Public Disorder

Lord Flight Excerpts

Thursday 11th August 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Browne of Ladyton]

My Lords, the Government are right to have recognised that gangs and gang culture lay at the heart of some of the worst violence that we have seen on the streets of our cities over the last few days. They are also right to appreciate that lessons can be learned from the Community Initiative to Reduce Violence, the gangs initiative in the east end of Glasgow that has been running since 2008, led by Detective Chief Superintendent John Carnochan and his deputy Karyn McCluskey. Both of them could be here in London much quicker than Bill Bratton could be—unless, of course, he is here for another purpose.

However, the Minister should recognise that that initiative, successful as it has been, is part of a wider initiative in Scotland known as the Violence Reduction Unit. It was born in Strathclyde Police and grew into a national unit between 2005 and 2006, and addresses many of the issues that noble Lords have raised in their interventions already, particularly the last one about early intervention with young people in our communities. I ask the Minister to not just take part of that broader package south, or across the United Kingdom, but to look at the whole package and see what can be learned from the Violence Reduction Unit.

[Lord Flight]

My Lords, all the circumstantial evidence is that these riots did not just appear spontaneously. What evidence is there to date, if any, that there was a fair degree of central organisation, if not orchestration, even down to the use of Sun Tzu tactics in riots? This required people to understand what those were about and how to use them. So my question simply is: what, if any, evidence is there of central organisation?

[Lord Adonis]

My Lords, like the most reverend Primate—and, I think, the House—I find the prevalence of children as young as seven and eight in these events deeply shocking. I agree with the most reverend Primate that issues to do with education—education for citizenship, education for virtue—are vital, as is early intervention. However, some very pressing and urgent questions need to be asked in respect of schools. Many schools have attached police officers. Many schools in the communities that have seen disturbances over the last week will be in a very fragile state at the beginning of term. Can the Minister confirm that every secondary school that wishes to have an attached police officer in any of the communities in question will have access to them, and that funding constraints will not be an obstacle to that?

Secondly, I expect we will find that most of the young people involved either have been excluded from school at some point or indeed may not even be attending school at all. On any one day in the school year, 1,000 pupils are excluded from school, many of them for acts of violence and serious disturbance. One of the issues that has to be looked at, coming out of these events, is the whole way that we deal with pupils excluded from school. They need to be properly supervised; they need to be properly organised; there needs to be some inspiration in the provision for them. I also believe that that should be a punitive element for those who are excluded from school in respect of acts of violence. The underclass that we have talked about this afternoon begins, alas, in our schools. Unless we tackle it in our schools we will never tackle it at all.