Equal Franchise Act 1928

Debate between Dawn Butler and Lyn Brown

Thursday 5th July 2018 Westminster Hall

[Dawn Butler]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention and I absolutely agree, because only then will we be able to measure how far we have come and what still needs to be done.

[Lyn Brown]

While my hon. Friend is advocating on behalf of the statues that we could build, maybe we could have a statue that had some of the working-class women around it, such as Minnie Baldock and Annie Kenney; maybe they could stand shoulder to shoulder with the other women she wants on the plinth. Maybe we could have a really big platform with lots of women from the suffrage movement standing tall.

[Dawn Butler]

How amazing would it be to walk around different parts of London and the country, and see statues of women, and learn about their history, and know that we have made that happen? People always bang on about Britain having had two female Prime Ministers. Well, we have a female Prime Minister—I am not saying that I want statues of the female Prime Minister going up all around the place, but I am saying that the female Prime Minister can make the decision. She can say, “Right, I will give the money for this to happen, so that we can embrace our rich and colourful and socialist history”, because our job is to give a voice to the voiceless and to uncover the hidden stories. Should I have missed out the word “socialist” there? [Laughter.] Our job is to put a name to “A.N. Other” and to “Anonymous”, to ensure that history becomes herstory, and that herstory paints a true picture of a moment in time.

Working-class women fought for all women, so when women of today fight for the select, privileged few, I find it hard to refer to them as feminists, and when they use their voice to amplify their privilege and ignore the cries of the less fortunate, I find it hard to support the cause wholeheartedly. I hope that in time people will use their power and privilege for progress. People often talk about the legacy that they will leave behind; I think that we need to talk about the foundation that we will leave behind. Women who are on the ladder of success should leave behind them the foundation for an escalator, and the women who are on the escalator of success should leave behind them the foundation for a lift, so that those women who come behind us get to that destination, quicker and more smoothly.

Gangs and Serious Youth Violence

Debate between Dawn Butler and Lyn Brown

Thursday 3rd March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

Let me make it clear that I was not around for the mods and rockers, but heard about them from my mum and dad!

A couple of years ago, I was driving home when, around the corner from my home, I saw to my horror the body of a young man curled up on the pavement. Several police officers were with him, and I could hear the sirens of ambulances on their way. That young man was the victim of a stabbing and was clutching a stomach wound that thankfully proved not to be fatal. That incident shook me to the very core; it was so close to my house and it was not even late on a Friday night.

Some in my community live every day with the pain and worry that results from knife crime and gang violence. They worry about their children’s safety and they have been robbed of a basic sense of security. They want—they need—weapons off our streets and they want their children to be safe.

I am therefore disturbed by the recent rise in recorded knife crime—up 9% in England and Wales last year after a long downwards trend. If we look at the numbers in more detail, we find that rapes involving a knife are up by 26%; threats to kill by 20%; and attempted murder by 24%. Gun crime is up by 4%. Those numbers are absolutely chilling.

I know that we need to treat recorded crime numbers with caution. The police should not be discouraged from improving the reporting or the recording of crime, which can explain such fluctuations, but sadly there is evidence that the increase in recorded knife crime simply reflects an increase in criminal activity using knives. For example, data from the London Ambulance Service shows a 9% rise in incidents resulting from assaults involving a knife.

There is some evidence to show that the rise in knife crime is related to an increase in the number of gangs. Recent Home Office research suggests a sharp rise in the number of gangs in the capital, and the number of offences that the Metropolitan police associates with gang activity has increased by 25% in the last three years. There are 225 recognised gangs in London, with around 3,600 gang members. In a large city, that is a relatively small number people, but they still account for 17% of serious violence in the capital.

Given those numbers, my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Mr Umunna) is quite right to draw this issue to our attention and to call for a debate this afternoon. There have been some stonkingly good speeches, and I want to pay tribute to all colleagues who have contributed to such a good debate.

I am aware that a number of police services have chosen to focus significant resources and activity on dealing with the scourge of knife crime. Last week, I visited Bedfordshire police to discover how they had managed to cut knife crime by 21%. Officers from Bedfordshire’s Operation Boson told me that they had adopted best practice from across the country, and tried to attack knife crime relentlessly from every angle. They believe that they have reduced the number of knives on their streets through “secret shopper” inspections and by carefully deployed “surrender bins”, unannounced “knife arches” and the judicious use of stop and search powers. They have also supported diversion schemes in partnership with the likes of Luton Town football club, which are aimed at offering alternative ways in which young people can deploy their abundance of skills and energy.

Bedfordshire’s magnificent performance has been done on a shoestring. The excellent police and crime commissioner Olly Martins told me that balancing all the demands of the service with ever-decreasing funding and resources was like trying to balance spinning plates, always worried that something would come unstuck. It is clearly a testament to his skill and determination and to the commitment and professionalism of serving police officers in Bedfordshire, particularly those in Operation Boson, that Bedfordshire police have been so successful in their assault on knife crime.

However, in the case of much crime, prevention is always better than cure, and I know that some first-class work is already being done throughout the country to try to prevent crimes of this nature from happening. If the House will forgive me, I shall give a parochial plug to the “Carry A Basketball Not A Blade” initiative, which is run by Newham All Star Sports Academy. That charity was started in tragic circumstances by Anthony Okereafor after two of his friends were lost through knife crime. Anthony helps young people by harnessing the power of sport to provide a counter-narrative to the poisonous idea that gang life is in some way glamorous. It is the sort of “peer-to-peer prevention service” that I think works incredibly well, and the Home Affairs Committee thinks that it should be “expanded” and “commissioned more consistently” across the country.

[Dawn Butler]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech. In the context of prevention, may I thank the Reverend Rose Hudson-Wilkin, who is in the Chamber today, for all the work she has done in Hackney, where she has comforted so many families who have experienced violent crime?

[Lyn Brown]

Absolutely. People of that kind, with commitment of that kind and programmes of that kind, require our support. They require staff who have expertise and the trust of their communities, but they are also seriously in need of investment. Last month, however, we discovered that the Home Office was pulling the plug on funding for the ending gang and youth violence peer review network, a practical programme that brings together academics, local government officials and the police to develop and share knowledge and best practice with the aim of reducing gang violence. The Government’s last annual report on the network described it as “successful” and

“low cost and high impact”,

so why is its funding being cut?

Two weeks after news of the cut was leaked to The Guardian, we were told by the Minister that the network would be replaced by a new “forum”. The network had the resources that were necessary to establish and share best practice; will the new “forum” be equally well resourced, or will its funding be reduced?

I should be very grateful if the Minister answered some of those questions. I can tell her that Deborah and George Kinsella, the parents of the murdered teenager Ben Kinsella, said:

“We are extremely disappointed to hear that the government is making further cuts to funding to tackle serious youth violence when there are so many of us trying to make things better for others after losing our own children.”

June Addai, the grandmother of 17-year-old Marcel, who was murdered by a gang on a Hoxton housing estate, said:

“The government seem to be cutting everything. Children have nowhere to go, they need clubs to go to rather than hanging out on the streets where they can get into trouble. They get left behind.”

Knife crime is beginning to creep up, and it is an undeniable truth that that is happening after five years of deep cuts in spending on youth clubs and crime prevention. There will be naysayers who will claim that the increase in knife crime has nothing to do with the cuts, and that is why I fully support my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham’s call for an all-party commission. We need to get to the bottom of why youth violence is on the increase, so that we can begin to turn the tide. I ask the Minister, who is not a bad woman, “Can we have an all-party commission—please?