County Lines Exploitation: London

Lyn Brown Excerpts

Wednesday 17th January 2018 Westminster Hall

[Joan Ryan (Enfield North) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered county lines exploitation in London.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dame Cheryl. I thank all hon. Members who are here to participate, and in particular my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport (Ann Coffey) for her support before this debate and for her important work as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on runaway and missing children and adults.

London gangs and criminal networks from other major cities are aggressively expanding their illegal enterprises. They are flooding suburban and rural areas as well as market and coastal towns with drugs. They co-ordinate their sales through dedicated mobile phone lines in a practice known as county lines activity.

The latest National Crime Agency report reveals that,

“there are at least 720 lines across England and Wales”,

with

“at least 283 lines originating in London.”

Worryingly, the report states:

“The actual number may well be considerably higher, as many of these areas are likely to have more than one line.”

London is the major urban source of county lines activity, and I will consider how the Met police, local authorities and other agencies in Enfield and across the capital are working to address it. It is spreading out from London and other urban areas, however, to reach into every area of our country. It is a national issue that demands a co-ordinated, nationally funded response that focuses on policing and children’s services.

County lines activity is having a terrible, damaging effect on young people, vulnerable adults and local communities. Children from my constituency and beyond are being exploited by gangs and forced to transport class A drugs, weapons and money great distances away from where they live.

Between November and December 2017, at least nine children from Enfield were reported as missing. Enfield police issued a statement to reassure the public that the borough was,

“not experiencing a disproportionate amount of missing teenagers.”

That was undoubtedly true, but I know from the messages and emails I received that the public were not reassured. If nine missing children in a matter of weeks is not disproportionate and there are 32 London boroughs, that is very frightening. There was genuine alarm about what was happening to those children and speculation that county lines exploitation could be involved.

It is not only vulnerable children and teenagers who are affected. Gangs are taking over the homes of vulnerable adults in those areas to set up drug dens—a process known as cuckooing—often through violence and coercion, or in exchange for free drugs. Many communities affected by county lines activities are reporting a rise in knife crime offences, violent crime and drug use.

The Government acknowledge that,

“County lines is a major, cross-cutting issue involving drugs, violence, gangs, safeguarding, criminal and sexual exploitation, modern slavery, and missing persons”.

[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that one of the good advances that we have made over the past year has been to understand that some of our children are being coerced into those gangs? Is she pleased, as I am, that the modern day slavery legislation is being applied in such cases so that those children are understood, rather than condemned?

[Joan Ryan]

Indeed, I will come to that later. As pleased as I am about the modern day slavery legislation, it has been used very little. In fact, I think there has been only one case, which I will refer to. We need to bear it in mind that those children often do not see themselves as being exploited. They think, “I’m doing rather well here. I’m getting money in.” If they are not cared for children, they feel cared for by their exploiters.

The Government acknowledge that,

“the response to tackle it involves the police, the National Crime Agency, a wide range of Government departments, local government agencies and VCS (voluntary and community sector) organisations.”

However, they must also acknowledge that county lines activity is putting our vital public services in London and across the country under even greater strain. Our health and social care services, police forces, schools and youth clubs are trying to tackle this growing menace at a time of Government-imposed austerity and severe funding cuts to their budgets.

The way in which county lines activity is being carried out changes all the time—the use of social media as a recruitment tool is one recent development. Authorities require the resources to respond dynamically to those changes and be innovative. I call on the Government to establish a national, co-ordinated, inter-departmental and inter-agency strategy to tackle county lines activity. I urge the Government to ensure that they provide our public services and local authorities with the support and financial resources they need to end the exploitation of some of our most vulnerable children, young people and adults.

London is the exporting hub from which county lines activity flows into almost two thirds of police force areas across England and Wales. Every day, older gang members in the capital prey on vulnerable children and young adults, many of whom are from troubled backgrounds, have been excluded from school or are suffering from mental health problems.

It is particularly concerning that almost half the police forces in England and Wales have reported,

“that individuals involved with county lines came from care homes”.

All too often, we take less notice of the safety and security of children who are in care. From cases such as Rotherham, we already know what happens when warning signs of abuse and exploitation are missed or ignored. We cannot allow that to ever happen again.

Vulnerable children as young as 12 are being groomed by county lines gangs with promises of money, companionship and respect. In reality, they are often forced to go missing from home for long periods of time; they are used as drug mules with their orifices plugged with class A drugs, predominantly heroin and crack cocaine; and they are trafficked to remote areas and forced to deal drugs in squalid conditions. At all times, they are at great personal risk of arrest by the police—in fact, probably the only time that they are really safe—or of physical and sexual abuse from older gang members, local drug users or rival gangs.

We must remember that this activity is associated with a lot of extreme violence. These are cases of modern day slavery. We have seen harrowing cases of vulnerable adults whose homes have been turned into drug dens by urban gangs, such as one individual who was held hostage in their own home and prevented from using their own toilet. Those vulnerable people, young children and adults, are in desperate need of our help.

The National Crime Agency, which has reported on county lines activity since 2015, acknowledges that there

“remains an intelligence gap in many parts of the country”.

It states:

“A clear national picture cannot be determined currently”

of accurate levels of exploitation and abuse carried out in county lines activity in many parts of the country.

[Lyn Brown]

One of the most shocking stories I heard was from a mum whose child had been on the county lines. She told me how she had been trying to stop him, but how he would just come home for a rest before going off again. What was most shocking was that child protection professionals were completely and utterly unaware of him. The gangs played the system really well: social services considered her a bad mum because of the unreasonable demands she was making on her son to stay at home.

[Joan Ryan]

Absolutely; so much more needs to be done. Let us remember that county lines are somewhat below the radar: we might know about them, but the response to the Twitter reports about missing children in Enfield caused something of a public panic. The public do not know about the issue, so there is not enough pressure to introduce policies to deal with it. Drug dealers like nothing better than operating in the dark, under the radar. Young people especially may not recognise their exploitation.

It is clear that we need to understand the creation, recruitment, opportunities, risks and scale of county lines so much better if we are to address the issue. I therefore urge the Government to commission comprehensive and rigorous research to pull together up-to-date police and local authority data to achieve that aim. After all, how can we hope to tackle the problem unless we understand its true scale? As the NCA’s head of operations for drugs and firearms threats, Vince O’Brien, says:

“This is a national problem…there is still no national response.”

Gangs are aware of the intelligence gaps. County lines activity is exposing the challenges of dealing with offenders who operate across police force boundaries. Part of the problem relates to police forces’ ability to work together.

Operating across county lines is a fantastic business model for the gangs, because they are opening up new markets and operating below the radar. They have no competition at the early stages of their operation, and very low overheads because their business is based on using vulnerable children and young adults as slaves. In Enfield, a young person who is absent from school may be regularly reported as a missing person, but in Essex the same child could be deemed by the local police to be a street drug dealer or to have been forced into street prostitution. It is very likely that the two police forces could be operating in isolation from each other. Which is responsible for taking the lead? Do we need cross-border crime squad teams, like the old national crime squads?

Progress can be made by improving how Departments and other agencies share data. In spite of the lack of national leadership on the issue, councils across London, led by Islington’s lead member for children and families, Councillor Joe Caluori, have taken proactive steps to understand the county lines that originate in their own boroughs. They are working together to cross-reference data and identify areas where further information and action are required.

My hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander) may want to go into this in greater detail, but police in Lewisham have also done innovative work by looking at the numbers of missing young people over the previous 12 months, identifying those who may be at risk of exploitation and uploading their information to the police national computer. That means that Lewisham police will be contacted if any of those at-risk young people comes into contact with another police force, which will build a fuller picture of the scale of county lines activity.

I welcome the Government’s implementation of new drug dealing telecommunications restriction orders, which allow the police to shut down phone numbers used for county lines drug dealing. However, while that is an important step forward, how much disruption will it actually cause? How long does it take for a county lines dealer to simply get another phone and begin sending drug offers to their original contact list? A lot more needs to be done to address the problem at its root.

I am concerned that major questions about county lines remain unanswered. The county lines model is being changed all the time. We know that social media are used to recruit children and young people, but do we know enough? Is there enough research and is it moving at the right pace? There also needs to be a much stronger focus on prevention. By the time the police become involved, it is often too late to prevent irreversible harm from being done to a vulnerable child or young adult, or to ever extricate them from the world they have become involved in.

All Government agencies and local authorities need to be able to recognise and act on the warning signs for victims of county lines exploitation. That requires proper funding from central Government, but the reality is that health, social and children’s services are being pushed to breaking point by the Government’s austerity agenda. In Enfield, the Government have slashed £161 million from the council’s budget since 2010, and the council is required to make a further £35 million of cuts by next year. Immense pressure is being placed on Enfield’s public services at a time when they are already struggling to support a rapidly growing population. How do we expect councils and other agencies to implement strategies to prevent county lines exploitation, when their resources are being cut year on year? I ask the Minister not to simply pass the buck to local authorities by telling us about raising the precept. Hard-pressed Londoners cannot make up the funding gap, and nor could raising the precept. That is not a solution and should not be put forward as one.

Home Office guidance states that tackling county lines will involve working with groups such as voluntary and community sector organisations, providing meaningful alternatives to gangs. What we need is meaningful actions; warm words just will not do it. The stark reality is that the Government cut £387 million from youth service spending across the country between 2010 and 2016. Government cuts to London councils have slashed youth service budgets by £22 million since 2011, leading to the closure of 30 youth centres and the loss of at least 12,700 places for young people. If the Government are serious about tackling county lines exploitation, there needs to be greater investment in youth clubs for children and teenagers and in children’s services across the board.

A standout example of best practice to tackle county lines in London is Project Denver, an initiative piloted by the Met’s Trident gang crime command unit in Enfield between October 2016 and January 2018. The project’s objectives are to dismantle one of the most violent county lines gangs in London, to identify vulnerable people who are at risk of exploitation, and to prosecute the gang members responsible. The team assigned to the initiative is made up of specialist Trident officers and local police from Enfield and other affected forces, working alongside Enfield Council and other councils within and outside London. So far, 20 operations have taken place, leading to more than 100 arrests and the identification of more than 50 vulnerable children and adults. The gang has now largely been dismantled. Formerly one of the most harmful gangs in London, it is now ranked outside the top 20.

--- Later in debate ---

[Heidi Alexander]

I have some sympathy with what the hon. Gentleman says, because I think that what happens in prison to rehabilitate offenders and to take them off the path that they are on is just as important as how many years they spend there. I am not sure at the moment that the system operates correctly, so I have some sympathy with his point. However, the point I am making is about the scale and significance of the activity in one part of London, and the action that is being taken by the local authority and the police to try to tackle it. As I will come on to say, that is very difficult in a time of constrained resources and with the funding pressure that the Metropolitan police and local authorities such as Lewisham are under.

As I was saying, I get the sense, from talking to police and council staff, that they are frustrated in trying to tackle the problem. A number of years ago, there was an operation called Operation Pibera, in which the local authority, in conjunction with the CPS and the police, tried to bring charges of trafficking under the Modern Slavery Act 2015. Unlike Enfield, they were not successful in securing those prosecutions. They wanted to bring those charges because the sentences associated with that sort of conviction would be longer than for the other lesser offences with which the individuals could have been charged.

The guys who are in control of the activity and who are luring, and sometimes coercing, children, teenagers and vulnerable adults into getting involved should feel the full heat of the law. They are people who will stab someone who wants to get out of doing the drug running. They are taking advantage of kids and adults with mental health problems by, in effect, getting them to do their dirty work. It is despicable, and rather than simply going for the low-hanging fruit of charging the individuals found with the drugs or the money on the day, there needs to be a mechanism in place to hold the guy at the top responsible.

As I understand it, the Modern Slavery Act was drafted primarily to deal with problems around individuals forced into sex work and domestic servitude. The running of drugs along county lines is different. Some of the underlying principles may be similar, but I would be interested to know whether the Minister agrees that it might be sensible to review whether amending the Act could make it easier to bring successful prosecutions, to ensure that those calling the shots on the county lines are held responsible.

It has been put to me that one of the changes that might be considered is changing the law to require the police and the CPS to prove, in relation to drug offences committed by, for example, teenagers on the county lines, that they were not being exploited, but were knowingly and willingly involved in the activity. The Minister would need to consider that issue in the round, but I would be interested to know whether she is looking at amending the Modern Slavery Act in any way. I believe that some 14-year-olds will know exactly what they are doing, but others will be victims, and we need to take our responsibilities to those children and young people seriously. Just because they might not be cared for, that does not mean that they do not matter.

[Lyn Brown]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way; everybody has been very generous this morning. One mum told me what she had heard about how county lines were being run. She told me about the provision of a gift such as trainers to an individual, which is then considered to be a drug debt that has to be paid back. When the child goes on the county run to pay back the debt, they are robbed by the very people who sent them out, which means that the debt gets higher and higher, and the child has to work it off. They cannot go to their parents to ask for money to pay off the drug debt, because they are often not wealthy people, or the individuals simply do not want to burden their parents by asking for that kind of money. It is coercion and slavery, whichever way we look at it.

[Heidi Alexander]

My hon. Friend highlights the precise problem.

How we prosecute individuals involved in this crime needs attention, but so do the tools that the police and local authorities have at their disposal to detect and disrupt such activity. I know that the Government recently introduced regulations to allow the police to apply to a court to close down the mobile phone being used to receive the drugs orders, for want of a better word for them. I know that those regulations were introduced only in December, but it would be helpful to receive an update from the Minister on whether any such applications have been made, and whether they have been successful.

Will the Minister say what resource is being given to the Metropolitan police, the National Crime Agency and local authorities in London to ensure that the basic tasks that are needed to track and monitor such activity can be carried out comprehensively and in a timely fashion? I know that Lewisham Council is keen to do more work on a pan-London basis, looking at how statutory agencies might use social media more effectively to track and predict county lines activity, but that, of course, needs to be funded.

It also seems to me that the work done by councils and the police in big cities such as London to educate young people about how to stay safe is absolutely critical. We teach young people road safety. We need to have the same focus on bullying, knife crime, drugs and healthy relationships in our schools. We can pretend that this is not happening, but that is not doing anybody any favours. We also need to ensure that parents are involved in that conversation. All of that costs money and my genuine concern is that it is money that local authorities and the police do not have.

In my first term as a Member of Parliament, I visited the parents of three boys who had been stabbed to death in my constituency. I never want to do that again. My fear is that the postcode wars of seven or eight years ago, where gangs were defined by territory and violence escalated through revenge stabbings, are being replaced with gangs running drugs down to different parts of the country. The outcomes—people being stabbed and poor kids living in fear—are exactly the same. I do not want children growing up in Lewisham to have that on their plate. We need to find a way to join up the pieces of this jigsaw puzzle, treat children as victims when they genuinely are, take tough action against the ringleaders and find a way to stop the problem spreading. It already ruins too many lives in places such as Lewisham. The least we can do in this place is to try to work out a way to tackle it.