Knife Crime

Lord Coaker Excerpts

Monday 25th March 2019 Westminster Hall

[Vernon Coaker (Gedling) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Graham. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Mike Hill) on his introduction to the debate.

I will start with this and get it out of the way: there is an issue with police resources and numbers of police, and there is an issue with the cuts there have been to local authority services and youth services. We will leave that for another day, but I do not want people to forget it, because there is a debate to be had. On neighbourhood policing, I say gently to the hon. Member for Romford (Andrew Rosindell) that there used to be huge numbers of neighbourhood and community police officers, backed by police staff, and that that made a huge difference.

In order to try to take this forward from where we are, and as my hon. Friends and other hon. Members will have heard me say countless times over the past few months, I say to the Minister that this is a national crisis. It is a national emergency. If it were any other type of national emergency, irrespective of what else was going on, the Prime Minister or the Home Secretary or the Secretary of State for Justice would be in the House of Commons at the Dispatch Box day after day after day, outlining what had happened and what the Government were doing about it.

That is why I called a few weeks ago for knife crime to be treated like terrorism—not to underestimate terrorism or decry the importance of dealing with it, but to give that sense of urgency. Instead, frankly, we drift on. As my hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Neil Coyle) alluded to, the Prime Minister promised a knife crime summit nearly three weeks ago at the Dispatch Box. We are now told that one will take place sometime next week. I say to every hon. Member present that, in the face of a national emergency, a month’s delay—as it will be by then—is simply and utterly unacceptable and will be bewildering to the people of this country.

Virtually certainly, three or four times a week, not just in London but across the country, people are killed, horrifically, and we have to do something about it. We have to speak up and speak out about it more. It is absolutely astonishing that the House of Commons Chamber does not reverberate with the roar of MPs demanding action from the Government. The Government will say, “We are doing this, we are doing that,” but—as was certainly said by my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool and I think by the hon. Member for Romford—where is the urgency? Where is the passion? Where is the anger? Where is the desire to get a hold of this? The public do not see that, and I do not feel it.

People say it is ridiculous, but I have said, as did former Prime Minister Tony Blair this morning, that Cobra should meet because, irrespective of resources, cross-Government co-ordination is lacking. I will say something about sentencing in a minute to illustrate what I mean. Solving this is not only about police numbers—that is ridiculous—but a long-term public health plan will not prevent somebody from being stabbed tonight. Increased police resources and an increased police presence on the ground will stop that. That is not the overall answer of course, but that is where we have to go in the short term—the increase that the Chancellor announced will help.

The Government’s evidence in the serious violence strategy and the leaked Home Office memo—I know that the Minister is a Justice Minister—show that hotspot policing reduces knife crime. That is evidentially based. It also does not displace that crime to nearby areas; it stops the crime, because it tackles the people who commit those offences. Am I saying, “Lock them up and throw the key away?” Of course not. All I am saying is that we have lost control and there is no short-term alternative. Where are the intervention and prevention measures that were there before? Where have the youth clubs gone? Where are the street workers?

The hon. Member for Romford is right: when I was the Policing Minister, the most effective people on the street, alongside police officers, were street pastors, and particularly the older ones. There are countless examples. They stop stupid incidents outside shops or in precincts, when there are issues between stupid kids and their stupid gangs. Somebody might look at somebody else, or bump into their bike—for Christ’s sake—and get stabbed. The street pastors get involved and prevent that. That sounds almost pathetic in the face of the huge rises in knife crime, but it actually works and makes a difference.

I will come to sentencing, but I would love the Minister to say that he and the Justice Department recognise that the Government have to more effectively co-ordinate what happens across Government rather than there being individual, compartmentalised elements. I hope the Minister brings the urgency I have seen in his reflecting on other things to dealing with this problem.

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent series of points. I was hoping that we would cover that the break- down of the fabric of society is part of this. We cannot point to only one thing such as the 21,000 reduction in police officers. There are also schools exclusions, including unofficial exclusions. Kids are out on the streets, and there is a lack of youth provision and other preventive stuff. All that should be looked at in the round. Does he agree that austerity has had an effect, and that this issue could be a consequence of it?

[Vernon Coaker]

I absolutely agree. I am making the point that it is not only about policing. However, in the short term, that is where we have to go. That is all I am saying. It should never have got to this point, with the breakdown of all that.

The system—this is true of Justice or whatever—does not look at what works. For example, on youth crime, exclusions and kids not being in school have an impact. That is a no-brainer. We do not need a research project on that costing millions of pounds. Everybody knows it. People on the street know it, every Member knows it and everybody watching our proceedings will know that it has an effect. We have a problem in how we deal with those young people. There are brilliant examples of pupil referral units and activity with young people excluded from school, but many of those young people disappear. Everybody is responsible but nobody is.

That has to change, otherwise those young people just drift into a twilight zone where they are exploited by criminals or associate with people who parade around estates saying, “Do you want to make some money? I’ll show you how to make some money. Don’t listen to them.” We know that that goes on. We have to take that culture on, but we cannot do it without being honest. My hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) is absolutely right: proper provision for excluded young people is fundamental. Some of it works, and some of it does not. We have to find a way of ensuring that good practice is spread much more widely.

[Mr Howarth]

My hon. Friend speaks with his normal passion and insight. He is right on exclusions from school and young people disappearing, but there is another problem. When some youngsters are sent to alternative provision because they are too much of a nuisance in school, some of it is very good, but some of it is nothing more than poor childminding. We need to urgently look at alternative provision.

[Vernon Coaker]

I absolutely agree. The Minister will know, because his Department will report to him, that some of the alternatives to prison or custodial sentences are rubbish, but other alternatives are brilliant. If we know what works, why are we not replicating it instead of the Justice Department funding alternative provision outside some schools or inside others? Why do we not replicate those things that work and that prevent young people who have been excluded from school from getting involved? I know that this is not a fashionable thing to say in a time of localism. Localism is absolutely right, but sometimes the Government have to pick it up and drive it. This is one area in which they should drive it forward.

My hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool and the hon. Member for Romford made the point, as I am sure will others, that the Minister has a tough job. The public will say that anybody carrying a knife—I am not talking about the use of a knife—is completely unacceptable, and that they should be jailed straight away. They will also say that people should not have a second chance when it comes to something as serious as that.

All Governments, including the last Labour Government, write into every bit of legislation that courts have discretion to look at circumstances, but that is the bit of the mandatory sentencing guidelines that nobody reads. I am appalled by repeat cautioning and the fact that the courts seem in many instances to fail to act on persistent offending. However, even I can see that, if somebody stuffs a knife in the pocket of an idiotic 12-year-old lad but he cannot prove it, we have to let the court try to find out whether he deliberately carried the knife or whether somebody had put it on him, or had threated to beat him up unless he took it. We have to be careful about saying that, in every single circumstance and in every single case, the first time a pathetic girl or boy—that is what they are—carries a knife, they should be jailed forever and the key should be thrown away. I do not accept the inability of the state or the Government to explain that to people. Everybody says, “We’re going to be tough. We’re going to have mandatory sentencing. We’re going to lock all of them up.” Of course, that does not happen, because rightly in a democracy we have the legal system and the independence of the judiciary. The judiciary, including any of us if we were magistrates, would look at the circumstances of an individual case and say that in that instance they do not want to send the person to a place like that described by my right hon. Friend the Member for Knowsley (Mr Howarth), because they deserve a chance.

There are not many people in our Parliament who would not allow the courts discretion, but I say to the Minister—again, the Government should be shouting this—that he should explain that and tell people. He should not hide behind harsh rhetoric. He should do what I have just done and explain that, even in a national emergency—a knife crime epidemic—there will be circumstances in which the courts will want to exercise discretion. The Minister no doubt has that in the notes for his speech at the conclusion of the debate.

The legislation talks about mandatory sentencing except in exceptional circumstances. What does that mean? The Minister is brandishing the guidelines at us, but they are not interpreted across the judicial system in a fair and consistent way. That drives people mad—it drives me mad—and undermines the system. Alongside all the things that I have discussed, the sentencing by the courts is crucial. There has to be an expectation that people are jailed, whether they be young children, older children or adults, but there has to be more consistency. Figures were given by the hon. Member for Romford. It cannot be right that huge numbers of people are being cautioned again and again. It cannot be right that between different courts some people are going to jail and others are not. It cannot be right that nobody among the public properly understands what “exceptional circumstances” means—no Minister has properly gone out there to articulate and explain it. This Minister will have an opportunity to do that when he winds up the debate.

[Mrs Hodgson]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way again. When I was chair of the all-party parliamentary group on basketball, we did an inquiry into how basketball could be harnessed as a sport that appeals to certain demographics. It attracts a high number of inner-city and black, Asian and minority ethnic participants. Basketball could be used as a sentencing tool. That might seem a crazy idea, but evidence was given by police and crime commissioners in Leicester and in one of the London boroughs—I think it was Newham—which were using things such as basketball to sentence some of the young people who were at risk of being the ones to get into knife crime. They were looking for alternative provision, and basketball was one of the things that it was deemed would work, so much so that, in the London Borough of Newham there is an initiative called “Carry a Ball, not a Blade”. Does my hon. Friend think that more initiatives such as that should be looked at as a means of prevention in sentencing?

[Vernon Coaker]

I absolutely do think that more initiatives such as that should be introduced.

Let me finish with a personal account. I have been an MP for nearly 22 years. Before becoming an MP, I taught for 20 years, mainly in inner-city schools in Nottingham. They had the challenges that anybody here could recount. Much of the time, when I started teaching, it was possible for somebody to choose where they went. It was possible to say, “I would like to go here,” and I always said that I wanted to teach in an inner-city school. Some people stereotype me—for good reason or not—but talking in the way I do helped in Nottingham. This is a point for the Government. When we went there to raise standards—without being arrogant, in all the schools I worked at, we raised standards—we did certain things. Among the things that we put in place was certainty that, if someone broke the rules, there would be a consequence. It was not a case of locking somebody up and throwing away the key, but people knew that there would be a consequence.

There was a lot of the alternative provision to which my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West has referred. I was the harshest disciplinarian in the school. I was not going to have people coming in who were not in uniform. People may laugh about it, but the truth is that out on our streets the police need to ensure the same certainty. Alongside that we need the sort of provision that my hon. Friend has talked about and opportunities for young people to get work, to have social mobility and to prosper. That is what will stop knife crime. I say again to the Minister that this is a national crisis and a national emergency, and the Government simply have to treat it as such by co-ordinating and driving forward change, rather than just making a series of compartmentalised, well-intentioned announcements that do not have the passion, drive and enthusiasm needed to effect change in the country.

--- Later in debate ---

[Rory Stewart]

I will come back to knife crime prevention orders. The interesting thing about this debate is that although we all share a horror of knife crime, not everybody in this Chamber agrees on the particulars, such as knife crime prevention orders, sentence lengths or whether courts should have discretion. In a sense, the debate in this Chamber is a reflection of the debate among the public.

The core question is which of the dozens of suggestions in the serious violence strategy will make most difference as quickly as possible and be most effective. There may be many individual initiatives that are fantastic at a community level, but others may be even better, and those are the ones that we need to focus on. I want to focus on four areas in particular. The first is sentencing—this is a debate on sentencing, and I am here as a representative of the Ministry of Justice to talk about sentencing. It is true to say that following on from the 2015 two-strike rule, more people are now going to jail for knife possession offences, and they are going there for longer. My hon. Friend the Member for Hornchurch and Upminster (Julia Lopez) raised the question whether we have got that balance right, and it is a difficult balance.

The hon. Member for Gedling, a very experienced ex-Policing Minister, asked exactly how these exceptions are defined. They are defined quite closely. Some 82% of people found in a double possession will find their way towards a sentence. Who are the 18% who are not getting sentences? The guidelines stipulate very clearly what the mitigating factors are and lay them out. In extreme cases, it could be somebody with learning difficulties, mental health problems or a serious medical problem, or it could be somebody who has co-operated with the police—all these things are mitigating factors that might lead to someone not receiving such a sentence.

[Vernon Coaker]

The Minister talks about 82% of people being given a sentence by the court. Does he mean suspended sentences as well as custodial sentences?

[Rory Stewart]

I am including suspended sentences as well as immediate custodial sentences. In the case of a suspended sentence, if somebody breaks their licence conditions, they will be recalled to court for the remainder of their custodial sentence.

--- Later in debate ---

[Rory Stewart]

Yes, that is absolutely right. We should do much, much more on addiction. Shoplifting is a big problem. We have a lot of shoplifting, and the majority of people get short sentences of less than six months. The highest single offence is shoplifting by a very large margin. Of those offenders, 76% are crack cocaine or heroin addicts. The real way of dealing with the problem is to deal with their crack cocaine or heroin addiction.

[Vernon Coaker]

The Minister has given a very thoughtful, measured and informed response, and people listening to it will say, “That’s great. How will the Government and Parliament make that happen?” As part of that, will he tell the House that he will go back, wake up the people who need waking up and introduce regular statements to Parliament, every single week at least, about what is happening, what progress is being made and what is or is not being done? It should be a regular statement to Parliament, not a response to an urgent question.

[Rory Stewart]

I have enormous admiration for the hon. Gentleman, and I would be very proud to have him as part of our team dealing with this. I am sure he would deal with it very well. I am not in the business of committing colleagues in the Home Office to making statements, but I assure him that we take this very seriously. I have not spoken enough to the hon. Member for Dudley North (Ian Austin), but we are putting another £100 million into policing, particularly driven by violent crime and knife crime, in addition to our investment in the youth endowment fund.

Action is not just what happens in Parliament. It is not just about the inter-ministerial group that has been set up and the meeting that the Prime Minister is holding next week. It is about setting up the violent crime taskforce and that 10 am meeting every morning in Lambeth, and about ensuring the money and resources begin to flow in behind this. I believe that this will make a significant difference, but I absolutely agree to sit down with the hon. Member for Gedling. The only way of doing this or anything in Government is with urgency, grip, imagination and passion. Above all, it should be rooted in realism. I thank the hon. Member for Hartlepool very much indeed for this incredibly informative debate.