Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Austin of Dudley Excerpts

Wednesday 19th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I look forward to making those travel plans.

I think that my hon. Friend has managed to show that the Leader of the Opposition’s first lot of questions were irrelevant and the second lot were probably wrong.

[Ian Austin (Dudley North) (Lab)]

Q12. The answer the Prime Minister just gave to my right hon. Friend the Member for Warley (Mr Spellar) is simply not good enough. The fact is that, despite all the Prime Minister’s promises, fewer people caught carrying knives are going to prison under this Government than under the last, so will he apologise to Brooke Kinsella and all the bereaved families of victims of knife crime for breaking the promise he made that he would take a tougher approach?

[The Prime Minister]

I am full of admiration for the campaign Brooke Kinsella has run. When someone has suffered such a loss in their own family, it is incredibly brave of them to get out there and campaign for change—and not just change in the law, but also change in the way the police behave and in the way young people behave. I think she is a thoroughly good individual, with a very great campaign. What this Government are doing—which the last Government did not do—is have a mandatory sentence for knife crime, which we will introduce in our forthcoming Bill.