Knife Crime

John Howell Excerpts

Monday 25th March 2019 Westminster Hall

[Andrew Rosindell (Romford) (Con)]

I commend the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mike Hill) for bringing this debate to Westminster Hall. All of us here, but particularly those from Greater London, are affected in some way by what seems to be an epidemic of knife crime. I share the horror that others will express in this debate and which the hon. Gentleman articulated so well.

Everyone in the House will be united in grief by the tragic events we have recently seen, particularly the devastating murder of 17-year-old Jodie Chesney, which took place in Harold Hill, in the London Borough of Havering and in the constituency of Hornchurch and Upminster, represented by my hon. Friend the Member for Hornchurch and Upminster (Julia Lopez). Although it is in my neighbouring constituency, Harold Hill is considered by most people to be part of Romford. Therefore, my hon. Friend and I are working together, united in fighting against this horrendous attack on an innocent young girl and in bringing the community together. The whole community has unified to work together to eradicate such awful attacks. An innocent young girl, who was sitting in a park with friends and had done nothing wrong, was brutally murdered, which has had a huge effect on our community.

My heart, and those of everyone in the Chamber, goes out to Jodie’s family and friends today and in the future. I am wearing a purple ribbon in her memory. Purple was her favourite colour, and any hon. Members passing through the London Borough of Havering will notice such ribbons tied to trees, lampposts and fences, which is a mark of how hugely this has affected our community. I say to the hon. Member for Hartlepool that today’s debate means a great deal to the people of Havering, who have gone through a terrible trauma in the last few weeks.

While the debate was secured by worried citizens all over the country, it is telling that the biggest proportion of those signing the petition came from the three constituencies in the London Borough of Havering: Romford, Hornchurch and Upminster, and Dagenham and Rainham. When I raised the issue with the Prime Minister recently in a private meeting in her office here in the House of Commons, she rightly highlighted that the law already provides for mandatory prison sentencing for a second offence of carrying a knife, and that conviction for a knife or offensive weapon offence is now more likely to result in some form of custodial sentence than in recent years. The hon. Member for Hartlepool also made that point.

However, the figures reveal why the public still have little or no faith in our justice system. As it stands, two thirds of those carrying a knife escape a custodial sentence, and one in five repeat offenders avoid prison. People are frankly fed up with soft sentencing, and it is quite clear why. In Havering, knife offences have doubled since 2014, with 339 recorded cases last year alone. Although we are a Greater London borough, we are really in Essex, on the outer edges of London. We hear about this kind of crime in city centres, but in areas like ours we are not used to it. It has come as a terrible shock that these crimes are coming out as far as areas like ours, and indeed further afield.

Such is the desperation felt that people from across Havering have established a community group called Take a Knife, Save a Life. They are a completely independent group of local people who are now patrolling the streets and local parks, talking to young people, spending time with them, trying to understand what is in their minds and giving them the opportunity to anonymously hand over any knives or offensive weapons. That shows how people are desperate to do something. There is not the police cover that we want or expect, so people are taking things into their own hands in a law abiding way.

Some people may think this is dangerous, but it is no longer sufficient to merely request that the public be more vigilant. More work must be done to tackle these criminals, who simply have no respect for the law, authority or the communities in which they live. It is an issue not just of funding and numbers, but of police policy. Most people in my constituency favour a much more robust approach to dealing with violent criminals. We now have gang culture and youths coming from outside Havering, causing fear on the streets. It has got to the point where the Metropolitan police violence reduction unit will have to come to Havering, as confirmed by my recent meeting with Sophie Linden, the Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime.

I am glad that the Government’s push for knife crime prevention orders is taking place and I believe that the serious violence strategy is a step in the right direction, but we need a collective effort across London. It is no good just blaming the Mayor of London—I can criticise him, but I am not going to do so today, because this is too serious—or just criticising the Government. I criticise them because I disagree with comments the Prime Minister made about cutting police having had no effect on crime. Nobody out there believes that. It is no good making the subject a political football. It effects all our constituencies and our communities, and we have to work together with local communities to find solutions.

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

I like the points that my hon. Friend is making. He may have heard my urgent question about knife crime. Does he feel that MPs have a positive role to play in this situation rather than being just observers? Does he agree that my request to the Minister to give us information to help us to take action on the streets, such as setting up community groups as he described, is useful?

[Andrew Rosindell]

I thank my hon. Friend for that comment, because we all have a duty to our communities—we are community leaders. I am working with local groups to fight crime. We do not have a magic wand or a direct solution, but we can play a part. I commend the youth organisations, church groups and faith organisations that are taking a lead, including the Street Pastors and Scouts. Jodie herself was an Explorer Scout—something that has been highlighted about what was a tragic, terrible crime. Community and MPs have a leadership role and it is not just down to the police and social and youth workers. We all have a part to play.

The crime prevention orders were requested directly by the police. They favour a dual approach of tough measures and positive early interventions. I often stress the importance of community policing, with police based in communities, which they know and understand like the back of their hand, as I am sure we know from our constituencies. More importantly, with that kind of policing, the community get to know the police and become familiar with them. With familiar faces of policemen in the community every day of the week, trust and recognition are built, which grow in the locality. That brings people together, with trust in their local police, and it helps to halt or at least curtail crime.

I want to make a serious point that is particularly relevant to Greater London: neighbourhood police are the ones best placed to make interventions to protect residents, when the issue is community-based. I have attempted over and over to make that point in my 18 years as Member of Parliament for Romford, yet models of policing and resources are still outdated. Instead of being based around real communities as they should be, they are based around bureaucratic electoral ward boundaries on a map that bear no relation to actual communities. They are based on electoral numbers, which is crazy and does not make sense. Communities are divided up between police teams. Instead of policing based on true, natural communities, there are lines in a road, and one police team goes to one side but not the other because it is in a different ward. Wards are not the way to fight crime. Criminals do not base their crimes on ward boundaries. They can act anywhere, and the police should police communities on that basis.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Graham. I thank the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mike Hill) for introducing the debate. I begin where I was going to end, by reinforcing to the Minister that, in this cross-party debate, we are taking the issue seriously, there is a huge amount of commitment to it, and there is an enormous strength of feeling in favour of dealing with it. If he has listened to all the contributions, he will understand that that is the feeling of the Chamber.

Depending on how one looks at the situation in my constituency, it is either not very good or too good. I recently looked at the neighbourhood policing reports for the Henley area and for a number of areas around Thame. In the Henley area, the neighbourhood report gave no examples of knife crime, and in the areas around Thame, there were two examples, so hon. Members may think that I am unable to talk about the issue. My constituency is in the middle of the wide Thames Valley police area, however, which includes Oxford, Abingdon, Reading and Slough. The Minister will be aware of a recent knife attack in Oxford, which brought the issue home to people there and in the surrounding area.

The figures show that the number of knife attacks in the Thames valley was marginally short of 1,300 in 2017-18, which is the highest figure since 2010. That is about a 50% increase on the number of knife crimes committed in 2012-13, which is a number that keeps on coming up in the areas that we are looking at. The Thames Valley police area is the largest area of knife crime in the south-east and far outstrips counties such as Kent, Sussex and Surrey. That stands in marked contrast to the calm and peaceful nature of the area as a whole.

Knife crime has played a part in seven murders, 40 rapes, 10 sexual attacks and 86 threats to kill, so it is not gang warfare, but a much greater set of crimes that involves us all. I agree with the hon. Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker) that it is not a simple task to overcome that, because in the Thames valley, recruitment is up and a tremendous amount of work is being done to look at intakes. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Romford (Andrew Rosindell) that numbers will always make a difference to this situation, but we are asking, “Do they make the difference?” I agree with the hon. Member for Gedling that they do not, because we need to take into account a number of other things.

What the police want above all to tackle this problem is the certainty that the increase in numbers that they are seeing at the moment, which allows them to address recruitment, will continue. At the moment, they do not know that and they need certainty.

An equally big role that the police play—I think it has been mentioned—is in partnership with a number of other organisations. The agencies and organisations that the police are in partnership with include the NHS and others, but the one that I have the most sympathy for is the relationship that the police have set up with schools. There, they have a chance of breaking the link of knife crime to drugs, and as our deputy police and crime commissioner has said, “Once a young person has a knife, it’s almost too late.” However, working with schools is a way of breaking that link.

We have also heard a lot about stop and search, which has increased dramatically in my area by just over 50%. I have a mixed feeling about stop and search. I have participated in a group that included police and crime commissioners, the police and other politicians. There was a tremendous backlash among the group, including the police, against just carrying on with stop and search as it was. They did not see that that would create a favourable climate in which to tackle this issue because of all the things that are associated with the history of stop and search. We agreed that any stop and search operation needed to be intelligence led, proportionate and appropriate, and I am very pleased that the Thames Valley police initiatives have all been intelligence led and are having great effect.

Yes, we can and should increase sentences, and we have a unique position in this House to be able to comment on new sentencing guidelines—the Justice Committee always comments on them. After what I have heard today, I will certainly take back to that Committee a determination to make a more concentrated effort to ensure that we are as blunt as we can be in giving that information to judges.

As I said in my intervention, we all have a role to play. That is why in my urgent question I asked what role we as MPs can play, because I have noticed that currently many MPs are very much in the role of observers and have not yet found a way to become participants in this. The Minister thought that I had uncovered a pot of gold in saying that. I wish I had and I wish there was a pot of gold. However, if he knows what has happened to that initiative, on which I think there has been some progress, it would be very nice if he told us.