Karen Buck
Main Page: Karen Buck (Labour - Westminster North)Department Debates - View all Karen Buck's debates with the Home Office
(8 years, 2 months ago)
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Mr Umunna
There are so many big elephants in this room of issues, but one is poverty and deprivation. We cannot ignore the part that that plays. My hon. Friend is right to raise that issue. Young people who do not have anything are often robbing from other young people who do not have anything, then there is revenge, and we end up with a cycle of violence. That is definitely part of what we see happening.
Part of the reason that too many of our young people do not have enough money is the unemployment rate among them. Our education system is producing a whole generation who do not always have the skills that our employers need, particularly the technical and vocational skills. Let us face it, this has happened under Governments of all persuasions. I do not see this as a party political issue; I am not interested in scoring any points. We have to deal with the problems in a skills eco-system that is not giving our young people the skills that they need to offer employers to get a job. Let us not forget that hanging over this is the fact that youth unemployment is double the main rate.
The things I have spoken about are fairly obvious—the more talked-about factors—but we need to delve far deeper into the causes than we generally have. The hon. Member for Beckenham referred to the belief of many young people that they are safer in a group than they are on their own. As academics have argued, the perceived need for safety and protection tends to validate behaviour and levels of violence in ways that can obscure the boundary between right and wrong. There is also the issue of being bullied and how that interrelates with carrying or using a weapon. We do not like to talk about that, but we should. There is a semi-formal, often unsupervised daily routine outside school, but sometimes inside school too, that can incubate the production of behaviour and values that lead to a life of this kind of violence, and the expected norms of school and wider mainstream society are juxtaposed to that.
In addition to the fear that the hon. Gentleman talked about, the other big issue is trauma—the sheer trauma that many of our young people experience in their daily lives, which requires much greater consideration than we see reported in our media.
To return to the work of Whitney Iles, this issue needs to be seen as one not just of violence prevention, but of health, particularly mental health. Our young people are being traumatised by some of their experiences, but they are being given no support to deal with them. Unless we start engaging with them, not only on the obvious level, but at a deeper level, we will not be able to resolve the violence on our streets.
What should be done? First, the Labour Government introduced Every Child Matters, which had a strategic aim to provide wraparound care for young people from long before they went to school to long after they left. That did bring in teenagers, but I think we need to adopt an “every teenager matters” approach, with much more targeted schemes and versions of the previous initiative, in order to address problems experienced by teenagers. It must be said, however, that, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham has said, the problems are impacting on younger and younger children, not just teenagers.
Secondly, we have to elevate the standing of youth work in our country. It is about time that we put it on the same pedestal as teaching. Often, youth workers spend as much time as teachers with our young people, but we do not talk about their profession in the same way. We have to do so and put it on a pedestal; we cannot just look at it as an add-on. Too often, youth work is left to people who have other jobs and who may, through their tenants or residents association, be providing youth work on top of their daily job. It needs proper funding so that people can do youth work full time and so that we regard our youth workers in the same way as we regard our teachers.
Thirdly, I really do think that the Government have done some good things, and that is why I want them to reverse their decision to disband the very important ending gang violence and exploitation peer review network, which spreads best practice to local authorities and others. It is due to end in April—next month—but I really hope the Government will reverse that decision, because it is a good network and I have heard very good feedback about it from all over the country, including Lambeth. I want it to continue.
Fourthly, we have to ensure that our young people are properly taught in school about the consequences of what they do, and that they are provided with support to deal with their experiences outside school as well. I want to see more role models who have been members of groups and who have been victims, or even perpetrators, of acts of violence and suffered the consequences. I want more of them to go into schools and tell their story so that future generations do not take the same wrong turn as they did. There is nothing like having somebody who has lived that life telling young people what will happen if they carry on down that avenue. We need to provide much more support to our schools.
This is controversial, but I do not care and am going to say it anyway: a lot of the young people who get wrapped up in all this ultimately have quite commercial and entrepreneurial instincts. Their energy, however, is simply not channelled in the right way and the result is that they turn to criminality and highly illegitimate, terrible ways of doing things. If many of our young people received enterprise teaching in our schools, and if they were provided with inspiration and more access to opportunities to set up their own business, do their own thing and work for themselves in a way that delivers the goods and some money, perhaps we would be able to stop them taking a wrong turn. I can just see the write-ups saying, “MP says terrible gangsters should start businesses”, but, frankly, I do not care. If they have that kind of instinct, I want to make sure that they do not end up taking a wrong turn and doing illegitimate business, but that they set up a business and become the next Branson. I would like to see many of the kids from the Tulse Hill estate in my constituency going on to be the next Richard Branson.
Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is making a very important point. Does he agree that the Evening Standard should be congratulated on its campaign? He is recommending precisely the sort of work that it has been doing in support of people turning away from gang violence. It is turning young people’s skills and expertise towards business and entrepreneurship, and ensuring that they are able to make something of their lives.
Mr Umunna
I completely agree with my hon. Friend. The Evening Standard has done excellent work in its “Frontline London” campaign, which it has plastered on the front page frequently. I would like to see other publications and media outlets following its example.
None of us is excusing wrongdoing; none of us is excusing the violence that we see; and none of us would argue that for people who commit such offences, there should not be sanctions. Of course there should be sanctions. I suppose the point that everybody will make today is that if we can prevent people from doing such things in the first place, we will not have to apply those sanctions. Too often, the debate is about clamping down, zero tolerance and banging people up. It is harder to focus on how we prevent them from doing those things in the first place.
That is, ultimately, why I would like the Government to set up an independent cross-party commission on these issues, involving a wide-ranging consultation that, importantly, includes young people. Too often, we talk about young people but they are not at the table when we do so. I would like the commission to identify the root causes and effects of, and the solutions to, youth violence so that we do not see more death on our streets.
To wrap up, I think we should be absolutely honest, up-front and frank about the fact that if we were talking predominantly about middle-class children from comfortable, middle-income families and wealthy neighbourhoods, the issue would be much higher up the national agenda. The murder of young people by other young people who fit that middle-income demographic profile would command many more column inches. It is a disgrace and a damning indictment of our society that, increasingly, it is becoming immune to what is happening on our doorsteps. Our society is ignoring the issue, putting a whole generation of young people into a corner and saying, “That is what happens with those kinds of young people from those kinds of areas.” I want to make it very clear in this debate that the House of Commons recognises that no matter what their background—whether they grow up on an estate or in a comfortable neighbourhood—every single young life matters. We will not stand by while violence and fatalities continue to hit the next generation, because it is our future.
Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)
I start by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Mr Umunna) on introducing this important debate and on his powerful speech, which set out the challenges that we face. We have heard some extremely strong speeches, in which Members have made the point that this is not year zero. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) said, there is a long tradition of violent groups in this country, going back centuries in different manifestations. However, the nature of the problem is changing. It is growing younger and more female, and it is spreading to other areas. Yet it remains true that the crisis largely, but not exclusively, affects black and minority ethnic populations and is one of deprivation.
It is a great shame that we do not have more Members of Parliament in the Chamber to discuss this subject, and I fear that my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham is right that if the problem were not overlaid with that of deprivation, we would have more. It is critical that we exercise our duty as Members of Parliament to all our constituents, and that we echo the cries of pain that we hear in our communities by addressing the problem.
Because this is not year zero, we know that after a sharp increase in deaths from serious youth violence in London in 2007 and 2008, action was taken and the situation improved in the years to 2011 or 2012. The last debate that I secured on gangs and serious youth violence was in 2011, and after that time—I am not saying that the two facts were connected—there was genuine progress. Steps were taken, and there was a welcome reduction in the number of deaths in London. As my right hon. and hon. Friends have set out, that success is now being reversed, which is extremely worrying. As others have said, by no means all incidents are reported to the police.
Westminster North is not Lambeth, Haringey or one of the other areas usually associated with such pressures. It is certainly not south central Los Angeles. However, I will tell the House about some of the incidents that have happened there over the past couple of months. In January, just after the unfortunate removal of security cameras in Church Street in my constituency, a young man was stabbed in the street in front of witnesses. A constituent emailed me to say:
“This brutal and bloody event was shocking to witness and occurred immediately outside two shops that belong to”
the local trading association.
“I understand…that the victim is in surgery, and was lucky that a deep stab wound just missed his heart.”
Two days before Christmas, a young man I know well who did work experience in my office was surrounded by a group of 20 local young people and stabbed in the chest. The knife entered the fatty tissue of his heart, and he was extremely lucky to survive.
A few weeks earlier, a constituent who lives in my road emailed me to say:
“I was awoken by noises in the street outside and some desperate shouting. I got up and looked out of the window and saw a young lad on the phone, he was saying to someone on the other end; ‘I’ve been stabbed’.
I called 999—it took a long time for me to persuade them it was a real, serious incident. I understand that the boy had 4 stab wounds.”
That boy was 16 years old. In October, constituents reported violent clashes in St Mary’s Paddington Green and in Paddington recreation ground, tweeting at me:
“We desperately need police on patrol. The situation is out of control.”
They said that violence was rampant, with drugs and gangs, and tweeted:
“Huge gang fight behind Little Venice Sports Centre”.
That is a few weeks in Westminster North, which indicates how real the problem is.
It is true that, as my right hon. and hon. Friends have said, people can live in the communities affected and be completely oblivious to the situation. As a middle-aged woman, I can walk the same streets and live in a different world from the one in which our young people live in our cities, but increasingly also in some of our towns. Their experience of it is different, and the adult community needs to wake up to the challenges.
It is important to note that although most adults might be oblivious to every single one of those incidents, they have ripples, which spread out. The 20 young people who stabbed the young man who had done work experience in my office know what happened. Their families and relatives know the risks and dangers, and so do the family of that young man himself.
One of the most distressing things that I encounter is when I go into schools in my constituency and talk to eight or nine-year-old children and ask them how they feel about their community. One point they raise is gang violence. They ask whether it can be stopped, because they fear for their relatives.
Dawn Butler (Brent Central) (Lab)
My hon. Friend makes a powerful point. In my constituency, the youngest gang member is eight years old and the oldest is 61. That shows the breadth of the problem in communities such as Brent Central. As she says, many people are oblivious to what happens on the streets.
Angela Rayner (Ashton-under-Lyne) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is making a powerful point. My constituency is in mourning this week because, on Monday, a young, 11-year-old lad was the victim of a hit and run by young people in a vehicle. He was killed outside the mosque in front of his father, and the whole community is in mourning. As I have said before, often our young people do not understand the consequences of using weapons, and they feel that it is just part of being in a gang, or part of youth culture. That has serious consequences for the rest of their lives and for the whole community.
Ms Buck
I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. I do not want to go into the causes because they have been well set out and time is pressing, but she is right about the lack of understanding of the consequences of violent behaviour. A community group in my constituency ran a campaign called “fear and fashion”, which encapsulates the story perfectly. People are frightened, and “fashion” refers to people knowing that these things are going on in the community and considering them to be normal.
Every single incident, even non-fatal ones, is a tragedy that has ramifications and an impact on communities.
Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)
My hon. Friend will know, as a former member of the Home Affairs Committee, that the Committee conducted an inquiry into this—I think she was a member at the time. Given the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Mr Umunna), is it not important to revisit some of the conclusions because some of the knowledge is already there and just needs to be revisited and acted on?
Ms Buck
My right hon. Friend is right. As we have heard, there are changes in the way in which gang and serious youth violence is working itself out, but constants remain, and we need to learn from that experience.
Some positive things are going on in the work that community organisations do. I do not often praise Westminster council, but I do when it deserves it, and it has a gangs unit that includes excellent staff, who work intensively with young people. Redthread community organisation works out of four accident and emergency units and tries to catch young people at what it describes as a “teachable moment”, when injury has been inflicted and young people can learn from it.
There is therefore much that is good, but I am going to break a little with consensus by saying how much we are in danger of losing at the very point when we need to gain. I am deeply worried about the crisis in our youth offending institutes, which are ridden with extreme gang violence. The more the cost pressures bite in the youth justice sector, and the more the overcrowding in our prisons and youth offending institutes, the more dangerous the situation becomes. That is at a time when we are spending £138,000 a year in Medway to keep a young person in one of those units. In Feltham, we are spending £69,000 a year. That is kind of money we spend to lock up a young person—obviously not only for gang and serious youth violence—yet we are doing something dreadful: we are removing the investment that is necessary to prevent that behaviour.
I am horrified by my local council, which is not alone, because it is withdrawing all funding from its youth service. If we are talking about intervention and catching young people at a teachable moment, the youth service is critical. My hon. Friend the Member for Streatham made a point about youth workers and the continuity and expertise that they provide in the community. They are critical and we are losing them.
Mr Umunna
My hon. Friend is making a very important point. So many activities that are provided for young people are not statutory. A lot of youth provision is not statutory, so it is often first in line for cuts. I am desperately trying not to be party political, but the 56% cut in the local government grant from central Government to our local authorities will inevitably have an impact on the support that local authorities can give to third sector organisations working on this matter.
Ms Buck
My hon. Friend is right. We are in a dangerous situation as the pressure on youth services bites, because early intervention is so important. We often think of early intervention as being for the under-fives, but it is as important in the teenage and adolescent years as it is for under-fives.
Dawn Butler
My hon. Friend is making a powerful point. When I was the Minister for young citizens and youth engagement, it was our hope that such provision would be made statutory and that youth services would be ring-fenced in each council. It is disappointing that the Government have scrapped that and that we do not invest in all the youth services that have done an excellent job in communities for many years.
Ms Buck
I agree. However, it is not just youth services; there is also pressure on child and adolescent mental health services. For all the talk about giving mental health services parity, there has been an unprecedented squeeze in modern times on mental health services, particularly on CAMHS. My hon. Friend the Member for Streatham made a point about mental health and I want to spend a minute or two on that. Westminster council—again, I praise it when it does good things—commissioned a report on gangs and mental ill health, a vastly unexplored subject that is important in understanding serious youth violence.
The report said:
“Street gangs and associated serious violence have been a growing concern in the UK over the past decade and a specific concern in Westminster. They are concentrated in poor urban areas with high crime and multiple social problems. The mental health needs of young people in gangs have, until recently, been overlooked.”
The report demonstrated extremely high mental health need among those involved in gangs. Compared with non-violent men, gang members had increased rates of antisocial personality disorder—57 times higher than the average. Suicide attempts are 13 times higher, psychosis is four times higher, and anxiety disorder rates are twice the average. Gang members are significantly more likely than non-violent men to have used mental health services, with gang members eight times more likely to have consulted a psychiatrist, eight times more likely to have been admitted as a mental health in-patient and five times more likely to have used psychotropic medication.
We have a mental health crisis that affects the very people that we need to deal with, yet, at the same time, CAMHS are being reduced, and particularly some of the school-based services that can provide early referral. I am especially worried that the mental health intervention in my local authority is half what it was two years ago, and is funded only until next year. Of course, the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime—MOPAC—anti-gangs initiative is funded only until next year. There is therefore uncertainty about intervention.
Matthew Pennycook
My hon. Friend is making a powerful case. There have been 35 gang-flagged incidents in Greenwich and Woolwich in the few months since I was elected last May, including far too many tragic deaths in the Woolwich area. Given that, and the epidemic that hon. Members have described, does she agree that it makes no sense for the Government to pull front-line capacity, peer reviewers and national co-ordinators out of the ending gang and youth violence programme?
Ms Buck
I totally agree. We understand a great deal about what is going on, even with a changing dynamic, yet we are in danger of doing all the wrong things. We are scrapping youth intervention in some places; we are closing down the youth service in some places; we are cutting CAMHS and so many other areas of early intervention; and we are—fatally in my view—ensuring that services that work for children and young people who are at risk of gang involvement are short term and end quickly.
I believe two things. First, it takes a village to raise a child. Those of us who live in the city, which is diverse, mobile and disconnected, know that we have to build and rebuild that village every single day. Voluntary endeavour alone cannot do it: our village must include neighbourhood police and the youth service, the national health service, CAMHS and schools, as well as churches, mosques, voluntary groups and individual families. Secondly, we should treat gangs and serious youth violence as a public health emergency as much as a criminal justice matter. Mental health services are on the frontline of that battle.
Karen Bradley
I will give way first to the hon. Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck), who is my Member of Parliament in London.
Karen Bradley
It is for local areas to determine what works best for them, but the Home Office can help them with resources and best practice from the centre.