Gangs and Youth Violence (2011 Riots)

Karen Buck Excerpts

Tuesday 4th December 2012 Westminster Hall

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

I am extremely grateful to have the opportunity of the debate today, which I secured for two reasons. First, given that the riots of 2011 were so dramatic and one of the most momentous events in modern British history, justifying the recall of Parliament, it strikes me as somewhat extraordinary that we have not found an opportunity in the 15 months since to discuss them, their aftermath and what actions can and should be taken to ensure that such violence is not repeated. The Government gangs strategy was released in November last year, so we are at its anniversary, and the Government have reviewed progress, but we have not had an opportunity to discuss the events, certainly in Government time. I find that extraordinary, and I am grateful for the attendance of hon. Friends who represent boroughs affected by the riots for the most part, or by serious gang and youth violence, to talk about some of the effects on their communities.

Secondly, for a related reason, I very much want the opportunity to stress to the Minister, in the hope of reassurance, that the modest amount of money that has been invested in tackling gangs and serious youth violence over the past year, whether through the Home Office or the Mayor’s office, should continue beyond March next year at its present level at least. I will refer to that as I move on in my contribution.

Gangs and serious youth violence have been a feature of our cities for far too long. They are distinct but overlapping phenomena with similar roots. As I am sure colleagues will mention in their contributions, certain elements of the 2011 riots were specific to the time and place in which they occurred but, in general, the factors driving the gang and serious youth violence of recent years, which exploded into the riots, have the same stem. If we are to understand what happened and, ideally, to prevent and bear down on such phenomena in future, we need to understand both of them.

Acres of debate have been generated in the media and academia since the 2011 riots, which is one reason why not having the opportunity to discuss such findings to any extent in Parliament has been unfortunate. So much of the media coverage, however, was extremely unhelpful to our understanding. A lot of the reporting was wrapped up in language that betrayed the worst stereotypes, with talk of “feral youth” or “the underclass”, and reinforced a powerful sense of “the other”, a modern enemy within in our society. That distracts us from understanding the causes of such behaviour.

I was struck by some of the media commentary on the trials and convictions of 18 young people involved in the death of Sofyen Belamouadden at Victoria station in 2010, which casts a different light on some of our analysis of the problem. I met the principal of the college concerned a fortnight ago to discuss some of the issues. Paul O’Shea, that inspirational principal of St Charles sixth-form college, which was attended by almost all those involved in the murder, described his experience thus:

“All but two of the 18 were four-A-level kids. We had nothing in our files to suggest they could behave like this. Their attendance rates were high, and one of the boys had that very morning been given two achievement certificates.”

The idea that we can happily stereotype all young people involved in gang or serious youth violence, or indeed in the riots, as members of a feral underclass is demolished by that very experience, which requires us to think more carefully. As the Centre for Social Justice report was labelled, it is “Time to Wake Up”.

We have to accept that such issues are complex and multifaceted, with emotional, cultural, economic and social causes. We have to grapple with ancient impulses. The behaviour of teenage boys in particular has caused grief to adults for 2,000 years, although now we have to deal with some of the new tools that create new means by which behaviour can be channelled through very rapid communication. As I describe it to myself, the space-time between impulse and action is completely eradicated, which has important implications. What happens through the use of the BlackBerry Messenger service, YouTube or social media has fundamentally changed not how behaviour is expressed but how it can be organised and how young people organise themselves.

[Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is talking about some of the new technology that can lead to the fast propagation of some of the behaviours associated with serious youth violence. Does she agree that the issue is not only about the speed with which such behaviour can be spread, but about the material online that can escalate and foment a situation, leading to greater problems of retaliation between different gangs or competing groups involved in serious youth violence?

[Ms Buck]

I absolutely agree. My hon. Friend has been a powerful advocate of our better understanding of social media and how they can interact with long-standing patterns of behaviour and yet change that behaviour, increasing the ability of groups to taunt and confront each other through the posting of gang videos. She is absolutely right.

From all the analyses from across the political spectrum, left and right, from politicians, the media, think-tanks and academia we have a whole range of different contributory factors. Family breakdown, unemployment, the absence of effective role models—in particular for young men—poor relationships between young people and the police, the role of social media, excessive consumerism and poverty have all been analysed and put into the mix. We have yet, however, to translate our understanding of all such different factors into a comprehensive strategy for responding to the violence that has plagued our streets generally and to ensure that there is no repetition of the terrible events of 2011. Are we doing enough to translate our understanding of the causes of such behaviour into a specific understanding of, for example, where flashpoints can occur, postcodes, the role of social media or how adult criminals are directing the behaviour of younger members of the gangs? Such adults are sometimes directing from inside prison or even from outside the country. Young people involved in gang behaviour often say that they are dealt with by the police—quite rightly—but adult serious criminal behaviour is often behind the drug dealing or other criminal activity underpinning some gang behaviour, and those adults are not gone after or challenged. Work is being done in all those respects but I can fairly say that it is patchy, inconsistent and simply not good enough to insure against a repetition of the events of 2011.

In London, the number of people who died on our streets as a result of gang and serious youth violence peaked in 2008. It would be extremely unwise, however, for any of us to feel that that might have been a high-water mark for gang and serious youth violence, because it clearly was not. Serious youth violence was surging in 2011, up to and after the riots, and that would have been a more important element of media commentary had the riots not, understandably, distracted so much of our attention. We are only just beginning to appreciate the role of serious sexual violence, and the way in which girls are being drawn into the gang structure and abused.

It is estimated that around 250 gangs are operating in London alone, and that around 88% are involved in violence. Some 18% of individuals in gangs are linked to drug supply, 20% to stabbings, 50% to shootings and 14% to rapes. The Minister may say that we are calling for additional public spending to respond to some of the challenges, but the reverse is true. I want less to be spent on the consequences of that serious criminal activity, and on holding young people in youth offending institutions and prisons. A place in a youth offending institution sometimes costs £60,000 of public money a year. If only a fraction of that could be invested in prevention strategies, we would make a contribution to tackling the deficit as well as criminal behaviour.

When gang violence leads, as it has done, to serious concern about flashpoints in Pimlico, Parliament should regard that as a wake-up call. I am pleased to see the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mark Field) in his place, and he may make a contribution. That was a powerful wake-up call for people on Westminster city council because Pimlico is not the sort of place normally associated with the gang culture.

When a Westminster head teacher tells me that

“Hearing gun shots from my office yesterday really brought home to me how close we are to yet another tragedy”,

that should be a wake-up call. When a busy Oxford street store is the scene of a confrontation ending in a teenager’s murder, as happened last Christmas, we are reminded that gang violence cannot be swept out of sight and consigned to the usual suspect areas, such as Tottenham, Hackney and Lambeth. It can explode into everyone’s consciousness.

Given that background, we might have expected the problem to continue in summer 2012, perhaps with a repeat of the riots, and certainly a continuation of that surging youth violence that we saw throughout 2010 and 2011, but the picture is much more complicated. There has been a significant fall in serious youth violence locally in Westminster and across the Metropolitan police area with falls of nearly one third in knife injuries and 21% in gun-related incidents. The number of young people arrested has also fallen, gratifyingly, in recent times. But that makes my case more, not less pressing. If recent months are not to turn out to be an aberration, we must understand what contributory factors bore down on that youth violence, and how we can continue them.

We are definitely seeing the benefits of gang initiatives in my constituency and Met-wide, supported by some outstanding individuals and organisations which are delivering results with better information sharing, such as through the Gang Multi-Agency Partnership—the GMAP process, which monitors individual and gang activity—gang mediation and intensive family support.

I pay tribute to some of those involved in that work, because they do not receive sufficient recognition. They include Matt Watson, who runs Westminster’s gangs unit, and his team; the outgoing Commander Bray in Westminster, under whose watch a police gangs unit was set up and maintained despite all the other pressures on local policing; front-line gang workers, such as Twilight Bey and the Pathways to Progress team; Manni Ibrahim and the youth workers at clubs such as the Avenues, Paddington Boys, the Feathers and others, who have had to deal with the realities of gang violence on the front line; schools and colleges that have worked together; parent and family groups, such as the Tell It Like It Is campaign and Generation to Generation; and individuals who are doing creative work trying to tackle youth unemployment, such as Circle Sports.

It would be good to describe that as an infrastructure, but it would be unreasonable because, important as that work is, and invaluable as those individuals are, it is held together by gossamer threads. We simply do not know how much of the fall in serious youth crime in the last few months is due to the combination of statutory and community activity, and how much is due to other factors. That is an important challenge for Ministers. We may simply be seeing a lull in violence in the aftermath of the riots, when so many people were convicted and imprisoned and the shock waves went to communities in cities up and down the country.

The Centre for Social Justice report warned that the arrest strategy of recent months has weakened the leadership of some of the more responsible elders in gangs and created a greater risk of a more anarchic gang structure growing up in its wake. I do not know whether that will happen, but nor does anyone else, and that is part of the problem. What I do know is that we cannot afford to relax our grip for one moment. There is no evidence that the tide has turned, and in many respects, the underlying conditions for some of that behaviour are worsening because of factors such as the disproportionate cut suffered by the youth services as local government has been squeezed, and the pressure on family poverty and homelessness.

I was struck by a report that was published today by the Human City Institute. It says that social tenants have lost 10% of their purchasing power over the last couple of years—a total of £3 billion. Grainia Long of the Chartered Institute of Housing, who wrote the foreword to the report, said that it

“is very concerned that the combined effects of austerity and welfare reform run counter to the government’s fairness principle, and…that tenants are…disproportionately taking the strain of deficit reduction”.

That sort of upheaval and social stress cuts across some of the work that we are trying to do in tackling gang behaviour.

Long-term youth unemployment is at catastrophic levels, with unemployment of black and ethnic minority young men and women particularly worrying. The youth unemployment rate for black people has increased at almost twice the rate as that for white 16 to 24-year-olds since the start of the recession, and young black men are the worst affected.

[Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend recognise that, when considering that statistic, it is important that the House realises that the situation in Britain is now worse than in the United States of America? That is how bad it has become. Black and minority ethnic communities are also seeing women, who were traditionally employed in the public sector, losing their employment. That is devastating for families who find themselves in that circumstance.

[Ms Buck]

My hon. Friend, who has spoken eloquently and with great knowledge about the causes of social breakdown in his constituency, is absolutely right. It is shocking that black unemployment is higher than in America. We have often seen the consequences of that in America, and we know that such social polarisation and deprivation are undoubtedly two of the many causes of gang and serious youth violence. That cannot be ignored, because such behaviour does not occur in a vacuum, and the economy is a critical element.

This debate is not about poverty and unemployment, but any Minister who believes that we should not mention them in considering long-term strategies for tackling the sort of behaviour that has led to far too many young people being murdered and maimed on our streets, and hundreds of others being imprisoned, sometimes for life, with a devastating effect on their families, is missing the big picture.

Gang membership and serious youth violence reflect the experience of troubled families and powerful peer pressure on the streets, the hopelessness and alienation of exclusion, unemployment and powerlessness, the power of an alternative identity that gangs offer to young people without community or family protection, and much more besides. Mainstream services must bend to incorporate what we have learned about prevention and gang exit. There is much evidence from the work of the London School of Economics, from “Reading the Riots”, from the work of groups in the Transition to Adulthood Alliance, from Catch22, the Brathay Trust project and Working with Men, and from Harriet Sergeant’s powerful book, “Among the Hoods”.

There may not be a grand theory of everything to explain the riots and gang and serious youth violence, but we broadly know what to do. We need to prevent young people getting drawn into gangs, offer gang members a way out and ensure that enforcement works when all else fails. The question is whether we can ensure that we do that, and that we do enough of it.

Finally, Mr Speaker—[Interruption.] I apologise. In time, perhaps, Mr Streeter. The final point is that we have no certainty at the moment about the long-term funding for the anti-gang initiatives that we already have. According to my borough, the funding for 2013-14 will be less than it was for 2012-13, and we are anticipating cuts from the Mayor of London’s contribution in the region of 12% to 20%. The chief executive of Westminster council has advised me that it receives two grants from the Home Office for 2012-13, but the ending gang and youth violence fund, which represents a sizeable proportion of the council’s spend on tackling youth violence, is only for the current financial year. There has been no indication of further funding from the Home Office for 2013-14.

Having said that, the Home Office peer review of Westminster’s gang programme highlighted the importance of creating a period of stability in provision. I ask the Minister to reflect on how it is possible that on one hand, the Home Office requires local authorities to provide a period of stability in gang prevention and exit programmes, but on the other hand refuses to guarantee the funding or ensure that the Mayor of London maintains at least the current levels of contribution.

[Mr Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way, and I apologise for missing some of her opening remarks. Does she accept that whereas gang crime in London was perhaps once seen as an inner-city issue, it now very much affects a number of London’s suburbs, including my borough? Notwithstanding the need to maintain funding levels for the existing series of gang projects in the main London boroughs that are hit by gang crime, it is also necessary to recognise that this is a London-wide problem, and that there are London-wide funding issues, as well as the requirement to maintain stability for the funding projects that she is outlining.

[Ms Buck]

I could not agree more. Many people were shocked about gang violence exploding into Pimlico, and the fact that it is creeping out into Harrow should also give us pause for thought, although I suspect that the Government’s complacency is such that they will reject that argument.

If we have learned anything, it is that, in theory at least, stop-go initiatives to prevent gang violence and deal with the stem causes of gangs, serious youth violence and the behaviour that leads to riots do not work. There must be consistency. Relationships must be built up and there has to be an infrastructure, which must be maintained. That will pay off, as we know. We only need to look at how much it cost to police and respond to the riots, and at the cost of detaining so many young people in youth offender institutions and prisons in the aftermath of that behaviour, to know that the investment will make sense economically, even before one starts to weigh up the importance to young people and their families.

I hope that the Minister will respond positively and give us a strong signal that we can at least be ensured of a continued delivery of investment from the Home Office and the Mayor’s office in programmes that keep young people off the streets and away from serious gang-related violence, for all our sakes.

[Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

I congratulate my constituency neighbour, the hon. Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) on securing this important debate. Although I have some sympathy with her view that it is a shame that these issues are not being debated in the main Chamber, it seems that this is an appropriate place to debate matters that have a strong constituency aspect. I hope that the Minister will take on board the issues that she has raised.

I very much agree with the hon. Lady that there should be an absolute rejection of the culture of despair, which was part and parcel of the immediate response by the press and commentators to what happened— particularly, though not exclusively—on the streets of the capital city during August 2011. That issue of despair touches on a point made by the hon. Member for Harrow West (Mr Thomas), and today’s Evening Standard talks about Croydon no longer being a place that middle-class people wish to live in, which is having an impact on a number of big employers in the east Croydon area. Allianz is one such employer, but Allders department store has also closed down and Nestlé has moved out of Croydon to Crawley. There is a sense that the almost totemic aspect of the burning down of the long-standing department store in Croydon in August 2011 has had a very negative impact on Croydon as a place to live and work in. The idea of the culture of despair is to be questioned fundamentally.

The hon. Gentleman was right to say that this is not simply an issue for the inner cities, or for high-profile places such as perhaps Tottenham or parts of Hackney, which have traditionally been regarded as problem areas as far as gang culture is concerned. It is now permeating into what were once regarded as leafy suburbs—I appreciate that Harrow West does not necessarily comply with that stereotype, and the same can be said of Croydon.

I want to restrict my comments to something that is local to my constituency and say something about Westminster city council’s innovative approach to gangs and tackling youth violence, which has been touched on. The Your Choice programme was launched by the council alongside the Metropolitan police in the aftermath of the riots, starting as soon as November 2011. It was in response to an escalation in gang-related violence in the borough, and although there were lessons to be learnt from August 2011, it was part of a general process that had been happening for some years.

Your Choice is an evidence-based, multi-agency programme that involves the neighbourhood crime reduction service, the children and families services, the Metropolitan police, the probation service, and a range of other voluntary sector organisations, all trying to work together. The scheme tackles gang and youth violence through preventive measures such as early intervention in schools, gang outreach work and effective exit programmes, in order to ensure that a real difference is made to the young people who are in or at risk of joining gangs.

Fundamentally, it has two crucial aims. First and foremost, Westminster’s approach to gangs gives young people a real choice: they can engage and receive support, but if they do not, they must recognise that they face enforcement and sanctions. Secondly, the key to understanding the issue is that the local community must remain the absolute focus for the efforts, and the council provides a number of opportunities throughout the programme to capture community feedback and ensure that they are part of the solution.

To give a brief overview of how the programme operates, Your Choice currently works with more than 150 young people who are either actively involved in youth crime and gang activity, or are regarded as being at top risk of getting involved in gang violence. It has eight programmes that have been developed to tackle the complex and often multiple issues experienced by young people who are involved in or at risk of becoming involved in gangs. Those programmes include an outreach programme and an employment programme that gets young people into education, training or work. There is a gang-exit programme, as well as a school awareness programme and a housing scheme that quickly moves victims or perpetrators where gang violence has occurred. One scheme also focuses specifically on girls, helping to improve their self-esteem and prevent sexual exploitation. I know that that issue is very close to the hon. Lady’s heart and I will address it in more detail later. What is absolutely central to the idea of all the Your Choice programmes, as co-ordinated by Westminster city council, is the concept and notion of personal responsibility, choices and consequences.

There have been some local successes. It is important for all of us as Members of Parliament in London to note that, as well as rightly highlighting particular problems to the Home Office. Where there are successes, there are opportunities not only to praise local workers, but hopefully to find a route forward that can affect the capital and other parts of the country where gang culture is becoming sadly more prevalent. The Your Choice approach has been peer-reviewed by the Home Office and it has received commendation not only for its strategic vision and leadership, but for challenging the commissioning approach and its overall ambition.

The notable outcomes have been here on the ground. As recently as October this year, gang workers have been conducting mediation on a number of estates in the borough between parents and young people in order to try and reduce tension. The intensive outreach workers have been getting pretty good results with complex families who have never before engaged with council services.

Since the end of August, regular positive outcomes have been achieved with the Fresh Start employment scheme. I would not be naive enough to say that I did not have a lot of sympathy with what the hon. Lady said in her contribution. Of course, there is a massive problem with youth unemployment not just in this country, but in much of the western world. Broadly, the unemployment figures in this country are less negative than might have been assumed, given the broad state of an economy in which there is no growth, but there is a particular problem for under-25s. As I said, that applies not just in the UK, but in other parts of Europe, so we should not in any way suggest that a silver bullet has been produced by Westminster city council. None the less, its Fresh Start employment scheme has made some difference, even if not quite as much of a difference and not quite as quickly as we would all have hoped. One referral has secured an apprenticeship; another has obtained an interview; and two have secured permanent positions. All these men have been very difficult to engage in the past, but the council’s new approach has proven a success.

[Ms Buck]

I agree with everything that the hon. Gentleman is saying, and he may be coming on to this, but does he accept that the larger part of the funding that has gone into developing the Your Choice programme—and the positive outcomes that he has been talking about—is from the Home Office and the Mayor’s fund that I am so concerned about in terms of its continuation and reductions?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Browne]

We are keen to spend the money where it works most effectively. As has been pointed out, it is not just the Home Office that spends it; the Department for Work and Pensions has an innovation fund of £30 million, some of which is spent in this area, and there is another DWP project that helps prisoners on their release from prison. That matter was raised by a number of Members, including the right hon. Member for Tottenham.

The Ministry of Justice is leading some interesting pilot studies on payment by results, looking at how we can incentivise prisons more effectively to reduce the terrible reoffending rates, which the right hon. Gentleman mentioned. He also talked about work in young offenders institutions and adult prisons, and he specifically mentioned Feltham young offenders institution, which has joined together with the Islington youth offending team to deliver a specialist programme for gang members in custody. There is a lot of excellent work such as that, large parts of it directly supported, and in some cases funded, by central Government.

[Ms Buck]

I have been listening closely to what the hon. Gentleman has said, and he has not yet answered the question that I and my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) put to him: will the ending gang and youth violence funding from the Home Office, which is delivering so much of the anti-gangs strategy at the moment and is due to expire in March 2013, be continued at least at its present level into 2013-14?

[Mr Browne]

Let me address that point, and the initiatives that we have carried out, in the remainder of my speech. It is relevant to the third part of what I hope to tell the House.

Let me address the funding first. I am not in a position this afternoon to give guarantees on funding for future financial years. The funding was never made available on the understanding that it would be available indefinitely. We want to plant seeds and allow trees to grow. There is a lot of voluntary activity of which we are very supportive, and community safety budgets are being de-ring-fenced and will be spent by police and crime commissioners or, in London, by the Mayor’s office. They might choose to spend more money in this area than has previously been the case, but we are not in a position to second-guess elected police and crime commissioners, including Labour ones, who might or might not spend more, depending on their priorities.