Knife Crime Awareness Week

Jonathan Edwards Excerpts

Tuesday 21st May 2024 Westminster Hall

[Fleur Anderson]

I thank the hon. Lady for raising that. I absolutely do agree: education and prevention is crucial to this, and I will also be talking more about that.

I also thank the hon. Lady for mentioning the organisation working in her constituency. I pay tribute to the other charities working to tackle knife crime, which include the Ben Kinsella Trust—which is organising Knife Crime Awareness Week and has written a report on keeping young people safe—along with Lives not Knives, Street Doctors, the Damilola Taylor Trust, Justice for Ronan Kanda, and Triple P. They are just some of the many organisations working across the country to tackle knife crime. Often, education is the key.

Knife crime destroys lives, devastates families, and creates fear and trauma in communities. Labour has made it our mission to halve knife crime within 10 years of a Labour Government. It is right to be ambitious to change the current situation. For 14 years, the Conservatives have failed to grip this epidemic and take the action necessary to get these dangerous weapons off our streets. The Government’s response has been wholly inadequate. The serious violence strategy is more than five years out of date, the serious violence taskforce was disbanded, and everyone knows from their own communities that too little is being done to divert young people away from violence and crime.

Youth services are an essential part of that. I have spoken many times about youth services, and I wanted to use this opportunity to speak about them again. The YMCA’s research shows that real-terms expenditure on youth services has been slashed by 73% since 2010-2011, which equates to a £1.1 billion loss. The number of youth centres has been cut drastically, from 917 in 2011 to just 427 across the country in 2023. It is not enough. No wonder we are seeing this epidemic of knife crime.

Half of young people do not have access to a youth service. Too often, when teenagers are caught with knives, nothing happens; there is no action or support to stop a spiral into even more devastating crime. Too often, when there are signs that a young person is getting into trouble, being groomed by gangs or getting lost in a dangerous online world, nothing is done. There is not enough parenting support either. Too often, when teenagers say they do not feel safe or are struggling with trauma or abuse, no one listens and no help is provided. That is the reality of Tory Britain. Labour will change that.

[Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (Ind)]

There was a horrific incident at Amman Valley School, in Ammanford in my constituency, in which a pupil attacked two teachers and another pupil. Miraculously, nobody died, but one of the teachers sustained especially horrific injuries. Does the hon. Lady agree that there needs to be a focus on weapons in schools? For me, the fact that weapons are being produced in schools in somewhere like Carmarthenshire, of all places, is extremely worrying.

[Fleur Anderson]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising that horrific-sounding incident. I agree that weapons in schools are extremely concerning and need to be tackled. We need a holistic approach; it cannot just be about weapons in one place or another, or education in one place or another, or about one particular service. We need to address the issue in the round, and weapons in schools are definitely a part of that.

Labour will extend the ban on zombie knives to ninja swords, establish an end-to-end review of online knife sales and close the loophole that allows online marketplaces to sell dangerous knives. Importantly, Labour will introduce a new young futures programme to establish new youth hubs, with both mental health workers and youth workers. The new young futures programme will draw on up to £100 million a year, based on combining existing commitments to fund youth hubs with mental health staff and youth workers in every community, and will be paid for by ending tax breaks for private schools. We will provide mentors in pupil referral units and youth workers in A&E, paid for by full cost recovery for gun licensing and a programme of public sector reform.

We will deliver a targeted programme in every area to identify the young people most at risk of being drawn into violent crime and build a package of support that responds to the challenges they are facing. That will be achieved by bringing together services at a local level to better co-ordinate the delivery of preventive interventions around the young person, rooted in a strong evidence base. We will develop a national network of young futures hubs and end the postcode lottery of youth services, which are better in some places than others. We will bring local services together and deliver support for teenagers at risk of being of drawn into crime or facing mental health challenges. Where appropriate, we will deliver universal youth provision, which has been cut so badly by the Conservative Government. We will also deliver youth workers in A&E units, custody centres and communities, as well as mentors in pupil referral units.

Under a Labour Government, there will be tough consequences for carrying a knife. A Labour Government will end the empty words and apology letters for knife possession, and will guarantee sanctions and serious interventions for young people who carry knives. There will be tough new laws to restrict the sale of knives. A Labour Government will implement a total crackdown on the availability of knives on Britain’s streets—no more loopholes, no more caveats and no more false promises. The Government have published 16 press releases about zombie knives since 2015, yet despite repeated promises to toughen the rules, a full ban is still not in place. Labour will urgently legislate to ban zombie-style knives, introduce tough criminal sanctions on tech executives who allow knife sales on their online marketplaces, and conduct a rapid review of online knife sales from the point of purchase through to delivery. In particular, we will strengthen ID checks and checks conducted by Royal Mail and Border Force for UK-bound parcels.

There are ways to take action. We can stop the increase in knife crime and see an end to this. I again thank the Ben Kinsella Trust, and recommend its report on keeping young people safe, in particular with regard to the need to work with young people in primary schools, which is where some of the belief systems about knife carrying start. I urge the Government to take more action to end knife crime.

Police Grant Report

Jonathan Edwards Excerpts

Wednesday 7th February 2024 Commons Chamber

[Chris Philp]

In just a moment. Overall, next year, police funding will be up 6% on this year for frontline forces. Inflation is currently only 4% and is forecast to fall further.

[Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (Ind)]

Further to the intervention by the hon. Member for Bradford East (Imran Hussain), is it not the reality that the contribution of the police precept to the overall cost of policing has increased substantially? In the case of Dyfed-Powys police, the precept was 37% of total funding in 2010-11, but this year it is 54.4%, so the burden is being pushed on to local taxpayers via the precept.

[Chris Philp]

Overall, across England and Wales, around two thirds of the total funding comes from central Government. As the hon. Gentleman says, that varies by police force, but on Dyfed-Powys police, the Government grant is going up next year by £6 million, which is nearly 10%, whereas the precept component is only going up by about £3 million. The Government grant for Dyfed-Powys will go up by double the amount of the precept increase. I say again that frontline police forces next year will have a funding increase of 6%, at a time when inflation is only 4% and falling.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alex Norris]

I am grateful for that contribution from my hon. Friend. Yes, I think the public would expect not only that the formulas reflect the need across the country, but that when promises are made repeatedly over multiple years, those promises are kept; even if the upshot was difficult political questions, the Government ought to rise above that. Instead, it just looks as though they are trying to dodge responsibility. I hope the Minister will be clear in his summing-up about the status of that formula. Has No. 10 Downing Street told him to put it on hold? If not, when will it be announced? The public deserve to know.

[Jonathan Edwards]

May I ask the hon. Gentleman kindly to take a look at the recommendations of the Welsh Government’s own independent commission on the constitutional future of Wales, which reported earlier this month? The commission strongly argued in favour of devolving policing and criminal justice powers to Wales, a position that is supported by the Welsh Government and the current First Minister. That would make a huge difference to funding for policing in Wales, because it would be based on population share and Barnett consequentials of spending in England, unlike the funding formula at present.

[Alex Norris]

I have had conversations with my colleagues in Wales on that matter. There is something to be said about the funding formula and Barnett—I am not conflating them, but I think that shows how badly broken the formula is. That point is well made and, as I say, I have had conversations with colleagues in Wales about it.

I will move on to the Minister’s priorities, as outlined in the settlement, and the police uplift programme. As I said earlier, 6,000 of the new recruits are not where the public would expect them to be. I have had a front-row seat, over my few months in post, as the Government have gone through all the contortions on this issue. Last autumn, they told us we had record numbers of police on the neighbourhood beat, but that has long since been disproven. Earlier this year, the Minister tried a new tack and said the Government would rebadge response police as neighbourhood police, so they could add those numbers together to would match up with the rhetoric. The public have seen right through that as well.

Last week, the Home Secretary tried another approach, demanding that police chiefs put more officers on the beat as part of his “back to basics” campaign—as if those chiefs were not working in overdrive to do that all the time, all year round. We respect and recognise the huge amount of work they are doing to get police out where communities want them. That is another approach by the Government, and another one that will fail; I was in short trousers the last time they did a “back to basics” campaign, but I do not think it has a very good history and I am not sure it is the right approach for them.

What we see, as always, is denial and deflection; it is always someone else’s fault. Labour has a better plan. Our community policing guarantee would rebuild neighbourhood policing. It would put 13,000 police and police community support officers back on the beat, embedded in our communities; not counting crimes, but solving problems and working with local communities to tackle and deter crime. That would be funded through a police efficiency and collaboration programme, saving £360 million through centralised standard-setting for procurement and increased collaboration on shared services and specialist functions. The Minister said in his statement that he wants to reduce inefficiencies, so that is a two-for-one for him: more efficiency and more officers on the frontline. Why are we not seeing those plans from the Government today?

To conclude, if the Minister expects garlands from colleagues, he will not get them from Labour. He tells the British people repeatedly that they have never had it so good on crime and policing. That rhetoric does not match reality or the public experience. As a result, this settlement is in line with those that preceded it for more than a decade. It will not deliver. The Government are wrong and the public know it. I know that sometimes the public and people in the policing family lose hope; all I would say is that, if we all pull together, we can make sure this is the last police grant settlement that this Government make.

Asylum-seeking Children: Hotel Accommodation

Jonathan Edwards Excerpts

Wednesday 7th June 2023 Westminster Hall

[Deidre Brock]

I agree entirely. That has certainly been the experience of the many different organisations that I have spoken to in Scotland, and that is what they say to me. As always with this Government, the proposals that Scottish Ministers put to UK Ministers are often either ignored or not taken fully into account. Again, I hope that the Minister can assure us otherwise.

[Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (Ind)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on obtaining the debate. Further to the intervention by the hon. Member for Llanelli (Dame Nia Griffith), whose constituency neighbours mine, we have a specific issue in Carmarthenshire, where a hotel will be used to house asylum seekers without any consultation whatsoever with the local authority. The Welsh Government have a policy that Wales is a nation of sanctuary, and it is beyond my understanding why the UK Government would act unilaterally without discussion with the Welsh Government or Carmarthenshire County Council.

[Deidre Brock]

I was looking at a contribution by the Local Government Association, which I believe operates only in England, and that seems to be one of its bones of contention too, along with the fact that insufficient moneys are being provided to support the welfare of these children and other asylum seekers. Again, I hope that the Minister will address that point.

The Scottish guardianship scheme, run through the Scottish Refugee Council and the Aberlour charity, provides personal, sustained support for these children, and it is funded by and delivered on behalf of the Scottish Government. My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss), who will be winding up the debate for the SNP, has urged the UK Government to provide a similar scheme to support, in particular, young people in care in Scotland.

Clause 23 of the Illegal Migration Bill strips Scottish Ministers of their powers under the Scottish Parliament’s Children (Scotland) Act 1995 to support and assist victims of trafficking if those victims meet removal criteria, with very limited exceptions. Given that that clearly encroaches on devolved responsibilities, will the Minister tell us why the legislative consent motion process was not engaged? Scottish local authorities are responsible for caring for these children and treating them as they would other looked-after children. If there are credible indicators of exploitation or other issues, local authorities have obligations under Scots law to intervene. Under the European convention on human rights, Police Scotland and local authorities have a duty to protect, investigate and take people out of a trafficking situation, but that will clash with the requirements on Home Office officials to remove people.

Even if those powers are used sparingly, as the UK Government claim they will be, organisations and charities in Scotland remain terrified about the effect of moving responsibility to the Home Office and away from Guardianship Scotland, the scheme I mentioned that is delivered on behalf of the Scottish Government to all unaccompanied asylum-seeking children and survivors of child trafficking. The Scottish Refugee Council says that some of these children are so afraid of the Home Office that they are up the entire night before their interview, praying that they will not be removed or detained. The possibility of being taken into Home Office care, coupled with the closing down of asylum and trafficking protections, while the prospect of removal looms, will lead only to more children running away. That will be a powerful recruitment tool for traffickers, who might look like a preferable option over being deported to Rwanda or remaining in detention.

We in the SNP have said repeatedly that creating safe and legal routes is the only realistic way to disrupt the human traffickers’ business model. If the Home Office has no interest in creating an asylum system that is based on fairness and dignity, it should devolve the necessary powers to the Scottish Parliament to allow Scotland to do so.

In the meantime, we need answers from the Home Office, so I close with these questions. Will the Minister give us the latest figures on how many unaccompanied asylum-seeking children who went missing from Home Office hotels are still missing? Will the Home Office commit to publishing a written report on the circumstances surrounding those missing children, including immediate steps to prevent similar issues from happening again? Finally, will the Minister advise whether and how an order from the Home Secretary under clause 16 will supersede protective orders issued by the Scottish courts? As a signatory state to the United Nations convention on the rights of the child, the UK needs to step up and meet its responsibility to uphold all children’s rights to protection, health and education.

The children’s rights officer from the Scottish Refugee Council whom I mentioned earlier recalled a boy from Afghanistan she had worked with through the guardianship service who was haunted by the image of his inconsolable mother saying goodbye to him. Rather than compounding the fear and trauma of children like him, we have a legal and moral duty to look after them.

Police Uplift Programme

Jonathan Edwards Excerpts

Wednesday 26th April 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call Jonathan Edwards.

[Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (Ind)]

Diolch yn fawr iawn, Mr Speaker. One of the unintended consequences of the programme is that police forces have to reduce backroom police staff because of the financial penalties they receive if they do not increase officer numbers, leaving police officers undertaking non-public-facing roles. As 50% of funding for Dyfed-Powys police now comes from the police precept, should the police and crime commissioner and the chief constable not have a greater role in determining the force’s optimal workforce mix? For how long will the Home Office maintain those financial penalties?

[Chris Philp]

Chief constables and police and crime commissioners are able to decide how to spend their budget and whether they spend it on physical equipment, buildings, police staff or police community support officers. They have operational independence, so they can make those decisions. I am pleased to say that every single one of Wales’s four police forces—North Wales, South Wales, Dyfed–Powys and Gwent police—have record officer numbers, and more officers than they had in 2010, under the last Labour Government.

Antisocial Behaviour Action Plan

Jonathan Edwards Excerpts

Monday 27th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Suella Braverman]

I thank my hon. Friend for the great campaign he has led, which is reflected in the decision we have made today to ban nitrous oxide. He has spoken passionately about the devastating impact it is having not just on individuals, but on communities. He is right that we now need to take this robust approach. We need not only to curb the supply but, importantly, to criminalise possession, so that there is a deterrent and a meaningful consequence for people who break the law by using nitrous oxide.

[Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (Ind)]

The website article supporting this statement mentions that up to £5 million will be made available for CCTV and equipment restoration in vandalised parks. Is that £5 million the total budget, because the restoration of Ammanford children’s park in my constituency, which was recently vandalised, and the installation of CCTV will cost £140,000 alone? Will county councils and town and community councils in Wales be able to access this scheme, and if so, how?

[Suella Braverman]

We want to ensure that sufficient resource is available to local authorities and police forces so that they can take meaningful steps to sanction those involved in antisocial behaviour—whether through the community payback scheme, in which we see the perpetrators undertaking the clean-up job afterwards, or through the higher fines that we have announced—and we want to enable local authorities to retain much of the revenue so that they can reinvest it in their resources.

Illegal Migration Bill

Jonathan Edwards Excerpts

Tuesday 7th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Suella Braverman]

The reality is that we need to all work together now to find a pragmatic, compassionate and fair solution to this problem. That is why I have introduced these measures today and why I encourage all Members to support them.

[Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (Ind)]

Last week, we saw with the revised Northern Ireland protocol deal what progress can be made when we work collaboratively with our European partners. Rather than the sabre-rattling content of this statement, is not the reality that the most effective way to deal with the issue of small boats crossing the channel is to work in full collaboration with our European partners? Is it not the case that the number of small boat crossings has increased substantially since Brexit?

[Suella Braverman]

The reality is that we have developed much closer co-operation with our French partners on this very issue. That is why I am pleased that we struck a good deal with them at the end of last year. The Prime Minister is heading to Paris—I will be accompanying him—later this week to talk further with our French partners on how to tackle this issue, among many others.

Spiking Incidents: Prevention

Jonathan Edwards Excerpts

Wednesday 11th January 2023 Westminster Hall

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the prevention of spiking incidents.

It is very good to have this debate under your chairmanship, Ms McVey. It is also good to see colleagues present, including recent former Home Office Ministers from several parties, despite competition from Select Committees and other vital business of the House.

The truth is that it should not have been necessary to have this debate. I do not intend to run through all the evidence showing why spiking is such an increased modern risk, particularly to young females and particularly in the night-time economy, because that is all on the record, including in Home Affairs Committee papers and in my ten-minute rule Bill on spiking offences, which I promoted almost exactly a year ago.

I will briefly mention, however, recent findings, the most striking of which are the data presented by the National Police Chiefs’ Council. For the year from 1 September 2021 to 31 August 2022, it has recorded 2,581 reported cases of spiking by needle; 2,131 reported cases of spiking by drink; and 212 reported cases of spiking by other means, particularly food. That is a total of almost 5,000 reported cases for the last year on record, and if that is not an indication of how serious this issue is, I struggle to understand what is serious.

[Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (Ind)]

I am extremely grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his work on this very important issue. Following the announcement that he had secured this debate, I received a message this afternoon from the police and crime commissioner for Dyfed-Powys, Mr Dafydd Llywelyn, informing me that the number of spiking incidents has been increasing over the last few months.

[Richard Graham]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. He and his Plaid Cymru colleagues epitomise why so many of us from all parties in the House are concerned about this issue, despite the problem of data collection, which I will come on to.

Let me now give a tiny bit of context. After I promoted my ten-minute rule Bill almost a year ago, a Home Office Minister promised me that the Department would research this issue and come back to me. By the way, very similar promises were made to the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson), who is with us in Westminster Hall today. That feedback has now come, but last autumn Ministers were intimating that they were working on a positive solution to confirm that spiking or any attempt at spiking is illegal, and that this simple amendment to existing law would provide a very clear message in words that the nation could easily grasp.

Migration

Jonathan Edwards Excerpts

Wednesday 16th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

The evidence presented to us by security services such as the National Crime Agency shows a significant and concerning link between Albanian migrants coming to the UK and criminality. My hon. Friend and others have raised the issues with me anecdotally. We screen all migrants when they arrive illegally at Dover, and we have counter-terrorism officers and others there to ensure that we catch as many individuals as possible, but I am afraid that there is a serious problem. That is why we need to take the most robust action possible on economic migrants from Albania and remove them as swiftly as possible.

[Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (Ind)]

Diolch, Mr Speaker. Will the Minister inform the House whether the British Government have found an airline willing to facilitate their Rwanda policy? Privilege Style has joined Titan Airways and AirTanker in stating that it will not participate in deportation flights. Is it not the reality that commercial operators are turning their back on the Government’s immoral policy?

[Robert Jenrick]

I do not believe that the Rwanda policy is immoral. I do not think that there is anything ethical about allowing individuals to cross the channel illegally, risking their lives and those of their children. We want to create a system that is suffused with deterrents so that people do not make the crossing in the first place and so that if they want to claim asylum, they do so in the first safe country that they enter. France, of course, is a perfect choice.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jonathan Edwards Excerpts

Monday 14th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Miss Dines]

There is a cheeky two-part question there. In relation to police numbers, I remind the hon. Gentleman that in his own area we have already recruited 804 new officers and there will be lots more coming in that space. On religious hate crimes against Muslims, my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary is working hard in this area. I remind him that this Government have done more than any other to tackle anti-Muslim hatred. We have provided extra money—over £4 million between 2016 and 2022—to monitor and combat anti-Muslim hatred. I remind him that, in addition, the Home Office allocated £24.5 million to protect mosques and Muslim faith schools through the Places of Worship: Protective Security Funding Scheme in May 2022. A new Muslim faith schools protective security scheme will also be delivered this year. The Government are thoroughly committed to stamping out this evil crime.

[Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (Ind)]

4. What discussions she has had with (a) Cabinet colleagues and (b) relevant stakeholders on the adequacy of entry pay rates for new police officers.

[The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Suella Braverman)]

The independent Police Remuneration Review Body makes recommendations to the Government on the pay and allowances for police officers. In July, we announced that we had accepted the review body’s recommendation to award a consolidated increase of £1,900 at all pay points with effect from 1 September, targeted at the lowest-paid to provide an uplift of up to 8.8%.

[Jonathan Edwards]

Police officers inform me that they have faced a 20% real-terms pay cut over the past decade, and there seems to be a particular problem with new recruits. My local federation tells me that some of its officers are using food banks and that a potential new recruit decided to continue his career with a fast food chain because he had been offered a pay rise. Does the Secretary of State admit that pay and remuneration for police officers—professionals who put their lives in danger on our behalf—is a real problem?

[Suella Braverman]

The Government recognise that increases in the cost of living are having a significant impact on the lower-paid. In that context, and after careful consideration, we chose to accept in full the review body’s recommendations to award the consolidated increases that I mentioned. We want to ensure that there is support for our officers, who play a vital role in this country.

HM Passport Office Backlogs

Jonathan Edwards Excerpts

Wednesday 27th April 2022 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Foster]

I thank the hon. Member for her kind comments about the staff in the Belfast passport office, following on from the similar comments of the hon. Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson). I know that they will be very much appreciated by the staff concerned. We release additional fast-track appointments every day. With the level of demand that we are seeing, they are taken up relatively quickly whereas normally there might be availability over a number of days. We have looked to expand the number of counter appointments, but she will appreciate that there is a limit to how many we can realistically offer each day. In some cases, some of the slots to do that sort of expedition would instead be used to deal with compelling and compassionate applications where someone urgently needs a passport to travel for some of the reasons that I have touched on.

[Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (Ind)]

I raise the case of my constituent Elliot Joshua Rees of Pontyates near Llanelli, who made his initial application on 8 February, more than 10 weeks ago. The application seemingly hit a series of barriers resulting from his parents’ marriage certificate, which is Austrian, despite the family providing a certified translation. The family are due to go on holiday in the next few weeks. Will the Minister please look at that specific case?