Luke Taylor
Main Page: Luke Taylor (Liberal Democrat - Sutton and Cheam)Department Debates - View all Luke Taylor's debates with the Home Office
(2 days ago)
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Luke Taylor (Sutton and Cheam) (LD)
The epidemic of knife crime is an issue that I have addressed many times in this place, although never in a debate specifically targeting its impact on children and young people. I commend the hon. and gallant Member for Huntingdon (Ben Obese-Jecty) on securing this debate on such a significant matter.
In Britain, we face a hard truth: young people are increasingly involved in violent crime, and the cycle is becoming ever more entrenched. Figures from the Ben Kinsella Trust show that across the country, some 614 young people under the age of 24 have been killed by knife crime in the last 10 years, 17 of them being 16 years old or younger. Children are being exposed to the tragic normalisation of stabbings. We have sleepwalked into a scenario in which many young people feel it is safer and easier to carry a knife to defend themselves. In this context, threats of punishment are unsurprisingly failing to deter violent behaviour. Knife crime should be treated as the societal disease it is, and we cannot afford to just treat the symptoms any more. If this Government are to truly tackle knife crime, they must address its roots—the deep-seated factors that drive young people to such violence in the first place.
To tackle knife crime, we must stop it before it starts. We must use a public health approach that addresses the root causes: fear, trauma, lack of opportunities, and social exclusion. This approach has many tenets—some of which I will outline today—and begins with education. When young people carry knives, it is often out of fear, not necessarily a desire to harm others. A study by the Ben Kinsella Trust revealed that over one in three young people do not feel safe in their own communities. Some 36% do not feel safe walking the streets, and two thirds report anxiety over knife crime in their area. The teenage brain is wired differently from that of adults; we know that a tendency towards impulsive and risky behaviour is much more common during adolescence. Studies show that in many cases, knife crime occurs in the heat of the moment, when an altercation could have been resolved without serious injury if a weapon had not been present. That is exactly why we must address knife crime before it happens—before a knife is pulled from a pocket and the situation escalates beyond control.
Education can play a principal part in challenging the misconception that carrying a knife somehow makes a person safer. We can teach young people the real consequences of carrying such a weapon—how it destroys lives, impacts families, and perpetuates fear among their peers and in communities.
Chris Vince (Harlow) (Lab/Co-op)
The hon. Gentleman is making an excellent speech that I think all of us across the House would agree with. I have spoken a number of times with Harlow police about knives and knife crime, not just in Harlow but across Essex. They do a lot of work with schools. Does he agree that it is important that schools fully engage with the police on these issues, and do not feel that there is stigma in doing so? All schools need to engage with that process.
Luke Taylor
I completely agree. I will come on to that later in my speech. I have spoken to the organisers and leaders of the Chris Donovan Trust in my constituency. They spoke about the challenge of getting into some schools to talk about knife crime, because of the perception that talking about it was a problem in itself. That was so frustrating to hear.
We need to have honest, open conversations with young people in schools. Teachers must be equipped with materials to educate the next generation, so that we break the cycle of violence. Even if a child is not at risk of committing a knife-related offence, educational programmes serve a critical role. They can teach children about the consequences of knife crime long before they consider carrying a weapon. That is vital. We need to reach young people and win the war for their hearts and minds before the prevailing climate of fear and the harbingers of toxic mindsets start their offensive. I urge the Government to consider introducing mandatory personal, social, health and economic lessons on the consequences of weapons possession, and to put the principles of restorative practice on the curriculum, in recognition of the great work of groups such as the Chris Donovan Trust in my constituency. We teach children from an early age about the dangers of diseases caused by smoking or alcohol; why, then, are we not having open discussions with them about the health risks associated with carrying a knife? Creating safe spaces for discussion, and building relationships with young people, can ensure intervention before thoughts of crimes arise, and deaths can be prevented.
To fully realise the nourishing, community-focused element of a public health approach, though, we must invest in youth services and community programmes that engage young people. Winning the war for hearts and minds means providing young people with opportunities to build skills, pursue education, and find alternatives to gang culture and criminal activity. However, as was mentioned in many speeches, we have seen a dramatic decline in youth services funding over recent years, with cuts totalling £1.1 billion since 2010. This has left too many young people without the support they need.
Investing in youth services is not just about providing safe spaces; it is about providing young people with alternatives to violence, so that we break the cycle of crime, shift the culture of violence, and empower communities to work together to prevent crime before it escalates. The targeted early help and integrated support team at Sutton borough council in my constituency does exactly this kind of work, offering opportunities to young people who are not often afforded the luxury of such attention elsewhere in their lives. However, these programmes rely heavily on grants from the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime, the Ministry of Justice, and violence reduction services. Those grants are subject to constant uncertainty, often approved at the last minute and often only allocated for 18-month to two-year periods, preventing proper forward planning. We must do better than that. We need to consistently get serious funding to these initiatives in a timely manner. I echo the calls from the hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes) about funding for these community schemes.
Lib Dem Members will continue to push the Government to make youth diversion a statutory duty, so that every part of the country has a pre-charge diversion scheme for young people up to the age of 25. That will ensure better outcomes for young people and less strain on police resources, but let us be honest with ourselves: police resources are already strained beyond breaking point in too many places, and education and early intervention alone are not enough to properly implement a public health approach. Visible community policing starts with actual police numbers in our London boroughs. To tackle knife crime, it is important for young people to see bobbies on the beat in London. Their active and engaged presence creates a sense of safety and security. We have to get back to meaningful community policing, returning the police to their proper duty as a positive, engaging arm of the state in people’s lives.
Building trust between young people and the police is also crucial. This trust communicates that there is no need to carry knives for protection, as young people know that the police are there to keep them safe. As I have said before, when 17-year-old Ilyas Habibi was stabbed to death outside Sutton station in my constituency in December 2023, he was just minutes away from a police station. If we cannot expect visible policing in town centres and the areas closest to police stations, how little have we come to expect of community policing? To be clear, that is not a criticism of the police, but a criticism of successive Governments and mayors, who have consistently failed to get the police the resources they need to do their job. In London, far too many police are abstracted away from the communities they are supposed to serve to help plug gaps.
I was deeply concerned to learn of Sadiq Khan’s budgeting decisions, which have led to dedicated police officers in schools in London being removed. Under the “A New Met for London” plan, officers will no longer be stationed in schools as part of the safer schools officers programme. While the plan claims that officers will still work closely with schools, the change reduces the consistent direct contact between officers and young people. That contact is crucial in building relationships with young people to foster trust. There should be plenty of positive interactions and experiences with the police throughout young people’s formative years. That can be achieved through school assemblies or classroom workshops. Young people need to understand that the police are there to keep them safe on the streets and are not the enemy, but when sparse police resources are focused on only the most extreme forms of deterrence, such as live facial recognition and stop and search, and when there is no community focus, it is unsurprising that they do not.
The hallmark of a meaningful public health approach that invests not just money, but serious political capital, is that it brings together all groups in our communities. It creates a coalition of care, breaks down the silos between projects, and builds a team across society committed to doing what it takes to rescue young people. On behalf of countless experts, professionals and parents, and on behalf of young people, I implore the Government to build that team, to create that coalition of care and to finally implement a meaningful public health approach to knife crime.
