Public Disorder

Julie Hilling Excerpts

Thursday 11th August 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

There 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.

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

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?

[The Prime Minister]

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.