County Lines Exploitation: London

Debate between Heidi Alexander and Lyn Brown

Wednesday 17th January 2018 Westminster Hall

[Heidi Alexander]

I have some sympathy with what the hon. Gentleman says, because I think that what happens in prison to rehabilitate offenders and to take them off the path that they are on is just as important as how many years they spend there. I am not sure at the moment that the system operates correctly, so I have some sympathy with his point. However, the point I am making is about the scale and significance of the activity in one part of London, and the action that is being taken by the local authority and the police to try to tackle it. As I will come on to say, that is very difficult in a time of constrained resources and with the funding pressure that the Metropolitan police and local authorities such as Lewisham are under.

As I was saying, I get the sense, from talking to police and council staff, that they are frustrated in trying to tackle the problem. A number of years ago, there was an operation called Operation Pibera, in which the local authority, in conjunction with the CPS and the police, tried to bring charges of trafficking under the Modern Slavery Act 2015. Unlike Enfield, they were not successful in securing those prosecutions. They wanted to bring those charges because the sentences associated with that sort of conviction would be longer than for the other lesser offences with which the individuals could have been charged.

The guys who are in control of the activity and who are luring, and sometimes coercing, children, teenagers and vulnerable adults into getting involved should feel the full heat of the law. They are people who will stab someone who wants to get out of doing the drug running. They are taking advantage of kids and adults with mental health problems by, in effect, getting them to do their dirty work. It is despicable, and rather than simply going for the low-hanging fruit of charging the individuals found with the drugs or the money on the day, there needs to be a mechanism in place to hold the guy at the top responsible.

As I understand it, the Modern Slavery Act was drafted primarily to deal with problems around individuals forced into sex work and domestic servitude. The running of drugs along county lines is different. Some of the underlying principles may be similar, but I would be interested to know whether the Minister agrees that it might be sensible to review whether amending the Act could make it easier to bring successful prosecutions, to ensure that those calling the shots on the county lines are held responsible.

It has been put to me that one of the changes that might be considered is changing the law to require the police and the CPS to prove, in relation to drug offences committed by, for example, teenagers on the county lines, that they were not being exploited, but were knowingly and willingly involved in the activity. The Minister would need to consider that issue in the round, but I would be interested to know whether she is looking at amending the Modern Slavery Act in any way. I believe that some 14-year-olds will know exactly what they are doing, but others will be victims, and we need to take our responsibilities to those children and young people seriously. Just because they might not be cared for, that does not mean that they do not matter.

[Lyn Brown]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way; everybody has been very generous this morning. One mum told me what she had heard about how county lines were being run. She told me about the provision of a gift such as trainers to an individual, which is then considered to be a drug debt that has to be paid back. When the child goes on the county run to pay back the debt, they are robbed by the very people who sent them out, which means that the debt gets higher and higher, and the child has to work it off. They cannot go to their parents to ask for money to pay off the drug debt, because they are often not wealthy people, or the individuals simply do not want to burden their parents by asking for that kind of money. It is coercion and slavery, whichever way we look at it.

[Heidi Alexander]

My hon. Friend highlights the precise problem.

How we prosecute individuals involved in this crime needs attention, but so do the tools that the police and local authorities have at their disposal to detect and disrupt such activity. I know that the Government recently introduced regulations to allow the police to apply to a court to close down the mobile phone being used to receive the drugs orders, for want of a better word for them. I know that those regulations were introduced only in December, but it would be helpful to receive an update from the Minister on whether any such applications have been made, and whether they have been successful.

Will the Minister say what resource is being given to the Metropolitan police, the National Crime Agency and local authorities in London to ensure that the basic tasks that are needed to track and monitor such activity can be carried out comprehensively and in a timely fashion? I know that Lewisham Council is keen to do more work on a pan-London basis, looking at how statutory agencies might use social media more effectively to track and predict county lines activity, but that, of course, needs to be funded.

It also seems to me that the work done by councils and the police in big cities such as London to educate young people about how to stay safe is absolutely critical. We teach young people road safety. We need to have the same focus on bullying, knife crime, drugs and healthy relationships in our schools. We can pretend that this is not happening, but that is not doing anybody any favours. We also need to ensure that parents are involved in that conversation. All of that costs money and my genuine concern is that it is money that local authorities and the police do not have.

In my first term as a Member of Parliament, I visited the parents of three boys who had been stabbed to death in my constituency. I never want to do that again. My fear is that the postcode wars of seven or eight years ago, where gangs were defined by territory and violence escalated through revenge stabbings, are being replaced with gangs running drugs down to different parts of the country. The outcomes—people being stabbed and poor kids living in fear—are exactly the same. I do not want children growing up in Lewisham to have that on their plate. We need to find a way to join up the pieces of this jigsaw puzzle, treat children as victims when they genuinely are, take tough action against the ringleaders and find a way to stop the problem spreading. It already ruins too many lives in places such as Lewisham. The least we can do in this place is to try to work out a way to tackle it.

English for Speakers of Other Languages

Debate between Heidi Alexander and Lyn Brown

Tuesday 3rd May 2011 Westminster Hall

[Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East) (Lab)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to open this debate, but I would rather that the need for such a debate had not arisen. Last November, the Government published a document that was somewhat euphemistically entitled “Investing in Skills for Sustainable Growth”. Alongside various changes to the funding of further education and training in the UK, Ministers announced that from 1 August this year, many people who currently qualify for free courses in English for speakers of other languages will have to pay a significant amount towards their studies. From August, anyone who receives council tax benefit, housing benefit, income support, working tax credit or pension credit will be expected to contribute £2.91 per hour to the cost of their ESOL course. Anyone who is dependent on someone who receives what the Department for Work and Pensions has defined as “inactive benefits” will also be expected to pay.

The sum of £2.91 per hour may not sound like a lot of money, but it amounts to a minimum of £1,300 in tuition fees for a full-time course. Although as a point of principle I tend to agree that those who can pay should pay, the Government are living in cloud cuckoo land if they think that those currently on such courses, or those who most need them, will be able to pay—they will not. If someone’s husband has a job on the minimum wage and works full time but still earns less than £12,000 per year, will they really be able to pay £1,000 for an English language course? It will not happen.

I cannot help but think that the proposed changes to the way ESOL is funded are woefully short-sighted. Set alongside the Prime Minister’s repeated pronouncements on immigration and the need for everyone to speak the language of their new home, they are nothing short of hypocritical. I called this debate to give the Minister an opportunity to explain the rationale behind the changes and to question him on the impact they will have, to ask him to reconsider the crude distinction that has been made between those on active and inactive benefits, and to urge him, at the very least, to delay the changes by a year to allow those involved in the provision of ESOL to work with the Government to find a way forward.

[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the changes are another example of this Government’s attack on women? Figures from the Association of Colleges suggest that about 77% of those affected by the changes will be women who, in a two-parent household, will not be in receipt of the benefits required.

[Heidi Alexander]

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend, and believe that the changes will have a hugely disproportionate effect on women and on members of black and ethnic minority communities across the country.