Public Disorder

Paul Beresford Excerpts

Thursday 11th August 2011 Commons Chamber

[Sir Paul Beresford (Mole Valley) (Con)]

My constituency was not hit by any rioters—and may it remain so—although we supplied police and so on, but I have considerable professional and political experience, over years, of the inner cities. I had great sympathy with the hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) when she spoke. She is right: very few of the young and of the youth were involved. I would expect that. However, this takes me back to when I was in education in an inner-city area, looking at some of the special schools we had, including a very special school for very difficult youngsters. It is as well that the Secretary of State for Education is here, because I have him nailed to the seat and I can raise the issue.

At the bottom, the people who feed the gangs are the very young, and they are feral. We are talking about parenting, but they do not have parents—or not what we would call parents. The father has gone, or the mother, or both, or drugs and so forth are involved, so they are not what we would call parents. In some cases, even if the parents try, they are physically abused by their children. Those are the sort of children in some of these schools and, in particular, I have been talking to one of the teachers who helps to run one of the schools for these little and not-so-little monsters. She tells me the conviction method we must introduce has to break up that social life pattern. She says they must be forced for several months—perhaps years—to attend a really tough school or undertake real community service from 8 in the morning to 6 at night, preferably for seven days a week, and that they are otherwise to be at home with an electronic tag, under a curfew. They should have no mobile phones, no BlackBerrys, no lying in bed, no mixing or drinking with their gang mates and no shop-lifting or shop thieving, for either sport or supplies. In other words, we should disrupt their social networking and perhaps give them some education, hopefully, while obtaining some real community work from them, if we can.

That will cost money, but it just might help. It might give a break. If we can do that at the bottom—some Opposition Members who have had the same experience as I have will recognise this—we will start to stop feeding the gangs in our inner city and to stop them spreading.