Offensive Weapons Bill (Tenth sitting)

Sarah Jones Excerpts

Tuesday 11th September 2018 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

I call Sarah Jones, although conventionally one should stand up to catch the Chair’s eye—it is the best way to do it.

[Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)]

Thank you for clarifying that, Mr Gray.

I support new clause 13 and amendment (a). Jermaine Goupall, a 15-year-old boy from Croydon, was stabbed to death last year. Jermaine was from Thornton Heath, and although he was not involved in gangs he was targeted because of tensions between the CR7 and CR0 postcodes. His killers, themselves teenagers, were convicted earlier this year. The trial was notable because of the emphasis the prosecution placed on the role of social media and the drill music genre.

The court heard how Jermaine’s killers—particularly one 17-year-old who published music under the name M-Trap 0—had been posting videos fuelling tensions with the CR7 postcode of Thornton Heath. Some of the videos, featuring lyrics such as “Push the shank straight through”, amassed thousands of views. I support the new clause because we cannot ignore the role that social media, and particularly video content, can sometimes play in escalating or triggering youth violence.

I want to make it clear, however, that I do not believe such videos should be considered a root cause of knife crime. The all-party parliamentary group on knife crime held a roundtable earlier this year looking specifically at the issue. Social media companies, young people, charities and those involved in the drill music scene all attended. It was clear from that discussion that the content that had been produced and shared through social media, much of it to an extremely high standard, is more often than not reflective of the social realities and violence many people are facing, rather than being a root cause of that violence. As one young person told me:

“It’s not like they are saying go and do this or do that. It’s more them just saying it how it is. In my opinion, growing up as a teenager, especially in London, it’s a mess. You have got people coming out like ‘I might not get home alive today.’”

They are reflecting their lived experience. However, it is also clear that in some situations, such as in Jermaine’s death, social media can be the trigger or catalyst that sparks real-world violence. In this, I agree with experts such as the Youth Violence Commission, academics such as Keir Irwin-Rogers and Craig Pinkney and many others.

Ultimately, it seems to me that we cannot expect social media companies to move at the required pace without strengthening legislation. Sometimes, they have a difficult job, because the line between artistic expression and inciting violence can be blurry. Sometimes, it can be coded lyrics or hand gestures that spark things off—things that only young people in particular areas will understand. Sometimes, however, it is very clear. If someone is displaying a weapon in a threatening manner in a video, that is not allowed. That is what the new clause seeks to ensure—that content should not be online.

The key point is that many websites already ban this type of content and the clause would simply ensure they apply their own rules properly. As already mentioned, YouTube’s community guidelines state,

“we draw the line at content that intends to incite violence or encourage dangerous or illegal activities that have an inherent risk of serious physical harm or death.”

The Home Secretary has admitted that YouTube and others have been improving their response to content that incites terrorism, which I heard a lot about when I was on the Home Affairs Committee. I have met Google, Facebook and others several times to discuss their work around knife crime and there is some progress, but it is far too slow. For example, I highlighted one music video to Google, which was on YouTube, and which they subsequently removed. The rapper in this video is known as A6 and he can be seen here—I have got a picture—carrying a knife.

[The Chair]

Order. The hon. Lady should not use a picture because it cannot be recorded in Hansard. It is possible to describe it, but it is not possible to show it to us.

[Sarah Jones]

I was not aware of that. It does not matter if we cannot see it because you can get it on YouTube now. Earlier, it was removed from YouTube. The rapper’s real name is Alexander Elliot-Joahill and he was jailed last year for 15 years after stabbing someone 13 times. These screenshots were taken in the last few days, so a different YouTube account uploaded the same video and it now has thousands of views yet again. Some of the videos featuring Jermaine Goupall’s killers showed similar scenes of knives accompanied by similar lyrics, with up to 80,000 views. They were removed only after his family spoke out in the media weeks after his killers’ convictions.

There needs to be a bigger incentive for social media companies to act on this type of content. When I first met Google last year, the company refused to say how many staff were employed to review content. Eventually, after repeated pressure from the Home Affairs Committee, it emerged that Google employed just 200 staff directly to view content. It said it had another 4,000 agency staff at other companies who “worked on content moderation”, but it is unclear whether they are full-time staff and none is based in the UK. Compare that with Germany, where strict laws mirroring what is proposed in new clause 13 have been introduced. Social media companies have stepped up their game: Facebook reportedly hired hundreds of new staff in Germany to handle their new responsibilities.

I urge the Minister to consider this new clause, but, as I mentioned before, some videos are more nuanced and difficult to set a line for. Social media companies talk about the importance of context and they are completely averse to being the judge of what is and is not acceptable if they can avoid it. Other platforms pose challenges because of their instancy. Snapchat and Instagram stories disappear after 24 hours. Snapchat has been used to document attacks—the actual attacks and their aftermath, such as the killing of drill rapper Showkey in Peckham, which was shared widely on social media. If you google him, you can see a video of him dying on YouTube. It is there now. It is absolutely horrific and nothing has been done about it. I also ask the Minister to consider some of the other proposals that have been raised via the all-party parliamentary group’s roundtable and my work with the family of Jermaine Goupall. I spoke to the Minister and she agreed to meet the family, so we need to set that up.

The Minister may be aware of my proposals on the use of criminal behaviour orders to prevent young people who are convicted of a knife offence and have an online presence or persona from posting publicly on social media as part of their punishment. By doing that we can draw a clear distinction between creative expression, which is in many cases brilliant and in most cases not wrong or offensive, and those who wish to use music videos simply to incite violence.

It is clearly not about censoring music. The value of that approach is that it allows us to say to young people, “You are free to make drill or any other type of music. We’re not censoring you, but if you offend, this is one of the ways we can punish you.” That reflects the value of such creative expression for young people while clearly setting a line. Most of these young people want to be in the studio making music, but they need to do it safely and not let violence spill over into the real world.

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It is simply a question of whether we are going to use the full range of resources available to us to enforce powers in the Bill as other comparable powers are enforced. I hope the Minister will agree that the new clauses, or something very like them, should be added to the Bill.

[Sarah Jones]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham on his new clauses, which I support. They would resolve a major failing in the Bill that has the potential to undermine any benefits of the legislation by allowing breaches of it to go unpunished. As he said, there is no point passing Bills if they cannot be properly enforced. The Bill rightly places greater responsibility on retailers and delivery companies, but does not give the relevant authority—trading standards—the statutory powers to investigate breaches properly.

I recently represented the Opposition on the Tenant Fees Bill Committee, where we had a similar problem with the Government not seeming to understand the importance of the role played by trading standards; they had set out a very small amount of funding for a very significant increase in workload. In this Bill, the Government have not given trading standards teams legal powers to enforce the new laws.

The role that trading standards can play in enforcing the Bill, if they are given the powers to do so, is illustrated by the leading work being done by Croydon Council. For years, Croydon Council and Croydon trading standards have been at the forefront of work with retailers to improve their understanding of the law around knife sales through training, to encourage them to go further than required by law through greater responsible retailer agreements and by catching traders willing to break the law on underage sales using test purchasers, both in person and online. Croydon trading standards now has 145 retailers signed up to their responsible retailer agreements. They ran eight “Do you pass?” training sessions with retailers over the past year, encouraging additional measures such as Challenge 25 and the responsible display of knives in stores. The training sessions are a good indicator of which retailers are keen to work responsibly and which might not be. Finally, they have carried out 61 test purchases of knives in the past year to identify those retailers who are not complying with the law.

As Croydon’s trading standards manager pointed out to us in evidence, without statutory powers, much of their work on this area will be reliant

“on retailers’ good will and common sense.”––[Official Report, Offensive Weapons Public Bill Committee, 17 July 2018; c. 26, Q42.]

The Committee also heard from trading standards that the additional responsibilities will create

“a large resource issue that will no doubt have an impact.”––[Official Report, Offensive Weapons Public Bill Committee, 17 July 2018; c. 26, Q46.]

As with the Tenant Fees Bill, I hope the Minister can look at providing trading standards with adequate resources to enforce the provisions of the Bill. I recognise that the serious violence strategy released by the Home Office contained the promise of a prosecution fund for trading standards—a fund for two years to support targeted prosecution activity against online and instore retailers in breach of the laws on sales of knives to the under age—but the strategy is not clear about how much funding will be made available, and it gives no clarity to trading standards about support two years down the line.

The pressure on trading standards is increasing at a time when budgets are stretched to an unprecedented degree. As well as the Tenant Fees Bill and the new requirements in this Bill, there is a new burden on trading standards regarding the use of wood burners and the Government’s clean air strategy. Meanwhile, the budget for trading standards teams has been cut by half since 2009, from more than £200 million to barely £100 million. The number of trading standards officers has fallen by 56% in the same period.

As Labour’s communities and local government team pointed out in a recent local government health check on trading standards, those cuts have led to the downgrading of the protections that consumers depend on, and the tradition of routine inspections and sampling work has given way to a system based on consumer complaints. Relying on such a system is not an effective way to enforce laws, particularly those related to the purchase of knives or corrosives, which, by their nature, are unlikely to result in a complaint from buyer or seller. I end with a plea to the Minister not to allow this important piece of legislation to be nothing more than words in the statute book because it cannot, in the end, be enforced.

[Victoria Atkins]

As always, I am extremely grateful to the right hon. Member for East Ham for tabling these new clauses. It is important to note that it is possible for the legislation to be enforced by the police and that the Crown Prosecution Service can prosecute retailers who have breached the law if appropriate. On several occasions in my previous career, there were joint prosecutions—not necessarily just with the CPS, but with the Health and Safety Executive and local councils—and in the old days, prosecutions on housing benefit fraud. There are already powers in law to enable that to happen; the Bill can be enforced through those measures.

It might be helpful briefly to explain how trading standards officers and local authorities enforce the legislation on the age-restricted sale of knives. Local authorities have taken action in the past, and prosecute the sale of knives using the general powers in section 222 of the Local Government Act 1972. Section 222 provides powers to local authorities in England and Wales to prosecute or defend legal proceedings

“Where a local authority consider it expedient for the promotion or protection of the interests of the inhabitants of their area”.

Those powers have been used to prosecute retailers in this context. Between 2013 and 2017, there were 71 prosecutions of sellers who sold knives to persons under 18. Although it is not possible to identify from the records whether the prosecution was brought by a local authority or the CPS, because the organisations do not maintain a central database that can run a report by specific offence, we understand that it is likely that the majority were brought by trading standards. Indeed, National Trading Standards has agreed to manage the prosecution fund that was introduced as part of the serious violence strategy, and it will work with local authorities in areas hit by knife crime to conduct test purchase operations and prosecute retailers if appropriate.

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[Victoria Atkins]

I thank the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley for raising those important points. The issue of the display of knives was raised by the British Retail Consortium and the British Independent Retailers Association during the Committee’s oral evidence sessions. We note their concern about the potential cost implications for small retailers of having to operate the secure displays and install the fixtures and layouts in their stores. The voluntary agreement with retailers, including larger retailers already sets out a requirement in relation to the display of bladed articles.

[Sarah Jones]

A couple of months ago someone in Croydon tweeted me, because Poundland, which has signed up to the voluntary code, had a large display of knives in its shop window. I wrote to Poundland and it removed the display, apologised and said it should never have happened—but it did happen. The fear with the voluntary code is that we can never be sure that people are doing what they say they will do.

[Victoria Atkins]

I was not aware of that specific example, but I appreciate the concerns. I am told that we would have to have a full public consultation on such a measure. That is certainly something about which I would like to think further, to see what can be achieved within the realm of the public consultation and so on. I would like us to keep the pressure up on those retailers that are already signed up to the voluntary agreement. I will consider this point in further detail.

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[Tulip Siddiq]

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

I am also aware that everyone wants to leave, so I will try to be as quick as I possibly can be—[Interruption.] At least I have one agreement from Government Members so far.

Subsection 5(1) argues that a person commits an offence if they have a corrosive substance with them in a public place. I tabled new clause 30 to force a court to consider, for the purposes of sentencing the offence set out in subsection 5(1), that the use of a moped is an aggravating factor. This would mean that if the offender was in possession of corrosives while driving a moped, or while a passenger on a moped, they would face a longer sentence.

Aggravating offences, as set out by the Sentencing Council, already include

“Use of a weapon to frighten or injure victim”

and

“An especially serious physical or psychological effect on the victim”.

Attacks using corrosive substances are clearly intended to frighten and, as we have discussed, they cause especial physical and psychological effects on a victim. However, I would like to see mopeds, as defined in subsection (3) of my new clause, explicitly listed as an aggravating factor for possession.

I do so for four key reasons: one, an individual who carries a corrosive substance on a moped poses an additional risk to the public; two, corrosive substance attacks committed from a moped uniquely heighten the physical and psychological effect on the victim; three, mopeds are deliberately chosen by offenders to escape detection and conviction; and, four, conviction rates for moped-related crimes are especially low, and explicitly listing mopeds as an aggravating factor will serve as a future deterrent.

In my constituency of Hampstead and Kilburn, moped crimes and offensive weapons have wreaked havoc in the lives of local residents, especially the attacks in recent months on two local councillors, who were both coming home from late-night council duty and were both targeted by people on mopeds.

The statistics are alarming, not only for my constituency but for London generally. In Brent, 512 crimes using offensive weapons took place between July 2016 and July 2018, and in Camden in the same time period 394 crimes using offensive weapons took place, which represented an increase of 16% between July 2017 and July 2018. In June 2017 alone, Camden suffered 1,363 moped crimes. In 2017-18, there were over 20,000 moped-related crimes in London.

The correspondence from my constituents at the height of these crimes has often been desperate and angry in equal measure. I will quickly give two examples from the many, many emails that I have received on this topic. Jessica from Belsize Park said:

“I have never written to my MP before but I am growing increasingly concerned about the spate of violent moped attacks taking place across London. I had a near-miss last week and almost didn’t report it to the police as I felt that there was nothing they could or would do.”

Gaurav from Hampstead Town said:

“I am frankly appalled at how inaction is emboldening gangs to strike with impunity. This has to stop. I feel scared about my family and children walking in the area.”

[Sarah Jones]

I apologise to the Committee for what will be a brief intervention; I just wanted to stress the point that my hon. Friend is making. Last week, I met a couple who had been walking along the street in Croydon with their young daughter, and two people on mopeds who were wearing masks came up to them and held a knife at the neck of the daughter, who is about seven years old. Fortunately, in the end nobody was hurt and the police are doing what they can, but my hon. Friend is making a really serious point. This is a real issue and it would be very useful if the Minister could consider accepting the new clause.

Offensive Weapons Bill (Ninth sitting)

Sarah Jones Excerpts

Tuesday 11th September 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gapes. I rise to support new clause 1 and new clause 25. The suggestion from my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham regarding data on acid attacks is very sensible. It will help build public confidence in this legislation if, as hoped, it helps to reduce such attacks. If the legislation does not bring down the number of attacks, it is essential we know that. The main area I want to focus on, however, is new clause 25.

Since I set up the all-party parliamentary group on knife crime last year and began working with my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, Deptford on her Youth Violence Commission, it has become clear that the drivers of youth violence are seated far more deeply in our society than simply the accessibility of weapons. We can all agree that tightening up the rules around online knife purchasing, restricting certain types of knives and restricting the sale of corrosives is the right thing to do and we applaud the Government for it. However, we also need to take a step back and look again at the problems we are ultimately trying to solve: the growth in acid attacks by and on young people; the continued increase in knife crime across the country; the age of knife carriers getting younger and younger; and the culture of fear that we know exists among a generation of our young people. Without new clause 25, this Bill makes no real attempt to answer these questions. It seeks to address symptoms without looking for the cure.

I am concerned that by prioritising online knife purchasing in this Bill, the Government are overemphasising its role on teenagers carrying knives. Of course, the death of Bailey Gwynne in 2015 was a horrible and avoidable tragedy—even one death from this loophole is one too many. Aside from Bailey’s death, the only evidence cited in the Government’s impact assessment for the Bill comes from anecdotal reports from the police, trading standards and Members of Parliament about teenagers accessing knives online. It does not appear that the Government actually spoke to young people themselves—and particularly young people who carry knives—about why they are doing so and how they are accessing these weapons.

The summary of consultation responses makes no mention of speaking to young people directly, but the all-party parliamentary group on knife crime has spoken to young people who carry knives. We brought 16 people from across the country to Parliament to meet MPs and peers to talk about why they carry knives. These young people had either been convicted of knife offences or had been victims of knife attacks and, in some cases, both. When asked about their reasons, one young person specifically mentioned online retailers, saying that it is

“so easy, yesterday at Amazon, I swear to go 30 seconds from the homepage to checkout to deliver to my house, about 20 seconds, literally.”

It was very clear from the rest of the young people where the majority of them had got their knives. Let me quote a few of them.

“What’s the knife, it’s just a trip to the kitchen then you can literally just grab it.”

Another young person:

“It’s really easy and you have only got to go to your kitchen drawer and there is a knife”.

Another, asked by an MP where he had got his knife, answered: “Out of the kitchen.” Another young person:

“In Camden, everyone’s going to have one—they put it in a sock—and everyone has one.”

I worry that the Government are focusing too narrowly and ignoring the reality that, for most under-18s, accessing a knife is as simple as walking into their kitchen. That is why new clause 25 is so important. If a young person is getting to the point where he or she is trying to buy a knife online, we have already failed them somewhere down the line. If that same young person is faced with tougher restrictions on online purchasing but still feels the need to carry a knife, as we have just heard, they can simply get one from their kitchen. That is not to say that this legislation is not worthwhile, but we need to think bigger and new clause 25 is the start of that.

The all-party parliamentary group on knife crime, the Youth Violence Commission and a host of experts from Scotland to Chicago have all said that the Government must now treat youth violence as a public health issue. A proper public health approach would treat knife crime like an epidemic. We know that violence breeds violence, so we need to tackle the problem at source while immunising future generations against it. We need to recognise that some young people are more at risk of early criminality than others because of their environments, and we must address those environments, changing the social conditions that lie at the root of youth violence.

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Home Office officials spent months examining evidence from across the world. We know that drugs are a major driver in this violence. The Home Secretary is hosting an international conference to look at international efforts to tackle the very dangerous drugs that we know are the drivers behind this serious violence: drugs such as cocaine that are not produced in this country and have to be imported. We have looked at practice across the board. We have spoken to healthcare, teaching and social care professionals. It has been a gathering experience. We may not label it in the same way as the all-party parliamentary group, but we are clear that this is about a joined-up approach.

[Sarah Jones]

The Minister has talked to education experts. Does she agree that the increase in exclusions is driving some of the youth violence problems we are seeing?

[Victoria Atkins]

It concerns me greatly. Edward Timpson, a former Minister of State for Vulnerable Children and Families at the Department for Education, is doing a big piece of work. He is conducting a review of alternative provision and the vulnerabilities that may be posed by children being in PRUs. We are very much looking into it just as we are supporting the work of charities such as Redthread and getting youth workers into A&E departments in the major hospitals—they are seeing an increase in young people coming in with serious stab wounds. They get those youth workers into the A&E department to act as a friend to those children at the teachable moment, as they call it, as well as staying with them while they are in hospital recovering from what often turns out, sadly, to be major surgery. We help children through knife crime through the anti-knife crime community fund, and support many charities, including larger ones such as the St Giles Trust, that have specific projects dealing with the issues in specific parts of the country.

I was most concerned to hear the concerns of the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley about inconsistencies in delivery and policing. We introduced the system of police and crime commissioners in the coalition Government to try and draw accountability for policing closer to the communities served by police officers. The title is deliberate. Although policing is an important part of the brief, the “and crime” part is also an important part of their responsibilities—the prevention of crime, how they help victims in their locality and so on. If there are concerns about the consistency of delivery of services, I hope that we would all go to the police and crime commissioners and ask them what they are doing. It is our role as parliamentarians to hold them to account, just as they hold us to account.

The College of Policing has been a major step forward in terms of professionalising policing and giving it the status it deserves. These are public servants who often put their lives at risk to serve the public. We want to give them the recognition and status that their day-to-day activities deserve. The purpose of the College of Policing is to achieve that, but also to help spread best practice. The hon. Lady will know that a great deal of work is being done on, for example, county lines. We set up the National County Lines Coordination Centre because we recognise that, while major urban centres may have experience of gang activity, rural areas probably do not. We want to tackle that new phenomenon by helping the police draw together all their experience and intelligence, and ease the lines of investigation between forces.

Offensive Weapons Bill (Sixth sitting)

Sarah Jones Excerpts

Committee Debate: 6th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 4th September 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Louise Haigh]

As with the entirety of the Bill, we fully support the intention and most of the content of the clause, but we share the concerns of some of those who have given evidence to the Committee and to the Home Office about mandatory minimum sentencing for children. The clause has been lifted from an amendment to the Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015, proposed by the former Member Nick de Bois, that introduced a two-strikes sentence, meaning that adults convicted more than once of being in possession of a blade will face a minimum six-month prison sentence and a maximum of four years, and that children aged 16 and 17 will face a minimum four-month detention and training order.

Since that legislation was introduced, there have been multiple media reports that have suggested that those sentencing arrangements are not being carried out for adults or children covered by that clause. Will the Minister provide details of how many offenders have been sentenced under those provisions and whether there has been monitoring of how many offenders do not receive a custodial sentence included in that clause, having been charged and convicted of knife possession on two separate occasions?

For example, the Telegraph reported in March 2016 that provisional data indicated that since the legislation was introduced, only 50% of offenders had been jailed, while another 23% had been given suspended sentences. Of those offenders, 907 were adults and 50% received a custodial sentence with an average sentence length of 6.6 months. It stated that

“The remaining 59 cases were offenders aged 16 or 17, with…46 per cent receiving an immediate custodial sentence.”

Has there been any review by either the Home Office or the Ministry of Justice of whether those reforms in the 2015 Act are being implemented by the courts—and, more importantly, of whether those reforms are effective? Are they improving public protection? Are they acting as a deterrent to children and adult offenders? Are they reducing recidivism? Has there been any review of the measures? If not, would it not have been desirable to conduct such a review before bringing forward the identical measures in this Bill?

Part of the written evidence we received came from the Standing Committee for Youth Justice, which made a compelling case as the Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015 passed through Parliament—it restates it here: that mandatory minimum sentences for children do not necessarily act as a deterrent, do not necessarily rehabilitate children who are caught with knives and do not ensure that the public are protected, as opposed to when the judiciary has full discretion.

The Children’s Commissioner said in evidence:

“I want to have a system that can respond to individuals, so my instinct is not to go down the mandatory minimum sentences route but to look at individual cases.”––[Official Report, Offensive Weapons Public Bill Committee, 19 July 2018; c. 90, Q223.]

I fully acknowledge that during that same evidence session we heard from the Victims’ Commissioner, who said:

“I have to say that victims tell me they want mandatory; only then will it be effective.”––[Official Report, Offensive Weapons Public Bill Committee, 19 July 2018; c. 91, Q223.]

Of course, it is understandable that victims and the public at large should want to see people who commit, or intend to commit, abhorrent criminal offences sent to prison for a reasonable amount of time, but the ultimate objective of custody must be to reduce offending and keep the public more secure. To achieve that, we believe that we have to look at each individual case, especially when it involves children, and the judiciary should have full discretion to respond appropriately.

The Standing Committee for Youth Justice’s evidence is compelling in that regard. On the claim that custody acts as a deterrent, it contests that awareness of second sentencing among children is perceived by frontline practitioners to be low. There are many children in and around the criminal justice system who we would not expect to make rational choices, in the economic, behavioural sense of the word.

As well as that, children carry knives and weapons for numerous and complex reasons, often because of the perception that it is necessary for self-protection. Punitive measures, particularly custodial measures, are unlikely to act as a deterrent, even if the child is aware of the punishment and able to act rationally. In other words, for those children who fear for their safety and their lives, carrying a knife or corrosive substances may be seen as the rational course of action, and the threat they are facing—perceived or real—will be more significant than the threat of a custodial sentence. Research on deterrents has consistently supported that, with studies finding little or no evidence that sentence severity or the threat of custody acts as a deterrent to crime for children.

The statistics on knife-crime offences also support that evidence. Since the introduction of mandatory minimum custodial sentencing in 2015, the number of children convicted of possession or threatening offences involving bladed articles or offences weapons has risen.

[Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)]

I want to add to the sensible speech my hon. Friend is making. In the all-party parliamentary group on knife crime, our first meeting was with about 15 young offenders who had been in prison for knife offences. We had a conversation with them about whether prison was a deterrent or not. Some of them said, shockingly, that going to prison was a relief, because it was a break from the streets. They could keep out of trouble and be fed. They were in a secure institution. Their lived experience was so tough that being in prison was not the worst thing in the world, so I endorse everything she is saying about it not necessarily being a deterrent.

Offensive Weapons Bill (First sitting)

Sarah Jones Excerpts

Committee Debate: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 17th July 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Paul Scully]

Thank you.

[Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)]

Q I do not think I need to register the fact that I chair the all-party group on knife crime and John is close to the secretariat. This has been a really interesting morning. You are painting an accurate and vivid picture of some of the challenges. I want to ask a couple of questions about education and health, which we have talked about quite a lot. The statistics on people who come to hospital, having been stabbed again and again, and who then have an intervention are incredible: they do not come back. It works. How many major trauma centres have this amazing service and how many have not? What interaction have you had with the Department of Health and Social Care? Does it fund anything? Does it interact or engage in this agenda?

On the education side, everything you said chimes with what I have seen. In Croydon we had 60 serious case reviews of youth violence, and in every single case each of the 60 kids was outside mainstream school, so there is clearly a pattern there. What specifically do we need in terms of resources in schools? We have not touched on policing in schools, which is one aspect that may or may not be worth mentioning. What engagement is there from the Department for Education on this, and indeed from Ofsted? We talked about Ofsted potentially having a greater role. The question is about what traction you are getting from other Government Departments.

John Poynton: Shall I jump in and answer the first part? Redthread hosted a symposium of all of the hospital-based violence intervention programmes in the country—Victoria kindly opened the conference for us last week. That is a conference of only about eight existing hospitals, but there is a growing number of emerging interested hospitals. We had colleagues come from Glasgow and Edinburgh, from across Nottingham and Birmingham, and also from London, who are delivering hospital-based programmes, such as those at Redthread, St Giles and the Royal London.

There are 23 major trauma centres in England and Wales, four of them in London. The four in London have hospital-based violence intervention programmes embedded within them, between Redthread and St Giles. Redthread is working in Nottingham and is launching this month in Birmingham, so there are a number—I will let you do the maths. A number of other major trauma centres are interested, but it comes down to the resource question.

There is brilliant and innovative commissioning from police and crime commissioners, from the Home Office’s tackling crime team and the Mayor’s office for policing and crime in London, where commissioners are recognising, from the policing and criminal justice side, that we cannot arrest or enforce our way out of this problem. They are looking at where they can innovate and spend their money. But there is not match funding coming from other Government Departments—from the Department of Health and Social Care, from NHS England, from Public Health England or from the Department for Education.

The only way for us to be able to have hospital-based violence intervention programmes, where we know that we will be able to wrap around a comprehensive package of support in this teachable and reachable moment for young people, when they are victims of violence and they are most reflective and open to breaking their cycle of violence, is to have a clear cross-Government match-funding approach. We know that the Department for Education needs to be on board with this because, as we have talked about, perpetrators and victims of violence are very likely to have dropped out of mainstream education.

Coming from a family of teachers, I am not saying it is just about putting more responsibility on classroom teachers and headteachers but it is looking at resources. It is looking at how we support these young people outside of the classroom. There needs to be a clear approach from health colleagues in how they support this. There is advocacy and championing of a hospital-based violence intervention programme from clinicians on the shop floor; from Mr Martin Griffiths or Dr Emer Sutherland or Dr Asif Rahman, to name a few clinical champions in London hospitals.

There is funding in kind in ensuring that there is space for youth workers, caseworkers to be embedded in those hospitals, but there is no financial resource coming from the top down. As I have advocated, this needs to be an approach that is not just about knife crime or gangs or just about corrosive substances. This needs to be moving down to looking at a foundational approach to all forms of violence. There is a very clear example model for us to take a closer look at in the way that sexual assault referral centres are commissioned. Those are clearly accepted to be commissioned jointly by criminal justice and NHS England. That is one form of special commissioning from NHS England, where it jointly match-funds with its justice colleagues. That is an example that could be looked at in match funding in order to find the resource that we need to ensure that we can work with the victims.

[The Chair]

We only have a few minutes left and four people still wish to ask questions. If we have quick questions and brief answers, we will get everybody in; otherwise, we will not be able to, as we have an absolute cut-off on the time. I call Mary Robinson.

Oral Answers to Questions

Sarah Jones Excerpts

Monday 4th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

I know that the police in Essex taking this issue seriously. Among the actions that they are taking, one thing I would encourage them to do more of is to apply to the Community Fund and to focus a bit more on early intervention, which I know they are interested in and have done successfully before. They have received funding for such projects before, and I would encourage them to seek it again.

[Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)]

We know that prevention lies at the heart of much of the knife crime issue, but there are things that can be done now. The former Home Secretary, who is here today, told the Home Affairs Committee that she would look at using more criminal behaviour orders for people who have been convicted of knife crime to stop them from going on social media to get the attention that they crave. Will the Home Secretary look at that issue?

[Sajid Javid]

The hon. Lady is right that much more can be done that does not require legislation, meaning it can be done more quickly. She talked about criminal behaviour orders. We are looking at that very issue and seeing whether their use can be expanded.

Serious Violence Strategy

Sarah Jones Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Wallace]

The right hon. Gentleman makes a clear point. In the past, there were plenty of middlemen between the local gangs and the big serious organised criminals running out of Colombia or the Balkans. That has now reduced. Through safe and secure encryption, young people have the ability to order drugs and gangs have the ability to have delivered to their door large packets of drugs from Albanian or Serbian drug gangs, or indeed from local drug gangs: United Kingdom citizens—it is not the copyright of the western Balkans. That has put real power into the system.

At the same time, the United Kingdom is fast becoming the biggest consumer of cocaine in Europe. There is high demand from the consumer, and cocaine is no longer the preserve of the yuppie or the rich. We are seeing cocaine in my villages, in rural communities and in communities in London that would not previously have used it. It is a high-margin, high-supply drug at the moment, and that is fuelling the increase in violence.

With those Albanians or those serious organised criminals comes the enforcement of the county lines. They do not just put a 15-year-old into a house or “cuckoo” the house; they provide a weapon to enforce the drug line. Sometimes, if the 15-year-old is not a willing participant, the gangs will ruthlessly enforce that county line with violence. They will kill those people and they will kill the local drug dealers if they get in their way.

[Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) and I, through the all-party parliamentary group on knife crime, recently met some girls who had been involved in county lines. They had become involved because of boyfriends, because of money and because it was a solution to the problems they faced in their lives. They said that nobody had ever told them not to do it. No one at school or earlier on in their lives had explained that these things might be offered to them and that there were choices to be made. There was no one in their school telling them about that. Does the Minister agree that schools have a duty to keep our children safe, and that they need more resources to ensure that children know what good choices to make?

[Mr Wallace]

I totally agree that we have to educate children about the dangers that they are exposed to.

I go back to the point about modern communications and smartphones. In the past there was often a gulf between streetwise communities where young people grew up exposed to crime and were sometimes exploited by it, and other areas where people would say, “I never see gun crime in my village”. In the past, there was no connection between the two, but now it is all joined up. Now, young people can be exploited wherever they are, and whatever their background, by being able to access drugs using their smartphones. That is why we are seeing this problem seeping in, and that is why the first place to go is the schools—as low as the primary schools—to teach children about how vulnerable they can be online and how vulnerable they can be to being approached.

Another part of my portfolio involves child sexual exploitation. People are being exploited, manipulated and organised through those telephones. That is a real challenge, and I am not going to pretend that we have a solution.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Hayes]

I have already said that this debate stretches well beyond party politics. I know that it is always difficult for Liberal Democrats to step outside party politics, but I implore the right hon. Gentleman to raise his game and do so. I do not mean to be unkind; I am simply trying to be helpful.

The important thing is that fewer people are being arrested, and fewer people are therefore being convicted. Because of that, inevitably, more people feel they can get away with carrying a knife or a gun.

[Sarah Jones]

Ten years ago, only one in 10 stop-and-searches resulted in finding anything, and now it is something like one in three. The way that the police stop and search now is much more effective because it is much more targeted and intelligence-based. Surely that is the right approach, rather than a blanket approach of saying, “We’re going to stop and search anybody who looks a bit dodgy,” which is what was potentially happening in the past. It is much better for it to be completely targeted and based on intelligence, to ensure that those we stop are much more likely to have weapons or drugs.

[Mr Hayes]

There is of course a series of bases on which people are stopped and searched. The police are missioned to behave proportionately and, as the hon. Lady will know, there is a protocol associated with stop-and-search. Policemen must make it clear who they are and what they are doing and justify why they are doing it. She is right, of course, that it should not be used permissively. I am simply pointing out the fact that more people are carrying knives and guns and fewer are being arrested for doing so. I know that that will be of concern to the Government, and they will want to respond accordingly.

I also want to say a word about sentencing before I conclude. At the moment, as Members will know, there is a maximum four-year sentence for carrying a knife. In practice, as the Ministry of Justice reported recently, the average amount of time that people serve is just over six months. People are serving just over six months for being convicted of carrying a knife, and that is just not long enough. In Scotland, those convicted spend on average a year behind bars, and there is a lower rate of knife crime in Scotland than in England and Wales. Immediate action needs to be taken to address the issue of inadequate sentences.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sarah Jones]

I serve on the Select Committee on Home Affairs and we went to see the National Crime Agency to talk about county lines. The NCA made the point that these crimes are not just cross-border within this country, but are cross-border across Europe and the world. One of the worries about Brexit that the NCA expressed was that at the moment we can arrest people, follow people and collaborate with other countries, and if we do not get that sorted when we leave the EU, we will be in big trouble.

[Mr Jones]

The hon. Lady is right from the point of view that the world has in recent decades become a very small place, and, as my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr Hayes) eloquently pointed out—as did my right hon. Friend the Minister for Security and Economic Crime—there are places from which people can send things through the post right to somebody else’s door; they no longer need a long distribution chain with items changing hands. The Prime Minister has been clear about this country and its exit from the EU and about wanting to maintain that information-sharing, working with other countries in the EU and beyond. Although we are leaving the EU, we are still very much part of Europe and we want to continue to work with our European partners to ensure that we support and assist each other in reducing the amount of crime.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey), who speaks with great knowledge on this subject. I have been pleased to work with him in the all-party parliamentary group on knife crime.

I speak as the chair of the all-party group but also as the Member of Parliament for Croydon Central, where we have had a significant issue with knife crime, as have many other places across London and across the country. I want to respond, although he is not in his seat, to the hon. Member for Braintree (James Cleverly), who questioned the conversation we were having in this debate about whether we care or not. I do not think it is an issue of whether we care but of whether we care enough. I do not doubt the Government’s compassion on this issue, but I do doubt the choices they have made about what we care about more. It is the Government’s role to prioritise, and this issue is not prioritised enough.

Most of the debate so far has been very good, and we have recognised most of the issues at play. We know that this is partly about policing and partly about prevention. Those issues have been rehearsed and I do not need to go over them again. I just want to make one small point to add to the overall picture: it is not just the individuals involved who are suffering deeply as a result of this violence, but the families and communities. I have in my constituency the family of a boy who was murdered. The boy’s brother, following the murder of his brother, got into trouble at school. There started to be issues, and the school was looking at whether it should perhaps expel him. He then got access to some mental health treatment. It transpired that this boy had very severe post-traumatic stress disorder and needed counselling. We then had to go on the CAMHS waiting list for the treatment that he needed. It took months for him to get that treatment, and who knows what damage will have been done in the interim? It is not just about the individuals, but their families, communities and schools that are also suffering.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Vicky Foxcroft) on her repeated requests for a debate on this subject, not least in asking the Leader of the House every Thursday morning for many, many weeks. She has done well to get a debate. As many others have said, it is a great shame that it has been so long in coming. We should have had a proper debate, with the Home Secretary, as soon as the strategy was published, and that has not happened.

Before the publication of the strategy, I, along with 12 other chairs of cross-party groups from both sides of the House, wrote to the then Home Secretary to call for a clear and ambitious target to halve the number of deaths from youth violence over the next 10 years. We were disappointed that the Government chose to ignore that call and not to set themselves any kind of goal, but given the resources they have put in place, that is not surprising, because the resources are simply not enough to achieve a target. The Government talk of a different approach, focusing on early intervention, but those are frankly just words; we need more action.

I want to make one main point that will hopefully add to the debate. I think we all agree that this is a very serious issue that we need to do something about. Everybody is talking about how the public health response can help. I want to mention my friend and former boss, Tessa Jowell, whom we lost recently to brain cancer. I want to pay tribute to her trailblazing work in this area, as the first Minister for Public Health. Almost 20 years before public health became part of our discourse around this agenda, Tessa was putting in place a strategy that was called by one commentator “the success story of our time”, and there are strong lessons to learn from it.

The teenage pregnancy strategy is an example of the sort of long-term, integrated public health approach that we so desperately need now to tackle knife crime and violent crime. It was an evidence-based programme. It had a 10-year goal, it had funding and it had leadership. The strategy did not simply attempt to crack down on teenage pregnancy but sought to understand and prevent its underlying causes. There were tough national targets, but there were local strategies. There was a central team in Government—that was key—who co-ordinated the response across Government. The Prime Minister took a keen interest in the strategy and was regularly given reports on progress, and it was taken seriously. It was not just about telling girls not to have sex; it was about the underlying issues of aspiration, jobs, training and support.

That strategy succeeded. It halved teenage pregnancy rates and is now used as a blueprint by the World Health Organisation. Speaking in this place 20 years ago, Tessa Jowell criticised

“the rather pathetic hand wringing about moral decay that characterised so much of the debate about teenage pregnancy in the past.”—[Official Report, 23 June 1999; Vol. 333, c. 1127.]

Sadly, the debate about knife crime remains full of hand wringing about moral decay, with not enough focus on the social conditions that underpin it. Of course offenders must be caught and punished, and the police without any doubt need more resources to do their job, but every single police officer will tell you that we cannot arrest our way out of this problem.

We know what a lot of the answers are. We just need to have the will. At the moment, the Government are not showing that they have the will. I think everybody on both sides of the House would work with them, if only they would publish a proper strategy, with proper resources, focused on prevention.

Police Funding

Sarah Jones Excerpts

Wednesday 28th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Latham]

My hon. Friend makes a valid point. Why do police and crime commissioners need these enormous reserves when they talk about cuts all the time?

[Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Mrs Latham]

No, I will not.

Derbyshire was the only force nationally not to sign up for the outsourcing of back-office services, a measure that was proposed to increase efficiency and make savings during this so-called period of austerity. Clearly, that is a logical way to save money by being much more efficient. Similar-sized forces in Nottinghamshire and Leicestershire, which surround Derbyshire, have smaller reserves than Derbyshire.

Derbyshire police were saving up money to spend some of it—only some of it—on a new fire and police headquarters, which was desperately needed, but that was not all the money they kept. I was very interested to see that Essex has a police, fire and crime commissioner—the first in the country. I might recommend that if I thought it would be good for Derbyshire, but with the current incumbent, it certainly would not be good for Derbyshire because he would not know where his budget was.

The police and crime commissioner for Derbyshire clearly does not want to increase efficiency and make savings. It is clearly an ideological decision by this left-wing police and crime commissioner who does not want to change anything, because he wants to blame it all on the Conservative Government. There are lots of examples of waste: in the last budget, he proposed extra expenditure provisions—much more spending than has ever been spent before—on hotels and conferences. Now, why would that be when he says he cannot afford police officers?

--- Later in debate ---

[Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)]

During the election campaign I met a 20-year-old young man called Kelva Smith. He was in a front garden with a group of friends, and they had a chat with me as I was canvassing. We talked about crime, the lack of youth services, funding cuts and all the issues that young people are facing. If I am honest, Kelva and his friends were pretty pessimistic about my ability to do anything about any of these problems. On 5 March this year, Kelva was stabbed to death on the streets of Croydon. It turns out that Kelva and his friends were right to be pessimistic. I did not manage to change the situation for young people in Croydon. And now Kelva is dead and it is too late for him. I do not want us to fail another person, which is why I set up the all-party parliamentary group on knife crime, why I am campaigning—along with so many colleagues across the political divide—for action on serious youth violence, and why I am working with every organisation I possibly can.

Our police are under pressure like never before in the face of knife crime and youth violence. In London, 80 people were stabbed to death last year. We saw eight deaths in a week of knife crime and gun crime just a couple of weeks ago, and the majority of cases are young people. Twenty-six people have been shot or stabbed to death in our capital so far this year—roughly one person every three days. This problem is not unique to London by any stretch. Knife crime across England and Wales grew by 21% last year, and almost all police forces are seeing an increase. There were 37,000 knife offences last year. Many MPs have joined the all-party parliamentary group, and are coming up to me quite regularly having realised that knife crime is a problem in their area. Knife-carrying in schools has rocketed, increasing by 42% over two years. The age of those carrying knives is also getting younger—some are 10, 11, 12 and 13 years old.

I sit on the Select Committee on Home Affairs, which is doing an inquiry into the changing nature of policing. I understand the pressures that the police are under and the changing nature of crime. I also understand the need for efficiencies. It is quite insulting, I would suggest, to say that Labour Members do not believe in efficiencies. Of course we do—nobody wants to waste taxpayers’ money—but there is only so much one can do with efficiencies in the situation where the Met police have already made £600 million of savings and have to make another £400 million, where all but one of the police stations in Croydon has been closed, where our borough commander now has to lead three boroughs rather than one, and where eight out of 10 of our neighbourhood police officers have now gone.

Last week, I was in a secondary school where I talked to school-based police officers who were doing extraordinary work in helping people with issues of domestic violence and helping with children who went missing. Those police officers had built relationships with young people that meant that those young people trusted them. However, school-based police officers have been cut by 20% since 2010, and 13 police forces have no officers in schools at all.

I want to end with a basic plea: we need more funding so that we can have more police. It is a very simple situation. We are not trying to spin the facts. We need more police. It is too late for Kelva but it is not too late for other people.

Women’s Suffrage Centenary

Sarah Jones Excerpts

Tuesday 6th February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Amber Rudd]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. Council election is often the first step women take before becoming a parliamentary candidate. The number of women in local government is shockingly low. We all need to do more to ensure that we find women in our constituencies willing to stand for the local council. The example he describes is very unsatisfactory. We need to be vigilant to make sure that women who do take the step are not talked down to.

[Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)]

I am proud to be Croydon’s first female MP and I have been learning this week about the suffragette Dorinda Neligan, who, as well as being arrested outside this place, was the first headteacher of an all-girls school in Croydon, despite complaints about strong-minded women encouraging girls to be dissatisfied with life at home. I am proud to be surrounded by many strong-minded women today. What can the Government do to promote more strong women in our school curriculum, from English literature to history, where we remain woefully under-represented?

[Amber Rudd]

The hon. Lady has highlighted the issue of girls in schools and the need to be vigilant to make sure that there is no sexism at that level. Women who have written great works or are great historians need to be ably represented in school. I suggest that her question is more specifically for the Department for Education, but I will certainly have a word with the Secretary of State to ensure that that is the case.

Oral Answers to Questions

Sarah Jones Excerpts

Monday 20th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Immigration (Brandon Lewis)]

The short answer is yes. We are very determined to do that. We have made a very ambitious and full offer on law enforcement and national security to our partners in the European Union, and I hope we will be able to move forward in a really positive way to ensure the security and safety of people in both the United Kingdom and Europe, as well as other partners more widely.

[Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)]

T3. I welcome the new Minister, the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins), to her role, which covers knife crime and serious youth violence. I warmly invite her to come to the all-party group on knife crime, which I chair.Cressida Dick, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, told the Home Affairs Committee that she has to find £400 million of savings over the next two years, despite the Mayor of London using the maximum precept that he is allowed. This means 10% fewer police officers in London, less prevention, less early intervention and less serious crime investigation at a time when violent crime and knife crime are rising. Will the Minister pass this on to the Treasury and ask for more police funds in the Budget?

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Some of these inquiries are very good, but there is an emerging tendency for colleagues to have a script prepared that—forgive me—is rather too long for topical questions. It may be exceptionally good and delivered with brilliance in every case, but it is too long and takes too much time. For future reference, please may I ask colleagues to curb this tendency, because you are crowding out other colleagues who may also wish to take part?

Knife Crime

Sarah Jones Excerpts

Wednesday 6th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for allowing this debate following a summer in which once again we have seen the devastating impact of knife crime.

A month ago tomorrow, 15-year-old Jermaine Groupall was stabbed to death in Croydon. Jermaine was the 15th teenager to die in a knife attack in London this year—15 young lives wasted. These devastating stories are in the news every time we switch on the TV or open a newspaper, but behind every headline is a family ruined; a local community in shock; more parents afraid to let their children out of their sight; and, tragically, a generation of young people who are becoming increasingly anxious and, in many cases, desensitised to the existence of dangerous weapons in their communities.

I asked for this debate because I believe, as I am sure everyone in this House believes, that every single life matters and that the epidemic of youth violence in this country will continue to escalate unless we do more to intervene.

I spent much of the summer talking to people in Croydon about knife crime, trying to understand why it has almost doubled in the past year. I spoke to young people involved in criminal gangs, youth workers who work with young people, local organisations that go into schools, mentor children, help provide advice and support or just give some love, and to the police, the local council, football clubs in local communities, large charities and tiny, two-person organisations in Croydon. I want to thank them all for their time and for what they do. They are all incredibly inspiring and strong.

I heard stories which broke my heart, including about policemen battling to save a life by putting their fingers in a wound to stop the streaming blood. The boy survived only to be picked up the very next week while out looking for revenge. I heard about young people who have been in care all their lives and find their only sense of love and belonging when they are in a gang; girls whose boyfriends ask them to carry their knives, and they do it because they believe that is what is expected of them; and horrific images of stabbings, of strippings, shown far and wide on social media. I was told of older men grooming young boys to carry drugs or commit other crimes with the promises of great riches that never materialised.

But this summer I also met towering figures who are giving their all to fight this problem, and some amazing young people who, against the odds, have turned their lives around. I was inspired and I learned a huge amount.

This is what I know: first, knife crime and knife carrying are increasing, and although they are greatest in London, they are increasing across the country. They are up by one fifth across England and Wales, according to recent statistics provided by the Office for National Statistics.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I sought the hon. Lady’s permission to intervene. I thank her for giving way and congratulate her on speaking on a massive issue. Northern Ireland has a relatively small amount of knife crime, with only 789 crimes involving knives and sharp objects in 2015-16. The fact remains, however, that there is a real need to educate our young people on the dangers of even bringing a knife out of the house. Does the hon. Lady agree that the Department of Justice and the Ministry of Justice must do more work with the Department for Education to target attention on the 12 to 17-year-old age bracket, because that is where the problem is?

[Sarah Jones]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right, and I will refer later in my remarks to education, which is key.

Knife crime is increasing. Comparative data from NHS hospitals show us that there was a 13% increase in admissions for assault by sharp object between 2015 and 2016. The Minister will be aware of the growing concern about county lines operated by urban criminal networks.

[Will Quince (Colchester) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing this important debate on the scourge of knife crime, which is one of the most important issues facing the country. She mentioned county lines. Does she agree that we need to get police forces outside London to work far more closely with the Metropolitan police to try to break some of those county lines, and particularly to tackle the practice of cuckooing, which preys on the most vulnerable in our society?

[Sarah Jones]

Yes, I agree with the hon. Gentleman that we need to do more. County lines is a new and developing issue that I have learned about in Croydon. Gangs go out as far as Cardiff and down to the south coast from London and other UK cities. They are spreading out, and we need to do more. Police resourcing is absolutely key, but we need to work together even more. Children from Aberdeen to Cardiff and Margate are carrying knives; it is a UK-wide problem.

The second thing I know is that the age of the young people involved is getting lower and lower. Every single agency I spoke to over the summer said that it was used to seeing young people between the ages of 16 and 24, but that the age of the children it saw was dropping to 12, 13 and 14.

[Mr Steve Reed (Croydon North) (Lab/Co-op)]

I echo the words of congratulation to my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. To what extent does she believe that the severe cuts to council services—they have led to cuts in services such as crime prevention, early intervention and family support—and the severe reductions in neighbourhood policing have contributed to Croydon having the second highest level of knife crime in London?

[Sarah Jones]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Over the summer, I walked around with the police looking for knives, and I talked to senior police officers and many others about the impact on their work of the cuts to their budgets and to other services. I heard about policeman buying food for children whom they had picked up before taking them home, because those children did not have enough food to eat. There are a huge range of issues that we need to tackle, but police cuts and local government cuts are an important part of the picture.

The third thing that I discovered over the summer is that the problem stretches beyond the children who are involved in crime and who carry knives themselves. Teenagers are growing up attending the funerals of school friends, with parents who are under-supported or overworked, and often both. Those children have growing anxiety and fewer ways to express it. A counselling service in my borough described deep-seated traumas among a growing number of young people, with half of the people who made up its case load having experienced suicidal thoughts. Many of our children now see the carrying of knives and the exploitation of men and women as normal. They see a world that, in many ways, we do not see.

The fourth fact that I learned is that the issue is complex. We cannot just say, “This is about kids in gangs who want to make money.” In fact, most knife crime is not gang-related. The causes range from policing, to jobs and training, to education, mental health and youth service provision; from silos in the care system to social media, parenting and street design. Every crime is different, every cause is different and every response must be adapted.

My fifth finding is that we know what works. A lot of people are already showing us the way, working hard and finding the answers. Although the picture is complex and the scale of the problem pretty big, there is a lot of evidence about what works and what needs to be done. I would not be standing here today if I did not think we could develop cross-party consensus about what needs to happen and how to tackle knife crime. The case that I want to make today is that we are simply not doing enough to tackle this blight on the lives of individuals and communities. I say that while welcoming the Home Secretary’s recent promise to crack down in law on the online sale of knives. I also welcome the continued commitment to Operation Sceptre by police forces up and down the country.

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing a debate on such a critical issue and on her truly excellent speech. Although the causes of and the solutions to knife crime are complicated, does she agree that the absolutely first base needed to solve it is properly resourced neighbourhood policing? Such policing builds trust, and is the bedrock of the trust between the police and local communities. It is absolutely critical in fostering a culture in which our young people believe that the police are there to keep them safe, and that they therefore do not need to carry weapons of their own.

[Sarah Jones]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. When I was walking around with the local police looking for knives on a local council estate, I talked to them about the impact of the cuts on their job, and they said the impact was very severe and that they could not do the things they wanted to do. For example, one of the things they do not have the resources to do is to go into schools to normalise the relationship between children and the police so that a bit more trust can be built up between them. Such interventions are absolutely crucial, but at the moment they are not happening in the way they should.

I welcome the Mayor of London’s recent knife crime strategy, as well as the work of many colleagues, such as that of my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Vicky Foxcroft), in setting up the Youth Violence Commission. The Home Office’s flagship scheme on ending gang violence and exploitation is well intentioned, but with just under £100,000 of funding for this year, it does not have enough money, and it also focuses predominately on gangs. It does not reflect the complex reality that has developed during the past few years, and it requires cash-starved local authorities to fund half the cost of the programme if they want it to be implemented in their areas.

I want to press the Minister to give this issue the breadth of focus it deserves. The Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Cressida Dick, has herself said that

“we absolutely cannot deal with this problem through enforcement alone.”

Specifically, I am calling on the Government to develop a coherent, 10-year knife crime strategy that co-ordinates work across departmental and party lines, puts preventive and acute resources on an equal footing, and recognises the interdependent nature of the public services in play. The hugely successful teenage pregnancy strategy implemented by the previous Labour Government resulted in record lows of teenage pregnancy, with a 51% drop over 16 years. Two things characterised that programme: the first was the length of time devoted to it—10 years; and the second was the recognition that no single Department could solve the problem alone.

I will not set out tonight, nor could I, what a 10-year strategy should look like, but I know plenty of people who could help us to write one. I want to highlight four things that must be part of the mix. The first is resources. At many stages of a young person’s life, the help they need is to be shown that they have choices, that getting involved in violence is not the way, that they can have a future and that people care, but such interventions simply do not exist. Such interventions might be in schools, to teach people about positive relationships and emotional responses, or through child and adolescent mental health services. They might take the form of a conversation with a policeman or a youth worker, or someone who can help them to think about their CV and their job options. Funding cuts across our public services—policing, youth work, education and health—have left a huge vacuum that social media and criminal gangs are filling, so we cannot duck the issue of resources or the lack of them. It comes up at every turn when we talk to anyone with first-hand experience of the problem.

My second point is that when I ask young people what has changed over the past couple of years, the conversation repeatedly returns to social media and the online world. Social media is undeniably fuelling an escalation in the cycle of violence among young people. There is a growing trend of documented attacks and threats between rival groups, of violating others and of widespread bullying through tools such as Snapchat and Instagram. We should look not just at hosting sites such as YouTube, but at channels that share and spread this content, often distributing it to thousands of people without consideration of the messages behind it or the age of those viewing it. All this provides the catalyst for an ever more extreme and condensed revenge cycle of violence. The smallest violation can now be broadcast to hundreds if not thousands of people, and it can escalate to face-to-face confrontation in a matter of hours. I urge the Minister to raise this issue with the Home Secretary. The Government have taken a strong approach to extremist content online, but this type of content is in many ways equally alluring and damaging.

My third point is that there are widespread concerns that schools are being overwhelmed by the scale of the issues they face and, as with the police, the spill-over issues of other services not being able to cope. Funding is absolutely key in that respect, but there are also increasing pressures to do with academic attainment. We have to ask whether some schools are bypassing their broader social responsibilities in the drive to make good on their bold claims about pass rates. There is particular concern about some academy chains. Every single agency that I have spoken to over the summer reports increasing levels of managed moves or expulsions, often for children with undiagnosed behaviour or mental health disorders, when the school simply cannot cope or does not want the child there.

Moving children to other schools or pupil referral units is a worrying trend. One organisation described to me the straight line between PRUs and gangs. We should look hard at whether there is sufficient accountability, particularly in academies, before condemning a child to a PRU.

Voluntary groups are an important bridge to young people, but they report increased difficulties in accessing schools. Again, academies seem particular culprits, preferring internal processes and systems to the learned experience and cultural competence that many voluntary sector organisations offer.

[Ross Thomson (Aberdeen South) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on bringing this important debate to the Chamber. Sadly, a young boy in my constituency lost his life while at school because another pupil had taken a knife with him. Every parent should be able to send their child to school in the knowledge that they will be safe there. Does the hon. Lady agree that there is some merit in looking at teachers’ powers and whether they should have the right to search pupils if they are suspicious or concerned that there could be a weapon in the classroom?

[Sarah Jones]

It is something that we need to look at. Teachers are overstretched in many ways: many support staff posts have been cut and teachers have to deal with children with special educational needs without the necessary resources. It is therefore hard to give them extra responsibilities for intervening if they believe a knife has been brought into school. However, we have to take action. The 10-year knife crime strategy, which would comprise a suite of actions and many different interventions, is the solution rather than one thing or another. There is talk of screens to walk through to go into school, but to me and many others that is an alarming prospect that we need to try to avoid if we can. However, if people are taking knives into school, we have clearly reached the point when intervention is required.

My final point is that we might look at the growing body of evidence that suggests we should view knife crime and youth violence as a public health issue. There is much good work on that in this country and abroad. The Minister will know that in America, across major cities such as Chicago, Boston and New York, youth violence is approached as a major public health issue, and tackled as an infectious epidemic. That includes interrupting activity at source, with people from the local community trained to intervene and work with young people; outreach workers working intensively with young people for six months or a year; and a programme of community and education activity to shift the norms around behaviour and expectation.

[Luke Graham (Ochil and South Perthshire) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on winning the ballot to hold the debate this evening, and I thank her for raising the issue, which affects the whole United Kingdom. It is especially pertinent to Clackmannanshire in my constituency, where there has been a significant increase in knife-related incidents in the past year alone, including one incident involving samurai swords in Alloa town centre. I welcome many of the measures that the hon. Lady has suggested and I hope to work with my hon. Friends to help to progress them. However, does she agree that measures on knife sales and imports of weapons to the UK should also be included in a future strategy?

[Sarah Jones]

The hon. Gentleman is right. I welcome the steps that the Home Secretary has already taken and I think we could do more. It is abhorrent that young people—children—find it easy to buy knives online or in shops. We should do everything we can to prevent that.

The direct intervention in America and in pockets here works and has high levels of success. I have visited projects and met people running projects here who are ex-gang members mentoring children, youth workers working with children in hospital directly after they have been stabbed, or former offenders working with kids in PRUs on training for job interviews and looking for other options in life. Those sorts of direct intervention work, and those pockets should become our response across the board. They need to be funded and co-ordinated.

[Mrs Kemi Badenoch (Saffron Walden) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing the debate. I agree that the Government should do all that they can, but policing is a devolved issue, and the first line of defence is the Mayor of London. As a member of the London Assembly, I scrutinised much of the work that he did in the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime, and I know that he has some leeway in addressing issues relating to funds for neighbourhood policing. Does the hon. Lady feel that his knife crime strategy addresses the problem, and if so, how?

[Sarah Jones]

I support the Mayor’s knife crime strategy. I do not think he is in a position to bridge the funding gap in the way that is required both for policing and for interventions in youth services and other services throughout the capital, but I know that he too is lobbying the Government for the funds that we need to tackle the problem. I know that he is doing absolutely everything he can, as are Cressida Dick and the Metropolitan police in London. I have met representatives of the Met, and have discussed the issue with them.

Let me end by returning to my original plea to the Minister for a cross-Government knife crime strategy. Governments have the job of deciding where and how resources should be allocated, and that is not an easy job, but this issue has been sidelined by the present Government for too long, and the consequences are very real. I hope that the Minister will commit herself to considering the proposals that I have outlined, meeting me to discuss them further, and hearing about the work of the APPG that I have set up and will be launching next week.

There are people here tonight who are working on the front line with children in Croydon to give them routes away from violence and crime. If we can match their commitment and bravery, we shall be doing a good thing.