resources. If he speaks to colleagues in Waltham Forest—my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow might say something about this—he will hear that they are concerned about resources. I think that this is one area in which we can make the plea for resources, because the consequences of under-resourcing will cost us so much more. The co-ordination and resources that must rightly follow, so that those professionals can do their job, are essential.

[Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)]

The right hon. Gentleman is clearly drawing on his extensive experience. To return to the issue of youth offending, is he calling for ring-fenced funding from central Government to go to local authorities, or does he believe that local authorities themselves have a duty to prioritise youth offending funding within their budgets?

[Mr Lammy]

I am not calling for prescription; it is not for me to prescribe how this should be done. That must be a matter for the Government. What I am saying is that this is a priority and a real issue in London. Youth services are being cut and reduced across London. It is easy to make the point that the London borough of Haringey, for example, should prioritise youth services at a time when it has to cut £40 million in year from its budget. I am worried, however, that I will be here with colleagues next year and that the figures will have gone in the wrong direction, because we will have been unable to prioritise the service.

As I said at the beginning of my speech, although I do not recognise a picture that suggests that gangs were behind this summer’s rioting and social unrest, it is clear that gang members were part of it. I have spoken to the manager of JD Sports in Tottenham retail centre and to the manager of Comet. I have also looked at some of the video and pictures of complete lawlessness, which ran for more than five or six hours—there were more young people in that shop that night, looting and robbing, than during the day—and I do not want my constituents to get accustomed to such things, because that would be dangerous for any society—those events have to be a one-off. Those charged with intervening in, dispersing and engaging with often chaotic families, as well as those who co-ordinate pupil referral units and ensure that young people in care are properly provided for, who work with families, who think about a living wage and about our economy, and who ask hard questions about where the jobs are in a constituency such as Tottenham, recognise that this is important.

Although I am pleased that the Government have said that they want to prioritise the issue, as a Back Bencher I want to scrutinise how that is done. We should, of course, speak to those from across the pond who have experience in this area, but I have now been the MP for Tottenham for 12 years and, when I began, knife crime and gangs were certainly not a major phenomenon of the capital city. In those days, the caricature was of yardie gangs—I am sure my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington will recall reading about them in the papers.

The situation has changed completely and we have a decision to make: are we going to see gangs and that terrible youth violence as a permanent phenomenon of our economy and country, as in parts of downtown America? We are on a cusp. We can either get over the problem with proper, co-ordinated quality effort, or I am afraid that it will be a permanent phenomenon of our modern economy.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

Young Offenders

David Lammy Excerpts

Tuesday 8th March 2011 Westminster Hall

[Paul Maynard]

My hon. Friend anticipates much of my speech. We certainly lack a fundamental ability to assess the needs of young offenders when they enter the youth justice system and determine how best to address those needs. They therefore end up in the secure estate without having been assessed properly, because the tools are not present in the system, which is a great worry that I shall discuss later. The conveyor belt appears to be constructed almost to minimise effective exit points before reaching the secure estate. That should be of great concern, because disadvantaged children face particular problems in both the courts and custody.

It goes without saying that reoffending by juvenile offenders is extremely high. Some 75% of those released from custody and 68% of those given community sentences or other disposals in the community reoffend within a year. Why is that? Undoubtedly, some of them commit crimes and are bad people, but for a significant number, the ineffective screening process and lack of appropriate tools for identifying behavioural and communication difficulties almost set them up to fail.

I welcome, for example, the Minister’s proposed amendments to the Bail Act 1976, which would remove the option of remand for young people who were unlikely to receive a custodial sentence, but I would also welcome an assurance from him that the alternatives will adequately protect vulnerable children. When I visited Barton Moss secure children’s home, I was struck by the fact that many children are remanded there on bail for their own protection and welfare, even though they might not end up receiving a custodial sentence. There must be no presumption against a custodial remand.

Equally, when offenders reach the youth court, they find disadvantage once again. Little is done to screen young offenders for mental illness, learning disability or speech, language and communication difficulties. It is no use imposing a disposal of any sort if the young person cannot comprehend the punishment or interpret what is occurring to them in what can be a very off-putting setting. I admit that I have never visited a youth court, but I can imagine the feelings of a nervous child entering that formal situation, uncertain of the process and of what is occurring.

I welcome the previous Government’s introduction of a witness intermediary scheme to help witnesses with speech and language problems or communication difficulties better to present their case in court, but I must ask why such assistance is not also afforded to defendants suffering from similar problems. Does a child’s impairment increase the possibility of custody, because it makes it more likely that they will fail to comply with a youth rehabilitation order, or because there is a lack of an appropriate youth justice programme that might enable compliance? If so, it is a damning indictment of the system. Is it really the aim of our society that eloquent children should be more able to plead for one last chance?

When children get to custody, they have what is called the Asset form, which is the primary document for interpreting children’s needs. Those forms are critical to the development of appropriate care and sentence plans, but they are structurally flawed, because they fail to identify speech, language and communication difficulties. They impair identification of individual problems and make it harder to address those difficulties during the time in custody, however short or long it may be. The inadequacy of Asset means under-reporting of those problems, and I believe that they are taken insufficiently seriously within public policy circles.

We should recognise that, thanks to Lord Bradley’s report, improvements have been made to the way in which mental health is addressed, but the situation is by no means perfect. Indeed, it is a success only relative to the absolute failure in terms of other needs. The consequences of that failure in screening and appropriate identification are severe. As I have said, we are setting young offenders up to fail, which manifests itself in the rapid increase in the numbers of young offenders who are returned to remand for breach of conditions. For example, someone might be given what is still called an ASBO—an antisocial behaviour order—and told that they cannot enter a particular road. However, their grandmother might live on the other side of that road and, if they cross it to see her and somebody spots them and reports them for it, that is a breach. It might get them sent back to a young offenders institution, but it seems to me to be a technical breach. It might even be that the young person cannot comprehend that to get to their grandmother’s house, they would be breaching an ASBO in the first place. If they do not receive appropriate care and an appropriate sentence plan, and if they have a basic lack of understanding of the process in which they are engaged and are incapable of engaging with the interventions provided for them, we are setting them up to fail.

The story is the same when they get to custody. Nick Hardwick, the chief inspector of prisons, has said:

“Prisons can offer a short window of opportunity for the majority of young people who end up in custody…That is an opportunity that must not be wasted.”

I am concerned that it is being wasted in some instances. For example, it is critical that children who might have dropped out of the education system and have not acquired the basic skills of literacy and numeracy are re-equipped with them, if they are to fulfil a purposeful life once they are released. However, it is clear from written answers provided to me by the Minister that the number of such young people achieving literacy qualifications dropped from 2,104 in 2006-07 to just 1,350 in 2009-10. Similarly, the number completing numeracy courses dropped from 2,680 in 2006-07 to 1,813 in 2009-10. I doubt that that is simply because of a decrease in the numbers in those institutions. There is clearly something more structural going on, and I would welcome some more information on why it might be occurring.

[Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman is making a good contribution. On his last point, does he recognise—I say this as a former Minister with responsibility for skills and training in prisons—that, although many young people are making progress in our prisons, we were not able to introduce schemes such as Building Schools for the Future in prison greatly to improve facilities? Does he also agree that it is important for young people on short sentences that their integration back into, usually, further education in the community happens in a real way?

[Paul Maynard]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that contribution, which raises a wider point about who owns the child when they progress through the criminal justice system. One of my concerns is that when someone transfers from their home local authority to the secure estate, their home council effectively washes its hands of them. When they have gone through pupil referral units—or educational diversity, as we call it in Blackpool—and then find themselves in a young offenders institution, it is almost like starting again. They are then released and, yet again, they start again when they are returned to their local authority. Again, there is a lack of cohesion.

I should also like to deal with the issue of the prison escort records of young offenders at young offenders institutions. I have been informed in a letter from the Ministry of Justice that the initial assessment of a prisoner’s language skills is made by the custody manager who completes the escort record, but there has been no national review of the quality or accuracy of those reception language assessments. There is no obvious evidence of the use of a tool that is approved by the professional bodies.

I do not believe that in custodial settings we have enough speech and language therapists. Speech and language intervention at Red Bank secure children’s home reduces the need for physical restraints from two to three times a day to just two times a week, but only 15% of youth offending teams have access to speech and language therapy. I am particularly concerned that the changes to prison health care and the re-assignment to the Department of Health risk worsening prison health care. I am concerned that a primary care trust in which a young offenders institution is located now has to take responsibility for all the young offenders in that institution. It is causing problems in relation to securing funding for the health care within that institution. Will the Minister comment on that and explain why the change has occurred and how he hopes to protect those in young offenders institutions who are in need of specialist health provision that PCTs now appear reluctant to fund?

We need to provide more exits in the community from the so-called conveyor belt. As I have said, I welcome the fact that we are trying to avoid the use of remand. I support the concept of local authorities bearing more of the burden of responsibility for the cost of youth justice in their community—a child from Blackpool does not cease to be a child from Blackpool when he is in Hindley young offenders institution—which was an idea raised by the recent Green Paper. Payment by results is another frequently cited intervention, but I am not sure that it is fully understood yet. I would welcome some reassurance that the schemes on offer are not merely a case of helping the low-hanging fruit first to demonstrate that the process works, but are focusing on those who are hardest to help.

Lord Bradley’s review, which I mentioned earlier, recommended that all youth offending teams have a suitable, qualified mental health worker with responsibility for making appropriate referrals. Child and adolescent mental health services are a particularly malfunctioning part of our health care system. The likelihood of CAMHS taking on a 15 to 17-year-old who presents for the first time with mental health problems is, I am afraid, pretty close to zero. Their view is that they will have to wait to be dealt with by the adult mental health care system. Structurally, that cannot be what is intended by any Government of any political persuasion. A child and adolescent mental health service has the word “adolescent” in it, which surely applies to the 15 to 17 age group.

I should also like to focus on the issue of transitional services for children entering adulthood, a period for which, in my view, there is no real age limit, because young people develop into adults at different ages. The issue will be covered in the forthcoming special educational needs Green Paper, but I hope that, just as early intervention was the public policy fad—if I may call it that—of the past decade, the transition phase will become the fad of the coming decade. It has been sorely neglected, which has had a damaging impact on the quality of public policy in this country.

We also have to consider the impact of arrangements for the release of young offenders. It is not acceptable to just hand them a travel warrant and £46.75 upon their release. I have suggested to the Minister that we increase that sum, because it is not enough. When I market-tested that with the professionals I met, it was not supported as much as I thought it might be. The point was made that, if we give them more money, cash in hand, we cannot control what they spend it on. Those professionals would far rather focus on handing out vouchers to meet the specific needs that those young offenders will face in their first 48 hours or so, rather than a cash payout.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)]

I am grateful, Mr Streeter, for the opportunity to contribute to the debate. I congratulate the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard) on a very good and effective summary of the state of youth justice.

I would like to associate myself with a number of the hon. Gentleman’s remarks, particularly in relation to the important role that now has to be played by local authorities on this issue. I, too, visited a young offenders institution just a few weeks ago: Feltham in west London. It was my fourth visit to Feltham in the 10 years that I have been the Member of Parliament for Tottenham. I visit constituents there from time to time. That keeps me in touch with them and in touch with some of the most challenging youngsters in my community. Reflecting with prison officers and chaplains, some of whom I have got to know, it is clear that the cohort of young offenders from Tottenham and other areas of north London are now in Feltham for more serious crimes than they were on my previous visit a few years ago, and on my visits before that. The nature of violent crime in particular, and what young people are being sentenced for, is deeply worrying, and is reflected in newspaper headlines about knife crime and other crimes.

The hon. Gentleman touched on some concerns that are really important if we are to address this issue. What happens when a young person leaves an institution such as Feltham? Reflecting on my experience as the Minister with responsibility for skills—and, therefore, offender learning in prison—for two years in the previous Labour Government, I am clear that we were able to improve education in prisons. If serving a sentence of more than six months in our prisons, a prisoner will now take not just level 1 and level 2 numeracy and literacy, but training, hopefully, in a trade that can be taken beyond prison. That is the case now. Lots of young men, in particular, are leaving prison and graduating with certificates to show the skills that they have acquired.

I would like to stress two points. We have not been able to renew and improve education facilities in our prison stock in the way that must be expected in the 21st century. There are jobs and opportunities out there, but if prisons, in partnership with industry, cannot provide the latest technology and training for those young people, whether in respect of construction or cabling for the information technology industry, the skills that they come out with will be virtually worthless when they compete with young people who have not been held at Her Majesty’s pleasure. That is something that we need to address.

A drive to ensure that industry works in partnership with our prisons to renew facilities and to support the provision of facilities in young offenders institutions is necessary. We did not see the kind of private finance initiatives or public-private partnerships that might assist in improving the situation in prisons in the last period. I hope that it is something that we can get to, so that young people receive the kind of training that I saw in Sweden and Finland, which, frankly, have far better results with their young offenders than we do.

Just a few years ago, my Government were able to begin pilots in what we called test bed regions, and I hope that the Minister might be able to comment on their success or progress. They were meant in part to deal with the other problem that is manifest in the system. I feel sorry for the Minister. I worked closely with justice and prisons Ministers in my period, and I know that many of the issues that the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys raised lie beyond the door of the justice system, and beyond the door of a skills Minister dealing with education in prisons. If a young person exits but does not quickly get suitable housing, which is very much in the domain of the local authority, that is a disaster, because he will probably end up with the same crew that he was hanging out with before he went inside. If he exits and has to wait two or three weeks to access benefits, that is a bigger disaster. Guess what he will do to find money and resources in the interim period because, frankly, colleagues in the Department for Work and Pensions have not been able sufficiently to integrate their systems so that he can quickly get the support that he needs, get on to jobseeker’s allowance and move forward.

Integration with further education and the role of the probation service are also fundamental. It is clear that the public imagination of what probation and probation services should mean is nothing akin to what is happening. A great deal needs to happen to ensure that a responsible adult is alongside the young person when they exit the young offenders institution. That is clearly the role of the probation service, which needs proper resources but also must be subject to proper expectations and accountable to the public. It must work alongside young offenders to ensure that they can continue to develop the skills they acquired in prison when they exit, particularly if they had a short sentence. There must be integration of the course that they were doing in prison with courses at the local further education college. In Britain, there are still too many young people falling through the cracks. They are not able to continue their education or training and access the necessary job.

We need a step change in the attitudes of industry and business to young people who, if they do not succeed in work, will cost the state millions in recidivism. I am afraid that the attitude of employers to employing young people who have a criminal record is still less than positive or wholesome. It is our civic duty to ensure that if someone makes a mistake, they are able to correct it.

I end with the story of a young man who came to see me in my surgery on Friday last week. He saw me in 2003, having committed some crimes in 2001. He had changed his life and wanted to join the Territorial Army. I contacted the TA at that point, but it said, “Sorry. We want to see more sustained progress in this young man’s life before we will take him on.” It is now 2011, and he has come back with his Criminal Records Bureau record showing no criminal activity, and with references from some of his employers over the last period. He has turned his life around and still wants to join the TA, and it is my sincere hope that it will look favourably on him. We need both public and private sector employers to take that kind of attitude to young people.

I am deeply concerned that the kind of cuts that we are seeing in provision for young people could lead to a serious explosion in crime among this important cohort. I say that fully cognisant of the importance of Tottenham and constituencies such as mine in respect of such issues in the past. Cuts to youth services and to provision such as after-school clubs for young people can have a detrimental effect down the road. I represent a constituency where many young people do not have access to gardens. They may live on the 15th floor of a tall tower block and share a bedroom with four, five or six brothers and sisters. They need youth services. They need the state in loco parentis after school and at the weekends. Without that, they are literally on the streets, in front of the television or on the internet.

Working women in my constituency do not get home at 3 o’clock to pick up their children. They are often single mums who need activities after school and at the weekend to keep their kids occupied until they can pick them up after they finish work at half-past 5 or 6 o’clock. Cuts in this area can have a huge and detrimental effect, so I hope that when we speak about youth justice, we recognise that it cuts across nearly every policy area, and that we must do better in Britain in the coming period.

[Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard) on securing this debate. As I said in an intervention, he has made a thoughtful and meticulously researched contribution—indeed, possibly even a liberal with a small l contribution. His emphasis on early intervention and ensuring that there is proper assessment of learning and communication difficulties among young offenders was a strong point.

I also congratulate the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy), who made a strong contribution based on his experience as a Minister. I did not disagree with anything that he said, including his last point about the impact of cuts on youth services. We must be cautious about that, because of the potential for significant negative knock-on effects.

I apologise to you, Mr Streeter, and to others, because I must leave early to sit on a Statutory Instrument Committee that is looking at licensing hours in relation to the royal wedding. Clearly, we hope that more people will not join the criminal justice system as a result of extended licensing hours and their drinking longer and harder than they might otherwise have done.

The backdrop to what we are discussing must surely be, to some extent, public perceptions of young people. Members may be familiar with a YouGov poll commissioned by Barnardo’s that was conducted at the end of 2008. It found that nearly half the adults regarded children as increasingly dangerous to each other and to their elders, while 43% feel that

“something has to be done”

to protect society from children and young people. It is a sad indictment against not young people but adults, society and, perhaps, the media that we have arrived at a point where the perception of young people is as negative as that.

The poll goes on to state:

“The British public overestimates, by a factor of four, the amount of crime committed by young people.”

I wonder to what extent that perception affects sentencing policy. If people think that young people are committing four times as much crime as they actually commit, that may be reflected in the sentences that are handed out.

That is the perception, but, interestingly, the number of children in custody has fallen by one third since 2002, from 3,175 to just more than 2,000. That goes against the perceptions that that poll revealed, and may explain to some extent the fall to which the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys referred in terms of young people accessing services. Fewer children are going into the custody system.

That is the backdrop, and I shall now address the issue. A couple of months ago, I organised a sentencing round table. I invited many of the organisations involved in youth justice to come and suggest how to enhance the proposals in the Green Paper and to propose additional measures. They stressed the importance of the emphasis on diversion, discretion and judgment in what happens with children who go into the youth custody system. As an aside to the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys, I hope that he will stick to his humanitarian instincts and consider why an age of criminal responsibility of 14 might be the appropriate course of action. Indeed, at the Liberal Democrats’ spring conference on Saturday, I shall open a debate on a motion that proposes precisely that.

The organisations had concerns about whether the Green Paper focused enough on custody of young people, and there was a lot of enthusiasm about what is happening to youth custody in Northern Ireland. Perhaps the Minister will respond to that, and confirm whether the Government are considering that as a way forward. Northern Ireland has far fewer children in the prison estate.

The organisations also focused on the need to address learning difficulties and mental disorders, as the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys said. He rightly drew on the briefing of the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists—at least, I am drawing on it—and referred to the asset system, which is the tool designed to assess young people. The concern, as the hon. Gentleman has said, is that it is not designed to identify learning difficulties or communication disabilities. I have a specific question for the Minister. Can that system be looked at to ensure that it is adjusted so that it can do precisely that? As he has said, it is a significant issue. Current evidence shows that 60% of young offenders have such severe communication disabilities that they cannot access prison education programmes. I agree with the right hon. Member for Tottenham that good, strong educational programmes in prisons are key, but they could go further in allowing offenders to obtain qualifications.

When I visited the prison in the Minister’s constituency, the point was made that it is all very well an offender achieving an NVQ level 1, but they need to go further if they are to be competitive in the job market when they come out. Appropriate courses must be available. That prison—Highdown—has a gym, where prisoners like to go, and perhaps they should be able to achieve some qualifications in gym work that they could use when they come out.

The right hon. Member for Tottenham was right to say that employers need to do more, and I am sure that he will be familiar with National Grid’s scheme, which is fantastically successful. It trains prisoners, and its experience is that on release, because they take up a guaranteed job at the end of the training, they are less likely than the general population to offend. That is a real success story, and I wish other employers would emulate it.

[Mr Lammy]

The hon. Gentleman will recognise that National Grid’s scheme works because the young offenders have often had day release or been out on tagging. Some of the public storm in the tabloids about young people leaving institutions must stop if such schemes are to work.

[Tom Brake]

That is a significant point, but unfortunately, there is an element of risk. The right hon. Gentleman was a Minister, so he will know that there may be occasions when something happens on day release, but overall the impact is positive. The Government must be willing to accept that there will be some risk, and that there may be some negative publicity if something regrettable happens, but the overall contribution of such schemes is positive, which is what must be borne in mind.

Other matters that were raised at the round table include transition, which is significant. When young people go from the youth estate into the adult estate, it is a huge leap, and that transition must be much smoother. That applies not just to 17-year-olds going into the prison estate, but to 18 to 21-year-olds, because many of them are not able to go into the normal adult estate without additional support.

An issue concerning young adults to which the Minister may wish to respond is that the law is being disregarded and they are mixed up in adult prisons. The law is clear, but I understand that it is not being applied. Another significant point that was made at the round table is the need for early intervention and early investment.

I have some additional proposals that I hope the Minister will consider. The police should be allowed discretion in how they tackle youth offending, perhaps adopting a problem-solving approach rather than unnecessarily arresting young people when they admit responsibility. It should be recognised that the criminal courts are not necessarily the most effective environment in which to deal with children, particularly those under 14 when, as the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys has said, they often do not have the slightest idea what they are going through in the court system, because it is too complex and completely opaque to them.

We must decriminalise children when they should be treated as victims, such as child prostitutes, and we should protect young people who are criminalised for victimless crimes. I am thinking specifically of consensual sexual acts between those under 16. On restorative justice, I hope that the Minister will respond on the Northern Ireland proposals.

As hon. Members have stressed, it is important to give local authorities responsibility for custody costs, so that there is a clear and strong incentive for them to invest in youth services, as the right hon. Member for Tottenham has said, if they can see a clear correlation, which I am sure that there is, between investment in youth services and a reduction in the number of young offenders going into custody with all the charges and costs associated with that.

This debate has been positive with well thought-through contributions, and I hope that the Minister will respond in kind; I am sure that he will.

Oral Answers to Questions

David Lammy Excerpts

Tuesday 15th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Blunt]

As I understand it, the likely level of compensation would mean that prisoners making such claims would not be eligible for legal aid in any event. However, that will not prevent the situation with no win, no fee arrangements, as a substantial case list is being created by solicitors touting for custom.

[Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)]

The whole House will be aware of the worst scenes of poverty in America. Will the Minister with responsibility for legal aid think again? Currently, both local authorities and his Department are cutting the money available for advice. Where will the people of Haringey, the constituency in which the baby P and Victoria Climbié cases occurred, get that advice?

[Mr Djanogly]

Let me tell the right hon. Gentleman that citizens advice bureaux and not-for-profit organisations have been able to do legal aid work for only 11 years. Before that, they just gave general advice. He must appreciate that when the previous Government allowed those organisations to do legal aid work, they did not look at the matter holistically. They did not look at the various funding streams coming together or at the waste in the system. Now that the money has gone, we are having to look at those things.

Public Disorder (NUS Rally)

David Lammy Excerpts

Thursday 11th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Nick Herbert]

We are conducting a review of sentencing, which will be published later this year. Of course there was no justification for the acts that took place, but I am not aware of any inadequacy in the sentencing powers available to courts. What is necessary is for the authorities to be able to collect the evidence and properly bring these individuals to justice.

[Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)]

At 1.10 pm I was at the front of the march with my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West (Julie Hilling), and I saw no surge on Millbank at that time. May I refer the Minister to the website london.indymedia.org? He will learn from that website that anarchist groups, both in this country and abroad, had been planning to join the march for quite some time, and there is a fair amount of evidence that they were caught up in the criminal damage. It is surprising that the police were not aware of that activity. Can we ensure that we do not curtail the activities of students who march in London in the coming weeks, which some intend to do?

[Nick Herbert]

I can reassure the right hon. Gentleman that the Government wish to protect the right of peaceful protest. He mentioned websites. I am sure that this debate is being noted by the Metropolitan police, and I shall make certain that his comments are drawn to the attention of the commissioner. He is, of course, free to write to the commissioner, and if he wishes to copy me in, I shall ensure that his comments are noted.

Legal Aid Payments

David Lammy Excerpts

Thursday 17th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

I am sure that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary and I will be only too happy to meet the Members of Parliament particularly affected by the issue. We will have to take advice on whether we will be subject to any kind of legal review if we do that in the middle of the bidding process but, subject to that, we would welcome advice from Members who have particularly large numbers of such cases to deal with, because we will have to look at the whole provision of legal aid in this and other areas.

[Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)]

The right hon. and learned Gentleman has made much of the fact that this is the only voluntary body that has found itself in such difficulties. Does he recognise the volume of immigration and asylum work that has been done and that has to be done? He suggests that other comparable bodies have not found themselves in such a situation; can he name some of those that particularly relate to immigration and asylum?

[Mr Clarke]

The trust that folded had a 7% market share. It was, of course, part of the old advisory service, which was split up some time ago. The other half of the old advisory service is to get a much bigger market share—over 20%. We are talking about a policy of the last Government, and one with which I do not disagree. The graduated fee scheme was introduced in order to get better value for money out of the legal aid scheme, and everybody had to adjust to it. So far as I am aware, the body is the only one that is in great financial difficulties. In a way, it would have been very awkward for us if it folded after we had awarded the contracts. We would have been in a mess if we had discovered that we had awarded a contract to a financially insecure organisation that went down once we were relying on it to do the work. As far as I am aware, everyone else who is bidding is, I hope, in a sound financial state.