Knife Crime: Children and Young People
Paulette Hamilton Excerpts(1 month, 1 week ago)
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Paulette Hamilton (Birmingham Erdington) (Lab)
I thank the hon. Member for Huntingdon (Ben Obese-Jecty) for securing this important debate. Knife crime continues to cast a dark shadow over our communities, claiming young lives, shattering families and leaving a trail of devastation in its wake. Last year, 10 people were stabbed every week in Birmingham—a statistic that is both alarming and unacceptable. Within my constituency covering Erdington, Kingstanding, Castle Vale and south Oscott, the B23 postcode has been particularly affected. In 2023, it recorded the highest number of knife-related incidents in the entire city, but behind those statistics are real lives, real families and real pain. When knife crime tears through families, it destroys lives and devastates entire communities.
Just weeks ago, this crisis struck my family, turning our world upside down. My nephew—a kind-hearted, wonderful young man—was brutally attacked in an act of senseless knife violence. His crime was being in the wrong place at the wrong time. While his wounds are healing, it will take months for him to fully recover. The emotional trauma inflicted on him and our family, however, is immeasurable. This is a pain no family should ever have to endure, yet it is a pain that far too many are forced to bear.
Knife crime thrives in the shadows of neglect. Fourteen years of austerity under the last Government gutted our communities, stripping away 70% of the support systems that once guided and protected young people. In Erdington, the closure of the Malcolm Locker youth centre in 2014 marked the end of the last council-run youth service in my constituency. The cuts have left a void that is too often filled by despair and violence. I am glad that this Government have recognised the problem of knife crime and included provisions to address it in the Crime and Policing Bill, but we can and must do more.
I have always said that prevention is better than cure, and while the police play a vital role in tackling crime, a sustainable solution requires a preventive, community-led and partnership-driven approach. In Birmingham, we have inspiring examples in organisations like Bringing Hope, which I have worked with for many years, which works relentlessly to tackle knife crime among children and young people. Similarly, the YMCA in Erdington is unwavering in its dedication to our young people. On my recent visit, I celebrated with them the purchase of 83 flats, ensuring that young people have safe places to live and access to the support they need.
Initiatives like those show us the way forward. We must create greater aspirations and opportunities for young people, offering them a future beyond a life of crime. That requires long-term investment in our communities, our youth services and the organisations already making a difference, saying that we can always go even further upstream to support families and end deprivation in communities like mine.
My nephew did not deserve what happened to him—nobody does. Yet too many families are still left to feel this pain, and too many young people are still becoming victims. We can no longer afford to be complacent. Every moment of inaction puts another young life at risk. We must come together across the House and within our communities to break this cycle of violence.
International Women�s Day
Paulette Hamilton Excerpts(1 month, 3 weeks ago)
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Dawn Butler
Social media platforms have a vital role to play. They understand that negativity spreads faster than positivity. In the old days of legacy media, it was often said, �If it bleeds, it leads�. Those platforms are absolutely aware of the damage that they do. They will not voluntarily make the changes that they need to make and, as a Government, we need to legislate for those changes to be made.
When I watched the story of the Women�s Army Corps unit of colour, which stars Kerry Washington as Captain Charity Adams, I actually cried. The 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion contributed to the war effort in a unique way. They sorted through 17 million pieces of mail and delivered it to American soldiers on the frontline. Those 855 black women improved morale and brought hope to the frontline, yet after going through all of that, they were discriminated against and history tried to erase them. We have to wonder why that is. Why do people continually try to erase women and people of colour from history?
Paulette Hamilton (Birmingham Erdington) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend for giving way and for securing this debate. As we mark International Women�s Day, I have to say that I am proud�absolutely honoured� to stand here not only as a black woman, but as a former nurse. However, black people are four times more likely to be detained under the Mental Health Act 1983. Does she agree that we can only truly say that we have honoured International Women�s Day when this glaring disparity is addressed?
Dawn Butler
My hon. Friend is also a first, so I congratulate her on that�and, yes, I absolutely agree with her on that point.
On average, we will all live to see 80 Christmases. The thing is, what are we going to do with them? Some people in the world are acting like they will live forever�God, I hope we do not, and I know that that will not be the case�but some pass through the world, leaving it just as they found it. Our job in Parliament is to change the world for the better. We need to leave an indelible footprint by ensuring that the world protects all women, not just straight, white women. We should start with the gay women, the black women and the disabled women. If we protect those, we will protect all women and the world will be a better place.
I often say that I cannot get my rights until everybody has their rights, because our rights and our lives are very much intertwined�whether we believe it or not. And just because I am pro-women, pro-LGBTQI+ and pro-black, it does not mean, as has been said online, that I am anti-white; far from it. I am pro-jerk chicken and rice and peas and I still love a bit of pie and mash and fish and chips. We can love more than one thing and be pro many things.
I want to end with a cold reality check. In Malcolm Gladwell�s brilliant book, �The Tipping Point� and in his follow-up book �Revenge of the Tipping Point�, he talks about the law of the very few, the overstory and the counterfactual line �what would have happened if�. We were slowly winning the war on highlighting violence against women and girls, highlighting injustices and highlighting discrimination, but we did not appreciate the honest conversations that we needed to have around how epidemics work, or appreciate the power of group proportions.
We are fooling ourselves if we think that we bear no responsibility for this epidemic of violence against women and girls. Epidemics have rules and they have boundaries. They are subjected to overstories, and we in society are in a position of power to create those overstories. These overstories change in size and shape when they reach a tipping point and it is possible to know when we are reaching that tipping point. We are currently at that tipping point when it comes to violence against women and girls.
The opioid crisis in the US is a lesson for us all. Most of the medical profession acted professionally, but a tiny fraction�just a few�did not, and that was enough to fuel an opioid epidemic in the US. That tiny fraction was driven by a certain class of people, and those people can be identified. The tools needed to control an epidemic are right in front of us. They are sitting on the table, and we can either grab those tools or let the unscrupulous people grab them. If we grab them, we can build a better world.
We need to take action and have an honest conversation. We need to ensure that organisations that believe in fair pay get the procurement contracts. We need to be mindful about the social media platforms that we use, and we need to elect people who care for many people, not just the 1%. By doing that, we will accelerate action, which is the theme of International Women�s Day this year.
I end with a message to the straight white boys and men in the middle of the table: �We need your protection, we need your love, we need your care and we need your kindness.� We know, as I have said, that daughters and young girls learn how to be treated by their partners by watching how men treat women in their lives, and young boys learn how to be men from the men in their lives, so we need all men, regardless of colour, class and economic status, to lead by example. Women are literally fighting for their lives. I want every single man in the world watching this debate to join us in that struggle. We should all believe in fairness. We should all believe in ending discrimination and homophobia.
In the time that it has taken me to make this speech, one woman globally will have been killed by her partner or a family member. May her soul rest in peace.
Immigration and Home Affairs
Paulette Hamilton Excerpts(9 months ago)
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Paulette Hamilton (Birmingham Erdington) (Lab)
As this is my first time being returned to Parliament, I would like sincerely to thank all the House staff for making the process so smooth for me and all our new colleagues.
I am delighted to say that this King’s Speech has filled me with hope. We have suffered over a decade of Tory neglect, mismanagement and chaos. We have endured five Prime Ministers, seven Chancellors, 10 Education Secretaries, 12 Culture Secretaries and 16 Housing Ministers. Finally, we have a Labour Government with a plan to put politics back into the service of working people. We have a plan to save the NHS; nationalise the railways; reform benefits; recruit more teachers; properly fund councils; invest in green energy; clean up our rivers; provide children with breakfast in school every day; prioritise women’s health; reduce the gender pay gap; create a national care service; and bring transparency and accountability back to public office. It finally feels like the adults have entered the room, but I am under no illusion: the hard work is just beginning.
Nine months ago, I stood in this Chamber, albeit on the Opposition Benches, to respond to the King’s Speech in despair at the levels of crime and antisocial behaviour impacting our communities in the Erdington constituency. My constituency has the highest rate of knife crime in the west midlands. People contact me almost daily about Erdington high street. Residents have made it very clear that they are frightened to go into the high street. I hear the same story time and again: our high street has become unrecognisable. Where we used to have thriving small businesses we now have empty shop fronts, drug dealing and violence, so we have our work cut out. Labour has inherited chaos in community policing. Huge issues in our criminal justice system mean that not only is crime not being prevented, but it is not being punished either. That is why I welcome the new neighbourhood police guarantee.
When we speak about crime and antisocial behaviour, we must also talk about community mental health. As a district nurse and an independent lay manager—I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests—I know how mental health services have been decimated, and how badly our communities are suffering in silence when it comes to their mental health. We cannot prevent crime without talking about mental health and improving community services, and I was glad to see provisions to modernise the Mental Health Act and make it fit for the future.
This King’s Speech shows Labour’s commitment to change: a commitment to higher growth and cheaper bills, a commitment to put the NHS back on its feet, and, crucially for my constituency, a commitment to create safer streets. It is vital that we crack down on antisocial behaviour and violent crime in our communities so that everyone can feel safe, and I am delighted that the King’s Speech pledges to create new respect orders, to halve serious violence in the next decade, and to take strong action to tackle violence against women and girls and knife crime.
When I stood here nine months ago, I said:
“We need to stop the decline and start fighting for a better future.”—[Official Report, 15 November 2023; Vol. 740, c. 742
Well, that fight starts now.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Siobhain McDonagh)
I call Paul Kohler to make his maiden speech.