Gangs

Ian Paisley Excerpts

Tuesday 11th October 2011 Westminster Hall

[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.