Knife Crime

Rachel Hopkins Excerpts

Tuesday 14th April 2026 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Jones]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The decimation of our youth services that we saw over the past 15 or so years, because they are not a statutory function for local authorities, has been catastrophic. We all know the impact of that. We are rebuilding infrastructure that has been torn away, and that is a challenge. As she says, we are introducing 50 youth hubs. The Mayor of London announced a youth centre for every borough in London, and other mayors across the country are doing what they can with their funding to make sure we are putting these services back. There is a huge push in the Department for Education and the Department of Health and Social Care to make sure that we have got people supporting our kids’ mental health in schools. There is a whole raft of interventions, but I am happy to talk to her about what Salford youth club is doing.

[Rachel Hopkins (Luton South and South Bedfordshire) (Lab)]

In Luton South and South Bedfordshire, we know all too well the devastating impact of knife crime, so I welcome our Government’s ambitious plan to halve it over the next decade, and in particular the emphasis on supporting young people and youth services. The Luton Youth Partnership Service is doing excellent targeted early-intervention work locally. Will the Government collaborate with existing programmes that focus on multi-agency partnerships to ensure that best practice is built on and expanded?

[Sarah Jones]

I am interested in what the Luton Youth Partnership Service is doing, and perhaps my hon. Friend and I can have a chat about that at some point. We are not trying to reinvent the wheel, but rather support the organisations that already exist. There are some gaps that we are trying to fill. For example, we are running a whole range of pilots across the country where we are intervening with young people who have been arrested but not charged; a lot of those people slipped through the net. We are doing a lot of work in that space, but we do not want to reinvent what is already working. I am happy to talk to my hon. Friend more about her partnership.