Knife Crime

Ellie Reeves Excerpts

Thursday 7th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

I very much will. I was delighted to visit my hon. Friend’s Erewash constituency recently to see the use of a scheme called Radio Link, which helps to co-ordinate the activities of people in the local town centre with the police. Those types of schemes are not huge in terms of resources or their public impact, but they can make a real difference in helping the police to police our streets.

[Ellie Reeves (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)]

On behalf of my hon. Friend the Member for Leyton and Wanstead (John Cryer), I am sure the House will want to send condolences for the young man who was murdered in Leyton yesterday.

Tackling knife crime requires an effective criminal justice system. With a damning National Audit Office report out last week highlighting the failures of the privatised probation services, it is clear that the system is not working. A joined-up approach is clearly required, so what discussions has the Home Office had with the Ministry of Justice to ensure that the probation service is fit for purpose?

[Victoria Atkins]

I am extremely grateful to the hon. Lady, and we of course echo her condolences to the grieving family. She is absolutely right that probation needs to be part of the answer. We have talked about imprisonment, but effective probation can steer children and young people away from criminality. I am in discussion with my ministerial counterparts in the MOJ about that, but we need to ensure that the criminal justice system is able to respond quickly and robustly to those who take the very bad decision to carry a knife or, indeed, to use one.

Knife Crime

Ellie Reeves Excerpts

Monday 4th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

My right hon. Friend will know that, as recently as 2015, changes were made to sentencing for serious violence crimes, including with bladed weapons. While it is right that the courts make decisions on sentencing based on the evidence and the facts in each case, we have seen a rise in custodial sentences. That is important, too, to make sure the right message and right deterrent are set out for these horrible crimes.

[Ellie Reeves (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)]

A primary school in my constituency recently told me that the three and four-year-olds who are likely to be vulnerable to gangs can be identified in the nursery, often because they have grown up in households afflicted by domestic violence or drug and alcohol abuse, or where other family members are in gangs. Yet our school budgets and Sure Start centres have been cut, making early intervention far more difficult. Has the Home Secretary had any conversations with the Treasury about proper funding for very early intervention, and if not, why not?

[Sajid Javid]

The hon. Lady raises the important issue of early intervention, including very early intervention. A ministerial taskforce is looking at this issue and trying to do more in this space, and work is being done. Through my Department, work is already being done on the early intervention youth fund, which has made allocations to more than 20 social enterprises, including those that are helping people to exit from gangs. Also, the draft Domestic Abuse Bill sets out to help young people who are more likely to be vulnerable to committing crimes themselves, perhaps because of their own life experiences.

Oral Answers to Questions

Ellie Reeves Excerpts

Monday 25th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

I am extremely concerned to hear that. The Government are investing more than £48 million over the next 18 months to bolster capabilities to tackle economic crime through, for instance, the new National Economic Crime Centre, which will increase the number of financial investigators and improve the regional and local response. However, I know that the Minister for Security and Economic Crime, my right hon. Friend the Member for Wyre and Preston North (Mr Wallace), is keen to meet my hon. Friend to discuss that case with her.

[Ellie Reeves (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)]

A public health approach to tackling youth violence requires fully funded public services, but in recent years policing, local authorities, schools and youth services have been cut, which has reduced support for local communities. What measures have the Government taken to ensure that new funds are available immediately to support the public health approach that is so desperately needed to tackle the rise in youth violence?

Windrush Scheme

Ellie Reeves Excerpts

Tuesday 5th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Ellie Reeves (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)]

My constituent Willow Sims came to the UK in the early 1980s and spent part of her childhood in the UK care system. She went on to have a career as a teaching assistant in local primary schools, where I first met her. In October, Willow came to see me. She had failed some immigration checks at work, so she lost her job and her recourse to public funds. My constituent is fully entitled to assistance under the Windrush taskforce scheme, yet due to mistakes at every level of government, and despite numerous representations to the Home Office by Willow, her solicitors and me, going as far back as October, her status has wrongly been brought into question. She now risks eviction from her home. Will the Home Secretary urgently rectify that chaos, apologise to Willow and meet me to discuss her case and what has gone so badly wrong?

[Sajid Javid]

I thank the hon. Lady for raising the case, not just today but in October. Had she not done so, Miss Willow Sims might not be getting the support she now gets. I am happy to apologise to Miss Sims for the Home Office’s mistakes in not recognising the importance of her case from the first moment she contacted the Home Office. I would be very happy to meet the hon. Lady to discuss it further.

Knife Crime

Ellie Reeves Excerpts

Thursday 24th January 2019 Westminster Hall

[Ellie Reeves (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Buck. Like others, I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Leyton and Wanstead (John Cryer) on securing this incredibly important debate.

We seem to be living through a knife crime crisis. In the year ending March 2018, there were nearly 40,000 offences involving a knife or sharp instrument—a staggering 16% rise on the previous year and the highest rate since comparable data began to be collected in the year ending March 2011. We should all be extremely concerned about that rise, especially because it has a disproportionate impact on young people and some of the most disadvantaged in society. Various solutions to the problems have been trialled over the years, but we do not seem to be keeping pace with what is happening. We cannot let the problem overtake us, because the consequences are all too real for our communities.

Other Members have talked about what has happened in their constituencies; in mine, at the beginning of November a 15-year-old child, Jay Hughes, was stabbed to death in Bellingham. Less than 72 hours later, 22-year-old Ayodeji Habeeb Azeez was murdered in broad daylight on a Sunday afternoon in Anerley. That was just one year on from the murder of teenager Michael Jonas just down the road. Following those murders I met the Home Secretary and we discussed the Government’s approach. I am really grateful for that, but those murders have shaken our community; constituents have expressed to me their fear about their family’s safety, taking their children to school and letting them be out at the local shops and on the streets.

Despite the difficult and tragic events that we have faced in Lewisham West and Penge, our community has shown strength and determination to bring the community closer. Stewart Fleming Primary School has held coffee mornings with the community, police and councillors, bringing them together to talk about how to tackle this problem locally. This Saturday, Athelney Primary School in the heart of Bellingham will hold an event with the police to bring the community together to talk about how to combat knife crime. I am proud of the resilience that our communities have shown in the face of adversity. As much as our community has worked hard to heal the wounds left by those tragedies, it cannot be left continually to pick up the pieces. The serious violence strategy sets out the Government’s response to violent crime and the increase in knife crime. There is extensive analysis in there, but my worry is that there are not sufficient concrete measures or funding for prevention.

We must be clear about the impact of austerity on the situation. Young people’s services play a key role in keeping people out of knife crime, but they have been cut to the bone. The budget for young people’s services has been cut by 60% since 2011-12, which led to the closure of youth clubs across the country. The Government’s own research shows that when there are no positive activities for young people to participate in, a vacuum is created into which gangs all too often move. We need investment in youth services and youth clubs in our communities.

Our schools play a huge role in the choices that young people make, but they too face massive financial pressures. When I visit primary schools in my community, I am told by school leaders that they can identify from the very early age of three years old which children are likely to be vulnerable to gangs and crime. They can identify them because they may have older siblings or family members who are involved in gangs. Schools in my constituency do a tremendous job working with those vulnerable people, but often there is a question about resources. Those schools are struggling to resource even the basics. When that happens, it is a real challenge to put time and resources into early intervention, yet it is so vital.

In London, the Met police have faced £1 billion cuts since 2010, which has led to the loss of 30% of police staff and 65% of police community support officers. Our police do an absolutely fantastic job. In particular, I pay tribute to Sergeant Dave Moss in Bellingham, and Sergeant John Biddle and PCSO Andrea in Perry Vale, who all do an amazing job in the communities. The reality in the wards I represent, however, is that we have at most two ward officers and one PCSO per ward; they do fantastic work, but they are overstretched. The big police station in Penge shut some time ago, and our small station in Penge was closed recently. That means that people do not think the police have as visible a presence as they used to have. Again, that means that people do not feel safe and do not feel as though they have the same relationship with the police.

Most people in the Chamber will agree that in order to tackle knife crime we need a public health approach. I thank my constituency neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Vicky Foxcroft), who is not here as she is performing Whip duties. She chairs the Youth Violence Commission and has campaigned tirelessly for a public health approach to youth violence. What has happened in Glasgow is a testament to how a public health approach can work to reduce knife and violent crime. That approach requires joining up health, education, youth services, the Home Office and the justice system, but the reality is that they have all been cut in recent years. If we are clear about the public health approach, it must be properly funded in order for it to work.

The warm words we have heard about a public health approach to tackling knife crime are a step in the right direction, but they are not enough. The Government need to come forward and take the lead on this issue. The austerity agenda since 2010 has left our communities and young people behind. We really need a fully funded cross-departmental public health approach to knife crime. My community cannot wait any longer.

Oral Answers to Questions

Ellie Reeves Excerpts

Monday 21st January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

I congratulate police and crime commissioner Katy Bourne; it is always a pleasure to work with her. That was one of 29 projects awarded a total of nearly £18 million from the early intervention youth fund. The project in Crawley helps engage positively with children under 18 at risk of committing serious violence. The project will establish a network of coaches, drawing together the various agencies working with those young people—again, very much underpinning our approach to tackling serious violence: that we should all be concerned about this matter and working together on it.

[Ellie Reeves (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)]

The Home Office-funded Violence and Vulnerability Unit report of 2018 noted that a reduction in services that offer positive activities to young people, such as youth services and school clubs, has left a vacuum that gangs are moving into. Does the Minister agree that supporting vulnerable young people and protecting them from county lines requires a cross-departmental approach with funding to back it? That has all too often been missing under the austerity agenda.

[Victoria Atkins]

I am pleased that the hon. Lady recently met my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary to discuss this issue. As she will know from the serious violence strategy, the taskforce and our intention to consult shortly on a public health duty, the Government take our work to tackle serious violence very seriously.

Public Health Model to Reduce Youth Violence

Ellie Reeves Excerpts

Thursday 13th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

It is as though the hon. Lady had my speech in front of her, because I am just about to move on to the further work that we have announced in recent months. Of course, having positive role models is key, particularly for young people with the biggest set of vulnerabilities, who perhaps do not have someone at home on whom they can rely. That may be because their home lives are difficult and chaotic, for reasons that we have heard about earlier in the debate. There is already a programme of work: the Home Office supports charities such as Safer London and the St Giles Trust to do innovative work to try to reach and then keep hold of the young people who most need their help.

[Ellie Reeves (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Victoria Atkins]

I am not going to, I am afraid, because I must make progress.

It has been a great pleasure for me, as part of my role, to meet youth workers and discover what they think will most help their young people. We in the Government are then in a position to help them in their work.

On 2 October, the Home Secretary announced additional major new measures to tackle violent crime. First, he announced a consultation on a new legal duty to underpin a public health approach to tackling serious violence. This would mean that police officers, education partners, local authority and healthcare professionals would have a new legal duty to take action and prevent violent crime, and fundamentally support our public health approach. The consultation will be a fundamental change in our approach—indeed, it will go further than the often-given example of Glasgow—and I will be very interested to see the results.

Secondly, the Home Secretary announced a new £200 million youth endowment fund, which will be delivered over 10 years and will support interventions with children and young people who are at risk of involvement in crime and violence. It will focus on those who are most at risk, such as those who display signs of truancy, aggression and involvement in antisocial behaviour. It will fund interventions to steer children and young people away from becoming serious offenders. Because we are delivering this £200 million over 10 years, it will provide longer-term certainty to those organisations that are helped through the fund, so that they can develop their programmes.

Thirdly, the Home Secretary announced the independent review of drug misuse, which will ensure that law-enforcement agencies are targeting and preventing the drug-related causes of violent crime effectively. Drugs have been identified as a major driver of serious violence. The review will consider recreational drug use, as well as use by the smaller number of users who cause the most harm to themselves and their communities.

Let me be clear: tackling serious violence is a top priority for the Government. The approach set out in the serious violence strategy, with a greater emphasis on early intervention, will address violent crime and help young people to develop the skills and resilience to live happy and productive lives away from violence. But we cannot deliver that alone, which is why we are supporting a multi-agency public health approach to tackling the issue and investing heavily in tackling the root causes of the problem and consulting on further measures to underpin the public health approach, to ensure that everyone is working collectively to stop this violence.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ellie Reeves (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)]

At the beginning of November, a 15-year-old child, Jay Hughes, was murdered in Bellingham in my constituency. Less than 72 hours on from that tragic event, a 22-year-old, Ayodeji Habeeb Azeez, was murdered in Anerley, just a year on from the murder of teenager Michael Jonas, which shocked the community back in 2017. These murders have utterly shaken our community, and constituents have expressed to me their fear for their family’s safety. No parent should have to harbour such concerns. No family should have to lose their child to violent crime. Similarly, no young person should be so bereft of opportunity and aspiration that they feel that violent crime is a path to follow. But this is the situation that we find ourselves in.

We are in the midst of a youth violence crisis. I will turn to the causes, but before that, I want to say how heartened I have been by the community’s response in Lewisham West and Penge. In the face of such tragic circumstances, they have shown strength and determination to bring our communities closer. I mention not least the work of the Bellingham community project, Youth First, the local police, Elfrida and Athelney primary schools in Bellingham, and Stewart Fleming Primary School and the Samos Road community in Anerley.

But as much as the community has worked to rebuild what has been lost, they cannot do this on their own. Tackling youth violence requires work from an array of public services in co-operation with our communities. Sadly, ever since 2010 we have seen some of the most devastating cuts made to our public services, especially the Metropolitan police, which has faced £1 billion of cuts since 2010, with further savings to be found over the next few years. As a result, we have seen the loss of 30% of police staff and 65% of police community support officers. Our police do a fantastic job, but in the wards that I represent, we have, at most, two ward officers and one PCSO per ward. They are fantastic, but they are overstretched. It is inevitable that with reduced police visibility and presence in our neighbourhoods, relationships with communities deteriorate, trust is eroded, and opportunities for crime arise. The Met urgently needs more funding so that it can work to prevent crime rather than just reacting to it. However, youth violence is not just a question of police funding and enforcement. The causes are extremely complex and involve societal problems such as poverty, adverse childhood experiences and lack of opportunity.

Tackling youth violence therefore requires a public health approach, which means addressing the environments that make people vulnerable to the risk of crime. We have talked about the example of Glasgow, where the violence reduction unit teamed up with agencies in the fields of health, education and social work, and the police force became the first in the world to adopt a public health approach. As a result, recorded crime in Scotland is now at a 40-year low. There are lessons to be learned from that, but it will work only if we join up health, education, youth services, housing, the Home Office and the justice system. Yet all those departments have been cut as part of the Government’s austerity agenda.

For example, the Government spend less than 1% of the NHS budget on children’s mental health, with many children waiting many months for treatment and often being turned away for not meeting the threshold. In the case of education, schools in my constituency tell me that they can identify children who are vulnerable from as young as three years old, because they may have older siblings or other family members in gangs. That is the point at which intervention is really needed, but schools can barely afford to go on as they are, so intervening to carry out that sort of work becomes increasingly difficult. Similarly, we have seen Sure Start centres have their budgets cut, and the loss of things like youth clubs and youth projects across the country.

The Minister mentioned St Giles Trust in her opening remarks, and I pay tribute to it for the work that it does. It was running a fantastic county lines pilot project down in Kent for six months, but then the funding from the Home Office dried up. That is the reality of the situation that we are working in. These projects need funding in order to carry on doing their work. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Vicky Foxcroft) for the work that she has done on the Youth Violence Commission—she has campaigned on this issue tirelessly—and also to the Mayor of London, who, despite restricted budgets, has launched the youth violence reduction unit. Such agencies desperately need money so that they can carry out this vital work.

We cannot bring back those we have already lost, but we can take action to prevent more from losing their lives. We can help prevent our vulnerable young people from turning to crime, and we can offer them aspiration and a stake in our society. What is needed is the funding and the political will.

Police Funding Settlement

Ellie Reeves Excerpts

Thursday 13th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hurd]

The hon. Lady tries to make a point about loading police funding on to council tax payers, when precept funding for Northumbria police represents 19% of total funding. The issue for Northumbria police is a low tax base and an historical decision not to raise council tax. This means that the precept level is low. Vera Baird now has an option to increase council tax by up to £2 a month, and the hon. Lady will have her own view on whether that is acceptable to her constituents. To her point, this is a settlement that builds on a settlement that put £5 million more into Northumbria policing this year, and has the potential to put in a further £18 million next year, to deliver exactly the things she is talking about, so I would be very surprised if she did not support the Government in the voting Lobby.

[Ellie Reeves (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)]

I have heard what the Minister has had to say about London, but the reality is that since 2010 the Met has faced cuts of £1 billion from central Government. The Government are to blame for the funding crisis in policing. Raising the council tax precept will mean that hard-working families will have to foot the bill and that police budgets will still be significantly underfunded compared with 2010. When will the Government stop abdicating responsibility and undo the damage caused by years of austerity?

European Union (Withdrawal) Act

Ellie Reeves Excerpts

Wednesday 5th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Ellie Reeves (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)]

There can be no doubt that this is a defining moment in our history. Our global economic and political success is at stake. I represent a constituency that voted overwhelmingly to remain part of the European Union and I stand here today to make this speech on their behalf. Although the European Union is not perfect, it is a union that has helped to bring so much peace and prosperity to our nation and to our continent. To dismiss our 45 years of membership diminishes what we have collectively achieved and what is possible.

Turning to the theme of today’s debate, we should not forget the benefits that EU membership has brought to the country through immigration. Could our economy or our NHS thrive without it? Of course not. In England, 63,000 NHS staff are EU nationals—one third of these staff work in London. Across the capital, almost half of the home- building workforce is from the EU, yet over the course of the referendum and subsequent negotiations, I have frequently been saddened by the fact that freedom of movement has become a political football spoken of only in negative terms.

A few weeks ago, when I was speaking at a public meeting in my constituency, a constituent, an EU national, stood up and told me that she had made her life here and now feared that she was no longer welcome in this country. I assured her that she was welcome. Like many others, I am immensely proud of our multicultural community in south-east London, but the Government have provided nothing but uncertainty on this issue. It is irrefutable that immigration has aided our nation and our continent. We should be proud of what it has contributed and what it has helped us to achieve.

Let me now speak of my personal experience. As a teenager, I was given the opportunity to live and study in Italy through the European Union’s Leonardo da Vinci programme. Growing up in south-east London and attending my local school, the idea of being offered, at the age of 18, the chance to temporarily move to Italy was almost incomprehensible. It was a completely life-changing experience, and I consider myself to be a citizen of the European Union. I want my son and all young people to have the same opportunities that I have had to live, work and travel freely within the EU. Instead, young people will be denied the chances of upward social mobility and co-existing with our European partners, compounded by an uncertain future of potential economic gloom as a result of this poorly negotiated deal.

When the withdrawal Bill was before the House this time last year, I tabled an amendment highlighting the work that Europe had done on family-friendly employment rights and gender equality. If my amendment, which lost by 14 votes, had passed, it would have ensured that Parliament was kept informed of changes in European law, making sure that we kept pace and did not fall behind on the equalities agenda. Rights in the workplace have been fought for long and hard, and a large number of employment rights on our statute book come from Europe, including rules on paid holiday, working hours, pregnancy and maternity rights, TUPE and age discrimination, to name but a few. Sadly, some Conservative Members would not think twice about tearing them up, and the workplace risks becoming even more precarious and insecure without EU safeguards.

I respect the outcome of the 2016 referendum, but nobody in the House could argue that things have not changed in that time. The political landscape has changed. The economic landscape has changed. Public opinion has changed. All the while, the Government are trying to force through answers to questions that were not on the ballot paper in 2016, and expect constituents to follow blindly.

When I was elected to Parliament, I vowed to my constituents that I would not support any form of Brexit that would be detrimental to them. London voted overwhelmingly to remain part of the European Union, and by a factor of two to one in Lewisham West and Penge. As my constituents’ representative and voice in this place, it is primarily their future that I consider when casting my vote on this motion.

This terrible deal would result in a miserable Brexit for the UK, threatening business confidence, jobs, our NHS and the future of young people. The biggest issues will remain unresolved while we follow rules over which we will no longer have any influence. I say to those on the Government Benches that these negotiations have been flawed from start to finish, and the results of this catastrophic approach are apparent for all to see. With time still left before the end of March, this does not have to be a binary choice between the Government’s deal and no deal.

I do not believe that anyone voted in the referendum to be worse off or less secure. The people should be given a voice again. They should be empowered to decide whether they want their future to be carved out by the Prime Minister’s deal, on which even her own MPs cannot unite, or whether they want an alternative. Given the shambles of the deal now before us, surely it is now time for the decision to go back to the public, with a people’s vote with an option to remain in the EU. With so much at stake—our prosperity, our success and our security—it is only right that we return the decision to the people and give them their say once more.

Police Pension Liabilities

Ellie Reeves Excerpts

Tuesday 6th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hurd]

I am grateful, as always, for my hon. Friend’s support. He knows from our previous exchanges that the Government recognise there is a problem in how stretched the police system is, and we took steps last year that led to more money going into the system, which is welcome, even though it was opposed by Labour. He knows my determination to find a solution not just for the pensions issue but for the stretch on the police. There is a need to increase police capacity.

[Ellie Reeves (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)]

In my constituency, a 15-year-old child, Jay Hughes, was murdered on Thursday, another tragic victim of knife crime. Then, on Sunday, another young man was stabbed to death in Anerley, just metres from where teenager Michael Jonas was killed last year. This is a crisis. When so many lives are being lost on the streets of London, surely we should be funding the Met properly, not cutting its budget. When will the Government put in place a proper plan to protect our communities? I listened to the Minister’s answer to the urgent question with dismay. What does he have to say to the families affected by these senseless killings?

[Mr Hurd]

What I have to say to the families, and I speak as a London MP, is that the whole country and the whole Government are absolutely appalled and shocked by what is happening on the streets of London. It is not just a London issue, as the hon. Lady well knows; it is a national challenge. We are absolutely serious about getting on top of this, and she will know that we have been here before, 10 years ago, at a time when the public finances were in a completely different place and when people were not asking, “Where are the police?” This is long-term, complex work, and we have to bear down on it.

The hon. Lady asked about funding for the Met police, and there is an additional £100 million going into the Met this year as a result of actions that we and the Mayor are taking. London has over one and a half times the national average for funding per head of population and for police officers per head of population.