Knife Crime Prevention Orders

Jim Cunningham Excerpts

Monday 4th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend who, with his expertise from the Select Committee on Education, hits the nail on the head when it comes to the role that exclusions and alternative provision seem to play in the lives of so many young people who are either the victims or perpetrators of serious violence. I am already working very closely with the Under-Secretary of State for Education, my hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi), particularly through the serious violence taskforce. I look forward to Edward Timpson’s review of good examples of alternative provision, because we need to ensure that children who struggle in mainstream education do not become targets for these criminal gangs that seek to exploit them as they attend alternative provision. We are very much working on that, and I would be delighted to meet my right hon. Friend to discuss our work further.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for the birthday present of calling me to speak this afternoon. I very much appreciate it.

A famous boxer once said, “You can run, but you can’t hide.” The fact of the matter is that there is a shortage of policemen, and the level in the west midlands is only 75% of what it should be. I have met different groups in Coventry, some from affluent areas and some from not very well-off areas, and the common denominator is the lack of police and the increases in burglaries, knife crime and drugs. Over the weekend, the police used a dispersal order in the centre of Coventry after a young man was badly stabbed. There have been a number of stabbings in Coventry. Let us have the police; let us do something about it; and let us stop shadow boxing.

[Victoria Atkins]

I understand and hear the hon. Gentleman’s concerns about police funding. I hope that he will encourage his police and crime commissioner to spend some of the £85 million he has accrued in reserves as of March 2018 and that he will support the Government’s funding settlement tomorrow. West Midlands police stand to receive an extra £34 million through the settlement with the help of the police and crime commissioner, and presumably the commissioner will be able to use that money to good effect.