Oral Answers to Questions

James Cleverly Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd April 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Lady knows that we are increasing the funding—£1.3 billion extra—available to schools. I am sure she will want to welcome, as I do, the fact that there are 22,500 more children in the Bristol local authority area in good and outstanding schools since 2010.

[James Cleverly (Braintree) (Con)]

Further to the question from my hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford), I thank the Prime Minister for the invitation she extended to me to her knife crime summit on Monday. Does she agree that, while the numbers and powers of police officers are important, we need to send a message to people who would never wear a t-shirt made in a sweatshop and look carefully at the air miles of the food they buy, yet seem not to make the connection between the drug use they have in their personal lives and the damage done to young people on our streets? Will she send a message that it is not acceptable?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend raises a very important point. If we look at the extent to which knife crime is gang and drug-related, many people across our society need to ask themselves what they are doing to ensure we deal with knife crime and not see drug-related gangs committing these crimes, so that we are able to rid our society of what I believe to be the curse of drugs. I believe they have those impacts. They are bad, and that is why it is important that, as a Government, we have a very clear drugs strategy to take people off drugs and ensure we deal with this issue. My hon. Friend makes a very important point: it is a matter not just for Government or police, but for all of us across our society to deal with these issues.