Knife Crime

Debate between Sharon Hodgson and Andy Slaughter

Monday 25th March 2019 Westminster Hall

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to be here this afternoon under your chairmanship, Sir Graham.

We were here just a few weeks ago debating this subject, and indeed knife crime has come up regularly—we had the urgent question on Friday in the main Chamber. It is also right, as my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker) said in his extraordinarily passionate and persuasive speech, that it is several weeks since we first heard about the knife crime summit, which apparently will happen some time next week. In asking a Minister a question about that on Friday, I said that I sincerely hoped that the summit would not be a talking shop and that we would see resources and action as a consequence of it.

I am glad that we are at last taking this seriously and debating it on a regular basis—I just hope that these debates lead to action—but I cannot help but observe that, since the last knife crime debate in Westminster Hall, and since the knife crime summit was announced, there have been two murders in my borough: one was of a 17-year-old boy, for which offence a 15-year-old has been charged; and the other, just a week ago, was just outside my constituency and was the murder of a 29-year-old man, who was stabbed to death needlessly and pointlessly in an ordinary street. It is often said—this is one reason we are now taking this very seriously—that for every one of these tragic murders, there are a hundred other stabbings and similar incidents. Some are not even reported to the police, and some are known only to the doctors who treat those involved. There could be thousands of instances of young people carrying weapons.

I do not want to exaggerate, because on the whole our constituencies are still safe places and walking around them at night, or at any time, is a perfectly safe and reasonable thing to do, but there is a cultural change and a change in how communities feel about knife crime. They feel that it is not just about one or two people, or gangs, or known criminals. They feel that it is now inculcating the atmosphere of where we live. That is why I do not think it is an exaggeration to say that knife crime is a national emergency or a matter for Cobra—we have to take it extremely seriously.

One of the young people who died in my borough, Ayub Hassan, was 17 years old. He was born and lived in my constituency, and he was killed in my constituency. As his mother told me, he was her best friend. She is inconsolable at his death. Although there is almost a pyramid, of which the killings are at the top, and although we worry about every offence, there is something absolutely significant about young lives being taken in this way, and the opportunity that is lost, and the way that people did not have a chance to live their lives, and about how it affects their siblings, their parents, their wider family and often the whole community where they live. We have to get to grips with knife crime. It is an incredibly complex, multi-layered issue, and will take a number of years to get right. However, it also requires urgent action.

This debate is about sentencing. That is an important aspect but, as we have heard in all the speeches so far, it is only one element. I suspect that my views on sentencing are probably closer to those of the Minister than they are to those of the hon. Member for Dudley North (Ian Austin). I am a former shadow Justice spokesman and have looked into this in some detail. I am not a big fan of mandatory sentencing. As has been pointed out, mandatory sentencing itself often has a degree of discretion of which the courts make due and proper use. There are sentencing guidelines, but we have to leave individual cases to the judiciary. We have a very competent judiciary —it is not a soft judiciary—in this country. As we have heard, we have one of the highest incarceration rates. Yes, there should be appropriate sentencing and, yes, people should be locked up for many offences, whether it is for carrying a knife, using a knife, or for any serious violence that results from knife crime. However, we will not solve this problem by sentencing policy.

[Geraint Davies in the Chair]

We need to start with something a number of Members have mentioned: proper community policing. The loss of that in London over the past few years has made a dramatic difference. When it started, it was an experiment —we were told it was about reassurance. Those were times of greater plenty as far as public funds go, and it was felt that, in addition to everything that was supposed to work, including response policing and detection, we could afford the luxury of putting police back on the streets—bobbies on the beat, community officers.

Then the police would have told us, “We’re not going to catch people doing crimes. We’re not going to solve crimes, but it’s an important community role.” Many senior police officers now admit that they were wrong about that, and that community policing has played a valuable role in reducing crime. A dedicated, in both senses of the word, group of police, even a small group—it was typically six per ward—got to know the community and which people were good and bad. The intelligence they collected and their knowledge of what was going on meant that it was not about just reassurance; it was about policing in the way we do best in this country, by consent and with the support of the community. It was resource intensive, and it is impossible for those who agree about that policing, whichever party they come from, not to acknowledge that the resources were just taken away.

The Mayor of London has done a very good job in putting resources back—we were down to one officer per ward at one point. It is a semantic thing to say that ward boundaries are the problem. The resources are the problem, and they need to be increased quickly. If that prevents further serious injury and death, it will go at least some way to turning this juggernaut around—all the indications are that we are going in the wrong direction.

I will make a pact with Government Members if they concede that resources have been cut back too far. Local authorities have lost 50% of their funding, meaning that things that are often discretionary, such as youth centres and youth funding, have been cut by even more than that. Most of the youth clubs in my constituency have closed over time. When they were being closed, it was fashionable for some politicians to say, “How on earth does youth work—diversionary activity—decide whether people will go out with a piece of metal and stab someone?” Such comparisons are crass. The opposite argument is that if young people are given something useful to do, are made to feel they are worth while and are shown that there is investment in them, their neighbourhoods and their communities, they have a different outlook on life. Life does not become hopeless. It does not become just a wasting of time and getting into trouble. If Members on both sides will admit that we must reverse that absolute drain on resources in our local communities, I will not make a party political issue of it. I concede that I think everyone is of goodwill whatever their views on aspects such as sentencing, penal policy or investment. I believe that there is a will across political parties to get this right in response to the horrific things we have seen. Having that intention is a good start, but it is not where we need to go.

The second thing we need to do is engage some of the expertise and knowledge that is out there. Part of that is in our policing and our judiciary, and among our medics and the experts in the field, but part is in the community. I spent half an hour at surgery this morning with the mother of a young boy in my constituency. She had not come to ask me to do anything. In fact, the surgery was almost the other way around—I learned far more from her than she did from me.

We spent half an hour talking about exactly this problem. Her son had a very late diagnosis of special needs, and all the trouble he was having at primary school was put down to bad behaviour. He ended up being excluded from secondary school at an early stage and going into alternative provision, which, his mother said, was dreadful and dire. It was not just that he was not being properly educated and his needs were not being identified and no action taken; before he was a teenager even, he had been cast out—he was now excluded, no longer part of acceptable society.

The second thing that happened, of course, was that he was put with all the other naughty boys, and when naughty boys go around together, perhaps not doing terribly bad things to begin with, after a while one or two of them will get into trouble and get convictions for this, that or the other—a bit of criminal damage perhaps. My constituent’s son now has a conviction for carrying a knife. That comes about either from neglect, bureaucracy or lack of intervention by, or resources from, statutory bodies of all different kinds.

Where does that leave the parents? My hon. Friend the Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury), who is no longer in the room—she tragically had a death in her constituency over the weekend—said to me, “Where is the support for parents of victims but also for parents who have tried to do their best to keep their children out of trouble and who worry every night about where their sons or daughters are?”

[Mrs Hodgson]

On my hon. Friend’s powerful point about who people come into contact with when they are first getting into trouble, if there was an automatic 10-year sentence on first arrest for carrying a knife, a young person who had not been in trouble at all could find him or herself not just in a young offenders institution but among the prison population, with some very, very bad people who had done much worse things. Turning someone who is carrying a knife because they are scared into a hardened criminal eventually could be an unintended consequence of what we hope to achieve with sentencing.

[Andy Slaughter]

My hon. Friend shows a lot of compassion and understanding.

I do not advocate a soft approach; on the contrary, we need rigour in the system, but not the knee-jerk reaction that we will suddenly cure this by sentencing. How often have we heard that in relation to every possible offence? Is that not what has driven the prison population to double, and the conditions in prisons and the assistance for those leaving to be so dire in this country that this is an international embarrassment?

I do not want to say much more. I believe not just that we are well-intentioned but that we are resolved to tackle the issue. The expertise is there, and part of that is listening to our communities.

I am almost dreading the summit next week, because I fear it will be a talking shop, a couple of press releases and not much more to get the Government through another week or two. I hope the Minister will tell us that that is not the case. I also hope that we will hear from him before 7 o’clock—I apologise, Mr Davies, that I will not be here after that. If I miss the end of his speech, I will read it diligently, as I always do. I know that it will be worth reading because he shares that view.

I respect what the people who drafted, motivated and signed this petition are trying to achieve, because they are expressing the same frustration as the mother who came to see me today: that Members are standing around, looking powerless—they might think we are uninterested, but we are not—and are not solving problems that are solvable. Those problems are getting worse and worse: they are now affecting not just individuals, but whole communities. This is a national emergency, and we need to act.

Sure Start Children’s Centres

Debate between Sharon Hodgson and Andy Slaughter

Wednesday 2nd March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Slaughter]

I am grateful for that. The Minister has said in previous debates that she has concerns about what is happening in Hammersmith. Her view—she has expressed it both in answer to parliamentary questions and in debate—is that there is sufficient money in the early intervention grant to preserve the network of Sure Start centres. I am sure she will repeat that view today, in spite of a cut of about 13% coming from central Government—certainly my Conservative council has said that the cut in Sure Start funding through the early intervention grant is 12.9%.

Given that we are talking about what are already pretty lean organisations, as my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger) said, we could argue about whether even a 13% cut can sustain the current professional network. However, the Minister has set out her stall on that, so I will address the issue locally, because even on the basis of the cut of about 45% that we are facing—a cut that has been revised slightly downwards—the preservation of Sure Start in Hammersmith is demonstrably unsustainable.

Without going into too much detail, there are one or two points from my local examples that bear analysis, because similar things may be happening elsewhere in the country.

[Mrs Hodgson]

Before my hon. Friend moves on, I would like to get some clarity on the assertion, which we keep hearing, that the early intervention grant is being protected in cash terms. When we look at the technical note, which I continually refer to—I even carry it round in my handbag, to have it handy at every opportunity—we see a £311 million in-year cut for 2010-11. It looks as though the grant is being protected in cash terms, but a £311 million in-year cut is being taken off the bottom, so it is not protected in cash terms at all. When we bear that in mind, we see that we are talking about a 20% cut over three years.

[Mr Slaughter]

Indeed, and with a 13% cut in the first year for my area. However, if my hon. Friend does not mind, I want to leave her and the Minister to debate that point, which is a valid one. We heard a disingenuous speech by the hon. Member for West Suffolk (Matthew Hancock), who implied that there was no need to make cuts of that order and that the Government were in some way protecting Sure Start. On the figures that my hon. Friend has given, that is not true around the country. However, if she does not mind, I will leave that point because, from my perspective, we would be grateful for a 13% cut—if I can put it that way—rather than what is actually happening.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Slaughter]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, but I shall now try to make some progress.

On or about 27 December—a time when we are all assiduously reading Government and council documents—my local authority published a report on family support, indicating what funding would be available over the next financial year. The report addressed Sure Start—not directly, but obliquely—first by rubbishing Sure Start provision, saying that although the centres were

“clearly popular with families, and seem likely to have some preventive impact, we have much less clear evidence about the degree of impact this has—including on the ultimate number of children falling into child protection”,

and that

“early studies showed no clear evidence of impact on early school results”.

That might come as a surprise to Members on both sides of the House, given that we heard my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree earlier quoting the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister—certainly before the election—expressing their strong support for Sure Start. However, those rather vague and grudging comments were used as the basis for reducing Sure Start funding by over 50%, with the council report saying:

“However, it is not likely under this scenario that LBHF could continue to directly fund more than 6 Children’s centre teams. In any case we would no longer seek to directly run centres”,

adding that it aimed

“to maintain some provision at most centres, through small amounts of pump-priming funding.”

In the financial section of the report, however, no money whatever was provided for such pump priming; money was provided simply to keep the remaining six centres open.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, by the time report came to committee and was due to be dealt with on 10 January, there was what might be called “a row on the town” in that a large number of people were concerned about it and turned up at the meeting. Indeed, my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) was one of them, so she might want to comment further in her own speech. At that meeting, the authority, faced with great popular disapproval, told people that they had misunderstood the position as no centres were going to be closed, and had misunderstood that the decision had already been taken as consultation was about to be launched. That is what we were told. That would have sounded quite good, save for the fact that the report was then passed in its entirety, including the 50% cut to the budget. We were in the peculiar position of being told one thing when a decision had been taken that was entirely contrary to it. The situation became even more complicated when, later in the same week and rushed out in response to public demand and other factors, a consultation paper was published, with an extra £19,000 slipped in, which turned out to be the pump-priming money—the £19,000 that was going to the Sure Start centres under threat of closure.

Leaving aside the fact that this was shambolic, chaotic and no way to run anything, let alone a local authority, we need to reflect on the reasons for this process of decision making. There were three. The first was connected to public relations. By putting £19,000 into centres that previously had no money at all, the authority could say to the general public and the media, who by this time were taking a strong interest in the issue, that it was not closing the Sure Start centres. Secondly, the consultation was done quite successfully, but it confused the parents and users of those centres, who were told that the centres were not closing but staying open as a result of this £19,000. Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, somebody had bothered to look at the regulations, so a scrutiny report was published at the same time, making the observation:

“Local authorities have duties under the Childcare Act 2006 to consult before opening, closing or significantly changing children’s centres, and to secure sufficient provision to meet local need”.

The authority realised that it would be subject to judicial review if the consultation process did not happen. I suspect that it will still be subject to judicial review because consulting after the decision has been made is not the best option.

[Mrs Hodgson]

I read that same paragraph in a copy of a letter from the hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke), which was a response to a letter to the Minister of State, Department for Education, the hon. Member for Brent Central (Sarah Teather), from the all-party Sure Start group. I was curious because I thought it sounded like closing the stable door after the horse had bolted. Once the budget cut has been made, the consultation does not matter, because if the consultation showed that people wanted to keep the centres, where would the money come—