Serious Violence Strategy

Lord Paddick Excerpts

Monday 11th June 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Paddick (LD)]

My Lords, this has been an interesting if relatively short debate considering its breadth. It is sad that more Peers did not participate in this important debate, considering how serious the issues are. Before I start I will pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, for her courage and her efforts to stand up for victims of crime. I cannot imagine what she has been through, but the noble Baroness has always conducted herself with great dignity.

As the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, observed, almost all serious violence is perpetrated by men against women and girls—much of it within relationships and much of it fuelled by alcohol. Violence against women and girls and domestic violence remain major contributors to the problem of serious violence and we must not lose focus on these important areas. But that is not where the increase in serious violence is occurring at the moment. We are seeing an epidemic of violence on our streets, as the Minister said in her opening. Homicides, knife crime and gun crime have all been increasing since 2014—not just police-recorded crime but hospital data. Hospital admissions for stab injuries are up by 18%; recorded firearms offences are up by 31%; homicides are up by 18%; and 21% of robberies now involve a knife. This is both serious and urgent—unlike the Government’s response.

It is interesting to note that the homicide rate changes are reflected globally, decreasing between 2008 and 2014 and then increasing between 2014 and 2016. The same is true in some countries in relation to robbery. Something serious is missing from this strategy. It is an acknowledgement that an erosion of trust might be driving this violence. With Brexit, Trump, Grenfell, Windrush and #MeToo there are plenty of reasons for people to distrust the Government and their fellow citizens.

The world today feels to many unfair and unstable, and its future looks uncertain. Some studies have shown that violence correlates inversely with public faith in government and trust in the elected officials. My extensive police experience tells me that, if people feel society is unfair, they are less inclined to play by the rules. People are angry, social media has fanned the flames, and angry people are prone to violence. Will the Minister comment on this omission?

The Government say much of the violence is being driven by the misuse of drugs, and they are right. Criminals have no legal way of enforcing their deals, protecting their territory or disciplining their workforce, so they resort to guns and knives. The strategy claims that the Government’s approach to dealing with drug misuse is succeeding, yet more young people are using cannabis and dealing in class A drugs. As other noble Lords have said, there is a cocaine epidemic in the UK, with increased use of crack cocaine, a drug closely associated with serious violence. The higher purity levels in cocaine seized by the police is a sure sign of the increased availability of that drug in the UK. As we have heard, county lines are exploiting young people.

There were 3,744 drug poisoning deaths involving both legal and illegal drugs in the UK in 2016, 70 higher than in 2015 and the highest number since comparable statistics began in 1993. Scotland has the EU’s highest rate of drug-related deaths, double that of 10 years ago. The number of opiate-using clients in rehabilitation has fallen by 14% over the past seven years and recovery rates are falling. Can the Minister explain how the Government can maintain that their drugs strategy is working against the background of such statistics?

New psychoactive substances—“legal highs” as they were known—were developed to replace drugs controlled under the Misuse of Drugs Act because they were illegal and legal highs were not. The new psychoactive substances have proved to be more dangerous and more likely to result in violence and psychosis, yet personal possession of these substances is not an offence. The police cannot stop and search for possession of new psychoactive substances. In short, the whole legislative framework around drug misuse is confused and is creating more harm, more deaths and more violence. We will continue to campaign to take drugs out of the hands of criminals, to adopt a harm-reduction, health-based approach, and to legalise and regulate cannabis to control its potency and to keep it out of the hands of children and young people.

It is not just the Liberal Democrats and the noble Lord, Lord Suri, who are saying that. In an editorial last month, the British Medical Journal said that it was firmly behind efforts to legalise, regulate and tax the sale of drugs for recreational and medicinal use. In April, the Royal College of Physicians took the important step of coming out in favour of decriminalisation, joining the BMA, the Faculty of Public Health and the Royal Society for Public Health in supporting drug-policy reform. In Portugal, where non-violent possession of drugs has been decriminalised, consumption has not increased but drug-related deaths have fallen considerably. In the Netherlands, the USA and Canada, regulated markets for the sale of cannabis generate substantial tax revenues. Can the Minister explain the downsides to this approach?

Sadly, I am not as positive as the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, about the Serious Violence Strategy. It may be 112 pages but it is thin on content. As the noble Lords, Lord Balfe and Lord Cormack, said, the analysis is good but effective answers are lacking. I think it was Mintzberg who said that strategy was little more than post-event rationalisation—and I think this is Mintzberg’s sort of strategy. Where are the action plans? Where are the smart objectives and milestones? Where are the measures of success? I share the doubts of the noble Lord, Lord Suri, about the task force.

Despite the fact, highlighted in the strategy, that each incident of violence is estimated to have an economic and social cost of £13,900, there is a woeful lack of government investment to tackle the problem of serious violence and a total lack of investment in police resources. The strategy contradicts itself. On the one hand it says that stop and search is not correlated with violent crime, but on the other it says that certainty of punishment has a greater impact on preventing crime than severity. Despite those facts, there has been a reduction in the number of arrests and in the number of charges for serious violence—but the Government are obsessed with increasing prison sentences and reducing police budgets.

The APPG on Knife Crime, of which I am a member, has talked to young people involved in knife crime. They told us they felt unsafe, and that they did not have confidence in the police to protect them so that they have to carry a knife to protect themselves. As the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, warns, a knife or a gun is coming to be seen as an essential accessory. Prisons were seen by these young people as training camps where they could learn to be smarter criminals and hang out with their mates. Having been to prison, their status among their peer group was enhanced.

As a result of the 25% reduction in police funding from central government since 2010—and the real-terms reduction is continuing—there has been not only a dramatic reduction in the number of police officers but the near-eradication of police community support officers, because the latter can be made redundant whereas the former cannot. As the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, pointed out, the Metropolitan Police alone have had to find savings of £600 million to date. The strategy then gives an example of where visible policing by PCSOs in hotspot areas for serious violence has led to a 39% reduction in crime. How can you replicate that when there has been a 99% reduction in the number of PCSOs?

It is not just visible deterrence, crime prevention and enforcement resources that are sadly lacking. In terms of other interventions, there are far too many expressions in the strategy of “we will look at” or “we will examine” and not enough “we will do”. For example, young people’s advocates support gang-affected women and girls. They have been going since 2012, yet the strategy says the Government will explore whether the YPA model should be expanded and supported in other areas. Is the initiative working? If it is, why, after six years, has it not been expanded? If not, why is it in the strategy at all? The strategy appears to be filled out with such examples of small initiatives involving tiny numbers of people and no promise of future government investment.

Time is against me so I will say just a few more things. As the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, said, the police and community need to stand together to tackle gun and knife crime. They did it before with Operation Trident at the end of the 1990s, when community leaders identified witnesses to black-on-black gun crime and encouraged them to come forward, protected by the police. Stop and search can be effective in taking guns and knives off the streets if the community tells the police who the gun and knife carriers are and when they carry them. However, that requires trust and confidence between the police and the community, which requires neighbourhood policing and PCSO numbers to be restored, and that requires cuts in police budgets to be reversed. That is why the Liberal Democrats, in our fully costed manifesto last year, pledged an extra £300 million a year for community policing, more than any other political party. That figure should be compared with the total promised in the strategy of £40 million, which, as the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, described it, is a drop in the ocean.

We need to get out the counternarrative to the pro-gang, pro-drug-dealing and pro-crime message that pervades social media. That is where charities such as Growing Against Violence, of which I am a patron, come in, changing perceptions and behaviours. Only those at the top of the pile in gangs and drug dealing networks earn vast wealth and avoid becoming victims of serious violence. The street dealers and those lower in the gang hierarchy take all the risks, are subjected to serious violence, and the cost-benefit analysis for them rarely turns out positively. We need to get this message across and this requires government funding. There need to be positive alternatives to gangs for young people who tell us they need a sense of belonging. This is partly as a result of family breakdown, as the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, said.

I complain about central Government cuts to police funding but these are nothing compared with the cuts to local authorities which could, should and used to provide youth services and outreach workers, and sustainable core funding to charities and community groups which can provide a safe and positive alternative to gangs.

Young people may predominantly be involved in the increase in serious violence, but we are all to blame. We are letting them down by not listening and by not providing them with hope and opportunity or with the support that they need. As the noble Lord, Lord Bird, said, we are not providing them with the education that engages them. There is some good in this strategy but it falls way short of what is required.