Gangs

Lord Herbert of South Downs Excerpts

Tuesday 11th October 2011 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice (Nick Herbert)]

I congratulate the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) on initiating the debate and on his thoughtful discussion of the long-term issues with which we must grapple, especially the challenge of gangs.

I welcome the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) to the Front Bench and wish her luck. I look forward to working with her—constructively, I hope—because I do not believe that there needs to be partisan disagreement over some of the issues that we must challenge. Although some Members picked up on particular aspects of the Government’s approach, which I shall deal with. There is more to agree about over the long-term issues—for example, exclusion and the need to tackle it.

Let me put the issue in context. Of the 4,000 people arrested in the disorders, two thirds were under 25, but only one in eight were known from police records to be a gang member. Although I say “only”, that clearly is a large number. However, we must understand that gang membership is a significant part of the problem, but not the only part—it is symptomatic of the wider youth violence that we must tackle. Gang members were often involved in offences at the more serious end of the spectrum—for example, in Birmingham, police officers were fired on by armed gangs.

It is important that we tackle gangs and the emerging problem of gang activity in some cities, but we cannot believe that that is where the problem ends, because the wider issues of offending in the riots must also be tackled. My right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for Justice announced that three quarters of defendants who appeared in relation to the disorder had previous convictions, and that the average number of offences was 15. A third of those defendants had served prison sentences.

Another lesson we must take from the disorder that goes beyond the issue of gangs is that we have high rates of reoffending, which is no surprise to those who have studied the performance of the criminal justice system for years, and that young people are entering the criminal justice system and finding themselves caught in a cycle of criminality. We must therefore focus on effective reform of the system.

There has been agreement in this short debate that the solution is not enforcement alone, important though it is. Tools are available, including gang injunctions, which we propose to extend to those aged 14 to 17, and effective policing, which will always be a significant component of any response to violence. Opposition Members acknowledged the Prime Minister’s response to the riots, in which he announced a cross-Government programme of work led by the Home Secretary that will tackle gangs and gang violence and report to Parliament by the end of the month. The report will be evidence led, as it should be, and will focus not simply on enforcement, but on the wider issues that have to be addressed. The programme has looked at the evidence of successful interventions from abroad and in Glasgow and Manchester, both of which the Home Secretary visited recently.

The right hon. Member for Tottenham was slightly disparaging about what he described as US advisers—Bill Bratton is giving evidence to the Home Affairs Committee this morning—but we must take advice and learn from success in our country and internationally. This week, we are convening an international forum on ending gang violence at which people from Europe and the United States will share the benefit of their experience. The Home Secretary has announced that we propose to set up an ending youth violence team, which will draw on independent advice. More will be said about it in due course.

It is common ground that we must focus on early intervention—the earlier the better. The fact that there is serial reoffending is partial evidence that some of the earliest interventions are either not occurring or not working. I agree with the hon. Member for Walthamstow that we must acknowledge the police’s role in crime prevention as well as in enforcement. Sir Robert Peel’s first principle of policing was to prevent crime and disorder, and it remains true today.

Members rightly drew attention to the importance of effective local partnerships, which we seek to promote. One of the significant features of learning in the past few years has been that effective partnerships between agencies can make a difference in crime prevention and effective interventions. Agencies and local authorities are under a statutory duty to be members of community safety partnerships.

In the little time available, I want to challenge the premise that the solution is money and the fact that we are having to save money means that we cannot find solutions. We have ensured that programmes are targeted on, for example, knife crime, with £18 million worth of initiatives that the Home Secretary announced following Brooke Kinsella’s recommendations on combating knife crime. If money was the solution, there would not be a problem, because there has been record spending on the criminal justice system and public services. We must hold a more hard-headed debate on the effectiveness of interventions, rather than assume that resources will be the whole solution. They cannot be the whole solution, nor can we lay the blame for youth violence on cuts.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) spoke about information sharing and the coalition commitment on hospital information. We intend to ensure that that applies across the country, and I shall write to update him on where we are with that.