Organised Crime: Young People’s Safety

Rosena Allin-Khan Excerpts

Wednesday 5th September 2018 Westminster Hall

[Dr Rosena Allin-Khan (Tooting) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Evans, and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown) for securing this important debate. It is a shame that more Members are not in Westminster Hall to reflect the severity of this issue, but that should not detract from how important it is.

As my hon. Friend said earlier, local communities play a vital role in tackling violent crime through mental health support, the offer of opportunities, and work with authorities. Across the country, violent crime has risen by 16% while police numbers are at their lowest since records began. Our police and frontline emergency services do incredible work, but at times they are over-stretched and under-resourced. This is a national problem. Our Government can turn away from the truth as long as they like, but the stark reality is staring us in the face.

Over the past 12 months, there have been a number of violent incidents in Tooting and Earlsfield, including some tragic fatalities. Local residents come to my advice surgeries afraid for their children’s lives—afraid that county lines are robbing children of their lives and tearing families apart.

As an A&E doctor at St George’s Hospital, I have treated teenagers who were once full of bravado on the streets, but who lay there, dying in front of my eyes, with tattoos emblazoned “Born to die” on their chest—children who were crying out for their mothers in their final moments. I have been with grieving parents who have arrived at the resuscitation room only to see their child die before them. The scream and echo of that pain—that audible anguish—never, ever leaves you. Once heard, it is never forgotten. Unfortunately it is a sound that we are hearing over and over again on our own doorstep and on our own watch. This has to stop, and I implore the Minister to listen to the arguments presented today.

As a Member of Parliament, I have listened to parents who cannot comprehend what has led their children to die before them. I am a parent myself, as are many in this room—imagine holding your dying child in front of you, knowing that they are dying not from some incurable disease, but from something that could be entirely avoidable but is part of an epidemic sweeping our country. Those parents cannot understand why they had to hear that their children died alone, why they went to work and came home to hear that the children they were raising died alone in their own blood on the streets, why the authorities were not there to support them through their grief, and why there was no way to prevent such tragedy. Enough is enough.

Just three weeks ago, I held a violent crime summit in my constituency of Tooting, bringing together the Deputy Mayor of London for Policing and Crime, the head of south-west London Metropolitan police, the chief executive of Wandsworth Council, and local community groups. It is imperative for local organisations that support young people and their families day in, day out, to be able to speak directly to the authorities and discuss how they can be a force for good and shape the way forward for young people in London and across the country. Only together, along with our communities, can we discuss the root causes of this rise in violence, and only together can we get weapons off our streets. Only together can we decide that this is not just another debate held day in, day out, on a number of topics that are discussed in Westminster, because only if this debate is treated with the respect it deserves can we truly save lives.