Gangs

Guy Opperman Excerpts

Tuesday 11th October 2011 Westminster Hall

[Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Caton, for allowing me three or four minutes to sum up this matter from the Back Benches. I speak as someone who spent 15 years at the criminal Bar. I was involved in nine different murder trials and prosecuted far too many punch-ups in the pub and knife crimes, in criminal courts up and down the country. I was also a specialist in relation to special educational needs and the special educational needs and disability tribunal. I advised multiple local authorities on the matter of statements.

I may represent 1,150 square miles of beautiful Northumberland countryside, but the east end of Hexham is a complex and difficult area. Sure Start, the Hexham East Number 28 project run by the Hexham community partnership and the Hexham East residents association, and the local police have dramatically turned the area around.

I notice that there is nobody here from Scotland, which is a great shame. Although I do not denigrate the amazing work that has been done by so many in London, there is no question that the essence of gangs derives from Scotland, both in relation to the knife crime that was alluded to by the hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) and the tremendous success in dealing with the issue. I applaud the work of Karen McCluskey who is pioneering the Community Initiative to Reduce Violence, which is based on Operation Ceasefire that was used in Boston. It is a fantastic scheme and should be supported. Sadly, because of illness, I missed the House’s debate on the riots, but the Prime Minister was right to praise and support the work of Karen McCluskey. Thanks to her there has been about a 50% reduction in murder and knife crime in her city. I urge the Minister to support her scheme and use it as a model to be rolled out in other places.

Finally, the vast majority of young men who were involved in the incidents in London and in various other parts of the country had a criminal record or had undergone some sort of custodial treatment, whether in a young offenders institution or in prison. Clearly, one cannot generalise but I must do my best in the minute that is left to me. The three issues that we must address in relation to young offenders institutions and prisons are literacy, which dovetails into education—clearly, the literacy and education of these young men and women is extremely poor—skills, and the revolution around drugs. If we address those issues, as part of the reform of prisons and young offenders institutions, we will be able to grab the people who have slipped through the net at an earlier stage.