Knife Crime

Debate between Sarah Jones and Luke Graham

Wednesday 6th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[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.