County Lines Drug Trafficking

Lord Rosser Excerpts

Thursday 19th March 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

Noble Lords have previously brought up in this House that the young people who are drawn into this sort of activity are not themselves criminals; they are victims of other people’s exploitation. It is very important to keep that in mind when we think about how we deal with these children and divert them into mainstream life and out of a life of crime.

[Lord Rosser (Lab)]

My Lords, following the Government’s decision to fund an increase in the number of police officers by some 20,000, the Home Secretary told police chiefs that she now expected them to deliver a return on that funding in the form of a reduction in crime. Now that the Home Secretary has admitted through that statement that the total number of police officers available does have an impact on the level of crime—contrary to what the Government used to maintain while they were busily reducing the number of police officers over the last decade—will the Government now agree that one reason, though not the only reason, for the rate and level of expansion of child criminal exploitation, or county lines, across the country has been the reduction in the number of police officers and the resultant increasingly stretched police forces across the country over the last 10 years?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, as I said earlier, I think these issues are multifactorial. One thing that the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, would say if he were here is that it is driven by the drugs market, but the drugs market is not the only factor. It is also fair to say that at some point demands on the police, and crime, became more complex, and therefore it was the right decision to take to promote the move towards having more police officers on our streets to fight crime.