Knife Crime

Ronnie Cowan Excerpts

Thursday 24th January 2019 Westminster Hall

[Ronnie Cowan (Inverclyde) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Graham, and to summarise the debate and speak on behalf of the Scottish National party.

I thank the hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead (John Cryer) for securing this very important debate. He took time to stress the importance of an approach that addresses prevention as well as cure. He also asked that we address the causes of crime and, in doing so, adopt a joined-up approach.

The hon. Member for Hornchurch and Upminster (Julia Lopez) asked what could be done to monitor social media, which can be used to promote violent crime. The hon. Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown) highlighted the extended trauma felt within communities and the fear it spreads. The right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith) noted that violent crimes are sometimes associated with tit-for-tat crime among criminal gangs, and mentioned the role that our media play in that. He also mentioned the violence reduction unit in Scotland, which I will talk about in greater detail later.

The hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) rightly talked about the victims and their families, and highlighted an increase in violent organised crime and the young people who are, and will be, put at risk until we address this problem. The hon. Member for Eltham (Clive Efford) talked about the need to invest in communities in a way that benefits them—“working with” rather than “doing to”. The hon. Member for Lewisham West and Penge (Ellie Reeves) expressed frustration that we are not keeping pace with the changing nature of the problem, and also referred to the VRU in Glasgow. The hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier) spoke movingly about a young man who survived a terrible attack but whose mother now does not know where to turn. Where is the support for those victims? The alternative is young men and women being recruited into gangs, so we need intervention and support.

The right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) said that he was weary, depressed and upset that we are still debating violent crime all these years after he came to this place, and that the statistics in England and Wales are getting worse. Like many others, he mentioned policing and county lines, which is surely a subject on which a debate is waiting to be had. Finally, the hon. Member for Croydon Central (Sarah Jones) asked the Minister to listen to the consensus of opinion that she has heard today. The hon. Lady also paid tribute to faith groups, which play an important part in our community, and I am glad that she found time to mention the excellent work that has been done in Polmont. From that brief summary we can feel the frustration and anger at the loss of life and the perversion of aspirations, especially among our young people.

A United Nations report published in 2005 found that Scotland was the most violent country in the developed world, with more than 2,000 people subject to violent attacks every week. In the same year, another report produced by the World Health Organisation determined that Scotland had the second highest murder rate in western Europe. Glasgow was widely claimed to be the murder capital of Europe, as was mentioned by the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green, with more than 70 knife-related murders every year.

Looking back on those statistics, one of the most eye-catching aspects was the rapid increase in crime over a relatively short period. Between 2003 and 2004, for example, the number of murders rose by almost 20% and the number of attempted murders rose by one third. An arms race was taking place on our streets as individuals sought to protect themselves from perceived threats. Drugs, alcohol and gang culture played a key role in that rapid rise in knife crime, and many urban areas of Scotland were affected.

That experience was not felt exclusively by Glaswegians. My constituency of Inverclyde also suffered—or, to be more specific, families suffered from the loss of loved ones as we tried to grapple with violence on our streets. Scotland stood at a crossroads, and it was at that point that Strathclyde police established the violence reduction unit, in an effort to change the circumstances that were giving Glasgow such a brutal reputation. There are similarities with London’s well-publicised problems with knife crime, which are spreading throughout the United Kingdom, in part due to county lines. Perhaps the rest of the United Kingdom is now standing at a crossroads as to how it tackles that problem.

Scotland’s choice was to take a public health approach to knife crime. While custodial sentences for handling offensive weapons tripled in length between 2005 and 2015, a number of other programmes were launched to engage directly with young people. For instance, a pilot scheme called No Knives, Better Lives was first implemented in my constituency of Inverclyde. That scheme was primarily an education programme and included workshops that allowed young people to speak with ex-offenders, victims and medical professionals as they learned about the consequences of carrying a knife. That programme was backed up by high-profile advertising campaigns in cinemas, bus stops and other public locations. By 2010, there had been a 35% drop in knife carrying, and since 2006-07, there has been a 68% decrease in violent crime in Inverclyde.

The VRU has been supported by the work of Medics Against Violence, a group of medical professionals from a range of disciplines who go out and speak with schoolchildren about their experiences with knife crime. It is one thing for a child to get a lecture from their family, or indeed from a politician; it is entirely another thing for them to hear an ambulance driver describe their experience of finding a murder victim, or a plastic surgeon describe the process of reconstructing a person’s face after a knife attack. However, the primary focus of the campaign was not shock and gore: it was the real-life stories that had the greatest impact on the students. Dr Christine Goodall, an oral surgeon, said in 2009:

“We realised that, in order to have some chance of preventing young people getting involved in violence, we had to address the problem early—it was no good waiting till we saw them in hospital after an injury. We realised we should be talking to young people before they accepted that violence was an inevitable part of their lives…We thought perhaps if we could take the doctors out of the clinics and operating theatres and into schools to talk about the consequences of violence from their point of view, we might have some chance of helping some young people avoid injury.”

Another community initiative established by the VRU was the “call in”, which called in more than 600 gang members in Glasgow. Those who attended listened to hard truths from former gang members and the families of murder victims. One attendee, named Paul, said:

“I felt excluded all my life. Now here was the police, who used to exclude me all the time and they were trying to include me.”

Among the 200 gang members who became directly involved in that initiative, violent offending halved and weapons possession dropped by 85%. Violence decreased even among those who did not attend the programme. More generally, the work of the VRU has contributed to the halving of Scotland’s homicide rate. Similarly, the number of recorded incidents of handling an offensive weapon declined by almost 70% between 2006 and 2016. The number of recorded violent crimes has also halved since 2006-07 to one of the lowest levels since 1974.

All of those achievements have been made possible by the more than £17 million in funding provided by the Scottish Government, including £1.6 million to the VRU’s community initiative to reduce violence—which tackles territorial gang culture in Glasgow—and £776,000 to the mentors in violence protection schools programme to continue its work of educating our young people about the impact of violence. That policy is a statement that the Scottish Government will not allow knife crime to be normalised.

Duncan Bew, the clinical lead for trauma and emergency surgery at King’s College London, who was cited earlier by the hon. Member for Croydon Central, stated:

“The VRU is run by the police force, with support from the Scottish government. This is highly unusual—Scotland has the world’s only police force to have formally adopted a public health model.”

I know that London can learn from our experience, and I am pleased to read that the city recently established a VRU. I wish its director, Lib Peck, all the best in her new role, and in spreading the message that violence is not inevitable.

In the words of a tireless knife crime campaigner from my constituency, John Muir MBE:

“We have to be honest about what is going on out there.”

We have clearly had some success in Scotland, but we cannot become complacent. Knife crime still exists, violence is still on our streets, and even one death from knife crime can devastate a community. I sincerely hope that the UK Government can learn the lessons of prevention and are taking a proactive approach, engaging with those at risk of going down the road of violence.