Violent Crime and Antisocial Behaviour: Carshalton and Wallington

Paul Scully Excerpts

Thursday 7th December 2023 Commons Chamber

[Elliot Colburn (Carshalton and Wallington) (Con)]

May I begin by expressing how devastated I am that the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) is not here to intervene on me? I have heard that that is a staple of Adjournment debates, but I fear that I will miss out on the opportunity. Nevertheless, I will soldier on and do what I can.

I would like to address a growing concern in our community of Carshalton and Wallington: violent crime and antisocial behaviour, which demands our attention and is a huge concern to my constituents. I am delighted that my constituency neighbour, my right hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp), is the Minister responding today, because he will know about many of these issues already. I am also delighted to be joined by my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully), who will know full well about some of the issues I plan to raise. I will start with a few recent examples of violent crime and antisocial behaviour in the constituency.

On 3 October, a man was fatally stabbed in Roundshaw, just a week after a tragic stabbing in the neighbouring borough of Croydon, which I know the Minister is aware of as the constituency MP for the area. That followed a number of recent attacks, not all of which took place in my constituency—some occurred in neighbouring Croydon, including the tragic case of a 15-year-old girl—involving several of the many teenagers who have been killed on London’s streets in 2023. Each one is a tragedy.

In Wallington, a man sustained a thankfully non-life-threatening chest wound and a woman suffered a hand injury in a knife attack on Birchwood Avenue last Saturday. I thank the police for their work. They always respond with the utmost professionalism, and they do a fantastic job. I also thank the air ambulance and NHS staff who cared for the victims. However, such incidents are of concern, because the London borough of Sutton, which includes Carshalton and Wallington, has long enjoyed a reputation as one of the safest in London, often competing with Richmond. Violent crime is not something we are necessarily used to, so seeing it happen on our streets over the course of the last few months is of real concern.

Like the inboxes of many of my colleagues across the capital, my inbox is often full of correspondence from residents, concerned parents and others who feel vulnerable and unsafe because of the crime that is happening in their area. It must not be allowed to continue. I vividly remember one constituent writing to me after the attack in Roundshaw to say that she did not feel safe enough to put her bins out in the dark. Another’s teenage daughter did not want to leave the house for fear of being attacked. We must not let that become the new normal in London—or anywhere, for that matter.

[Paul Scully (Sutton and Cheam) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech. We have had the sad news of the fatal stabbing of a 17-year-old boy outside Sutton station, and a 15-year-old was recently killed in the Minister’s town of Croydon. Not only do we have to lean into knife crime, which is sometimes imported into Sutton; we also need to make sure that we can bring down the fear of crime. Often it is imported by gangs, but it is really important that we can reassure people that the police are there and that we have a holistic view of knife crime in Sutton.

[Elliot Colburn]

Absolutely; I thank my hon. Friend and constituency neighbour for that intervention. He is absolutely right about the need to bring down the fear of crime and introducing measures to do that, and I would like to hear more from the Minister about what steps the Home Office is taking in that respect. My hon. Friend is absolutely right about providing reassurance, and I will go into that in a bit more detail. I pay tribute to him for his time as one of the longest-serving Ministers for London, and for the work he did in this space. He has been a fantastic champion of his constituency and the capital, and he is a great loss to the Government, but I am pleased to have him back on the Back Benches helping me to advocate for our fantastic borough of Sutton.

On 30 October—just a few weeks ago—a 15-year-old boy who was minding his own business was approached by another teenage boy, who led him to a block of flats, where three other teenagers armed with knives awaited. The young victim was robbed of his phone. That incident was one of many that underscores the vulnerability of our youth and the audacity of those who will prey on our children. Our children’s minds should be free to explore and not be occupied with threats to their lives, but, sadly, that was not an isolated incident.

Our community has witnessed rises in house break-ins and people trying car doors. One of the most common things that I see on social media is Ring doorbell footage of people trying car doors or front doors late at night in our community. That really makes people feel violated and scared in their own homes, and that cannot be right. These doorbell cameras deter crime in their own right. I often encourage my constituents to get them, because thankfully I have seen many videos where someone has clocked a Ring doorbell camera and turned away from the house. That is fantastic, but it is awful how often such footage comes up on social media.

Another fairly distressing incident was that of a four- year-old child who was slapped at a bus stop just a couple of weeks ago. Though details are still emerging, and I do not want to prejudice investigations in any of the cases I raise, that incident underscores the urgency with which we must tackle the root causes of knife crime and antisocial behaviour in our community. No child, no parent and no person should be left with the weight of that trauma or left feeling unsafe in their own community.

In our area in the last year, thefts are up by 31%, sexual offences are up by 43% and robberies are up by 58%. Those statistics are alarming—and more so because they are not part of a national trend. Across the whole of the United Kingdom, crime has fallen since 2010—the Minister will want to expand on the Government’s record in bringing crime down—so we must ask ourselves why it is only within London that we do not see that trend being played out. Some responsibility—in fact, I would argue quite a lot—must rest on the shoulders of the police and crime commissioner for London, who also happens to be the Mayor of London.

We have seen London benefit from the massive increase in police officers—we met our manifesto commitment of 20,000 new police officers, and 3,666 of those are working on the streets of London—yet we see this worrying trend with crime levels. Even just this past week, the Mayor of London was caught out misleading Londoners on statistics about crime in London. He may not be prepared to put the work in and would rather spend his time jetting off around the world trying to sell his book, legalise weed or whatever it is he is interested in doing other than getting on with his job. However, we cannot leave criminals to take over the streets of London, so I would really like to understand what work the Home Office is doing with the Metropolitan police to recapture the trust of Londoners and get on with the job of deterring and catching criminals, ensuring that our constituents—those of the Minister and my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam, and mine—are kept safe.

I absolutely welcome the increase in police numbers, but we face unique challenges on the fringes of London, from which a significant number of officers are regularly transferred away for major events in central London, where help is needed for policing, leaving only a minimal presence in outer London. I would like to hear a bit more from the Minister on the work that he is doing in the Home Office with the Metropolitan police to address that promptly so that when big events happen in central London, neighbourhood and local policing in outer London does not suffer.

Collaboration between the police and local communities is also paramount, and policing is only half the battle. I absolutely want to continue advocating for an increased police presence. We all want to see bobbies back on the beat, and it is great to see those new police officers getting out there in our communities and doing just that, but we must also tackle the causes of crime and antisocial behaviour along the way. Education is a crucial step in doing that. We have seen how that has worked in other parts of the world, and even here in the United Kingdom. Glasgow was once the most violent city in the whole of Europe. It took a different approach to violent crime, and has turned that reputation around and driven down that number.

In London, we were promised a violence reduction unit that would tackle knife crime in a similar way, yet we have seen no results from that violence reduction unit. There is little transparency about who sits on it and what work they are doing, whether they have met, what they have spoken about and when they meet. The violence reduction unit for London has not achieved anything because, as I said earlier, London is not following the national trend for crime at the moment.

The challenges that we face are daunting, but the spirit of our community is always resilient. We must do all that we can to tackle violent crime and anti-social behaviour and reclaim the safety and security of my constituents in Carshalton and Wallington, and across the whole of London. We need to ensure that we have a constant and visible police presence on the streets of Sutton. We need to ensure that people are aware of the consequences of criminal activity, and educate them to prevent their turning to crime in the first place, particularly our young people. I will not stop raising these issues, and nor will my hon. Friends, because until no one lives in fear, our community thrives, and people value and protect each other, we will not have achieved our aims.