Knife Crime: West Midlands

Preet Kaur Gill Excerpts

Tuesday 21st January 2025 Westminster Hall

[Preet Kaur Gill (Birmingham Edgbaston) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir John. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich (Sarah Coombes) for securing this timely and important debate and highlighting the real-life impacts of knife crime in her constituency. Knife crime is a public health crisis. I speak as an ex-cabinet member for public health and an ex-children’s services manager when I say that it is essential that we tackle both the causes and effects of knife crime.

In July, the Office for National Statistics found that knife crime in England and Wales had risen by 78% over the past 10 years. That is a staggering increase and sets out the scale of the challenge facing the new Government in reversing that terrifying trend within a decade.

I am sad to say that the West Midlands police force area is responsible for 10% of knife-enabled crime in the whole of England and Wales; only the Met police have more cases. However, the statistics alone never tell the real story and, as the MP for Birmingham Edgbaston, I have been witness to some horrific cases in recent years. Jordan Moazami, who was 18 years old and described as a “role model” by his peers, was stabbed and killed on Tennal Road in my constituency in 2019. Muhammad Hassam Ali, 17 years old, was followed and killed by a 15-year-old after a four-minute conversation in Birmingham city centre. And in 2021, Dea-John Reid, my constituent, 14 years old, was hounded by a gang of five boys and grown men before being stabbed in the chest and dying.

I cannot do justice in words to the horror of those cases. In every one, what struck me immediately was the senselessness of it. And in many ways that is where we need to start when thinking about finding meaningful solutions to the epidemic of young boys taking each other’s lives. Prevention has to be our watchword.

Understanding the root causes of knife crime is complicated. It is often a picture of poverty, drugs, gangs, exploitation, school exclusion, domestic violence, adverse childhood experiences and being in care. One of the two 12-year-old boys who killed Sean Seesahai in Wolverhampton in 2023 had experienced significant trauma in his life and been at risk of child criminal exploitation. According to the defence, he had been groomed, exploited and trafficked by men in the community, so there is a complicated story to tell there.

One of the questions we ask ourselves is, “Who is looking out for these boys?” I think child criminal exploitation is often misunderstood by professionals, which prevents the early identification of child victims. Too often, child victims of exploitation are criminalised rather than safeguarded—something that exploiters and organised criminal gangs anticipate and utilise to their advantage. The services that might identify them as at risk—schools, youth services, mental health services—are all under strain: youth mental health services are in crisis, school exclusions have been at a record high and youth services have been cut to the bone. The tragedy is that sometimes it is that absence of a safe space that is putting children at risk.

Some of the stories we hear are absolutely bleak. A Barnardo’s practitioner at a service dealing with child exploitation shared evidence that, during winter, groups of children often gathered outside a leisure centre and sat by the air vents, as that was the only place they could feel warm and safe. That became a spot for exploitation, described as

“a hotspot for adults or older teens with cars driving by and offering lifts…and McDonald’s”.

Of course, that is how the dynamics of exploitation start: the favours, the debts, the escalating patterns of criminality.

I was struck recently by a comment by Martin Griffiths, a consultant trauma surgeon in London and NHS England’s national clinical director for violence reduction—an incredible practitioner who has done some amazing work through his charity. He said:

“County lines drug carriers are all being exploited, whether it’s knowingly or not, by individuals or organisations who utilise them because they are impressionable. They are mentoring these kids to do bad things. These are children who are low on support, self-esteem and resources.”

It is precisely that lack of spaces and opportunities that is part of what puts children and young people at risk. Research by YMCA in 2021 found that, in England, local authority spending on youth services totalled £379 million, a £1.1 billion cut in youth services on 2010. I am hugely relieved that, in Birmingham, despite the current challenges for the council, all youth centres will now remain open and be retained by the council or partner organisations. It is a huge testimony to the importance that residents and young people place on these services in our city, and I want to thank everyone who made their voice heard in the recent consultation.

Communities and families have solutions, and they need to be part of the plan for change. I am really excited about the 10-year Young Futures programme the Home Office is working on, as it has the potential to do great things in my city. The creation of a new network of youth hubs is exactly what we need, and I should be grateful if the Minister would meet with me to discuss the provision in Birmingham.

There were 50,000 knife-related crimes in the year to March 2023 across England and Wales, around 5,000 of which were in the West Midlands police force area. I am heartened by the Home Secretary’s categorical commitment that every youngster found carrying a knife will trigger a rapid intervention, including a prevention plan, to stop them reoffending. Identifying those young people before it is too late is half the battle, and when the signs are there, we must act on them. Can the Minister say more about the plans laid out in our manifesto this summer to place youth workers and mentors in A&E and pupil referral units?

I want to pay tribute to brilliant charities, such as Redthread in my patch, which has been working at the Queen Elizabeth hospital for several years. I mentioned Martin Griffiths, a surgeon and clinical director; the work he has pioneered at his A&E as a trauma surgeon is extraordinary. Young people that he had seen many times before would often turn up on his operating table. He realised that A&E admissions were a critical opportunity to intervene. He has a multidisciplinary team at his hospital, based in A&E. Instead of just patching up children and sending them on their way, the team help them to get education, work or somewhere to live. There is mental health treatment and advice on special educational needs, and the police provide protection and support for those who want to get out of a gang. The hospital allows the patients to stay there until it is safe for them to be discharged. The results have been incredible: readmission rates have dropped from 30% to 4%.

Redthread has a similar model and has demonstrated similarly remarkable results. Some 90% of the young people supported by Redthread did not return to hospital for a violence-related injury in the following year, and six months after the intervention 100% of the young people supported said they felt as safe or safer than they did before the incident. Young people who engaged in the full programme were 51% less likely to reattend than those who did not. A cost-benefit analysis showed that for every £1 spent, there was £4.90 of economic and social benefit. Can the Minister say more about the multidisciplinary and multi-agency work to address violence or exploitation?

Finally, we need to crack down on the criminals and routes into serious violence and crime. It baffles me that we still do not have a specific statutory definition of child criminal exploitation. There have been multiple definitions, resulting in a confused, fragmented response by authorities, and investigators have to use laws on modern slavery to punish those coercing or forcing children to move drugs. A new offence of criminal exploitation of children would allow us to go after the gangs that are luring young people into violence and crime. I look forward to working with the Government on their plans to introduce this new law in due course.

I am proud of the swift action the Government have taken to tackle knife crime so far: banning zombie-style blades and machetes, which were used to kill Ronan Kanda in Wolverhampton, setting an ambitious mission to halve knife crime in a decade, and launching a new coalition to tackle knife-enabled crime working together with technology companies, sports organisations and the health service. But there is undoubtedly a lot more to do. When does the Minister hope to bring forward the crime and policing Bill, so that we can move ahead with the Young Futures programme and strengthen those laws?

The message we need to send to young people is one of hope and opportunity—that our society cares about them and that we are invested in them and their futures. Tackling knife crime has always been about prevention and protection as much as prosecution. After 14 years of abject failure by the previous Government on this issue, I am looking forward to working with the Labour Government to deliver change that saves more lives.