Julie Hilling
Main Page: Julie Hilling (Labour - Bolton West)Department Debates - View all Julie Hilling's debates with the Cabinet Office
(12 years, 11 months ago)
Commons ChamberThere will be lessons to learn about the extent of riot training and the balance between it and ordinary beat-based policing, and I know that we will want to learn all those lessons in the days to come.
The Association of Chief Police Officers undertook research that showed that where there is a well-funded youth service there is a decrease in criminality and where there are cuts in youth services there is an increase in crime. Youth work is part of a solution to this disorder, but youth workers are being made redundant across the country as we speak. Will the Prime Minister introduce a moratorium on youth service cuts?
We are going ahead with the Myplace youth centre programme, which is seeing vast and very well-funded youth centres built in places such as Islington and Hackney and across some of the most deprived parts of London. I do not accept the hon. Lady’s point about causation and that somehow a budget change in youth services leads inexorably to the sort of looting and rioting we saw on our streets.