Knife Crime

Stella Creasy Excerpts

Thursday 24th January 2019 Westminster Hall

[Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

We could not have had a better Chair for today’s debate, Ms Buck, given your expertise and experience on this subject, so it is wonderful to serve under your chairmanship.

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Leyton and Wanstead (John Cryer) for all his hard work in getting this debate from the Backbench Business Committee, and to my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker), who I know is sad he cannot be here today, but, first and foremost, I pay tribute to the family of Jaden Moodie, who are with us today. They have shown incredible courage and strength at such a difficult time by being here and being so determined about the future.

I want to start by saying that we sometimes look at this through the wrong end of the telescope. We talk about the violence, but I want to start by talking about the person, by talking about Jaden and his family, who have told me about his smile, his laughter and his ambition to take up motorcycling, work in a garage and be a young man who would have a business that would thrive in our local community. When we talk about these young people, we must talk about what we have lost as a society, about the contribution they could have made to our communities and country, and about why this is, frankly, a national crisis.

Jaden’s is not the first story I have heard, and his is not the first family I have worked with as the MP for Walthamstow. In the last 18 months, we have buried six children in our community—children killed by other children. The others were Elijah Dornelly, Kacem Mokrane, Joseph William-Torres, who was known as Nico, Amaan Shakoor and Guled Farah. Each of their families, like Jaden’s family, is grieving for the life they have lost and for all the family celebrations where there will be one seat empty—one person they will never forget. They are now asking for our help so that no other family will go through this horror.

We know that we cannot talk about the details of Jaden’s case. That is absolutely right, but we must talk about what is happening in our communities and country. This is a national crisis, as I said. We should have this debate every week in Parliament due to the level of knife violence and the young people’s lives that we are losing. In London, there have been 15,000 attacks involving knives in the last year—a 50% increase on 2015. Five hundred children have turned up in our hospitals as victims of knife crime in the last year alone—an 86% increase in the past four years. It is an upward trend, as my neighbour and hon. Friend the Member for Leyton and Wanstead said, and it is decimating London, in particular.

We have about 259 violent gangs in our capital city, who are responsible for almost a quarter of serious violence—17% of robberies, 50% of shootings and 14% of rapes in our communities. We know that gangs are growing, with 4,500 people in those roughly 250 recognised gangs in London. They are involved in not just drug crime, but violent crime. It is estimated that about 230 people in my borough are involved in gangs or are gang associates.

One of the things that gets lost in the way we look at these debates is the recognition that this is about not just gangs, but the people caught up in them, who live with the fear of violence—children who are not in gangs, but who are living through this time with us and who need our help. The Greater London Authority has estimated that by 2023 there will be a 15% increase in the number of children at risk from gangs in London, either as victims or offenders. That is an extra 123,000 young people aged 10 to 18 who need this not to be the only debate. They need us to talk about not just the violence we have seen, but the things that we will do to stop it ever happening again.

We know the gangs are changing. In my borough of Waltham Forest—what happened there has led to this debate—the problem was territory a few years ago. We have fantastic research on this by John Pitts: young people felt a sense of pride in being in a gang with other local people and said that that was who they were. Now, it is a commercial enterprise that is driving the toxin of drug dealing in our communities. There is a business ethos, as John Pitts calls it, and young people are being sent through county lines all around the country to make money for the elders.

The National Crime Agency found that 88% of areas now report county lines activity—a phenomenon that has grown only in the past few years. It means that what is happening in our capital city is affecting everyone in our country. And, yes, young women are involved too: 90% of those areas saw young women involved in county lines activity.

The gangs picture changes so quickly, but the young people who matter, and who are at the heart of this, do not. We think we have about 12, or possibly 13, serious gangs in Waltham Forest. Of those 12 gangs, only four were active a few years ago. The situation is changing and calls for a local response.

Some people have talked about middle-class drug users and the way they are driving the situation. It is important that we recognise, particularly in our local community in Waltham Forest, that people are trading in small amounts of drugs, which is pushing people into gangs. Some young people are being sent miles to make just £5. They are selling to everybody, and we need policing to be able to disrupt those chains of distribution. Anybody who tells you that policing does not matter is not living through this crisis. Our local community in Waltham Forest has lost 200 police in the past couple of years alone. Our police work hard to identify these young people and to work with our social workers and youth workers. Two hundred police have gone, which means there are 200 fewer people to help do that work—gathering intelligence, building the confidence of the local community, and interrupting and disrupting that behaviour.

We know it is not just about drugs. My hon. Friend the Member for Leyton and Wanstead talked powerfully about the importance of social work. I want to talk about the importance of schools and, as I said, to see the children behind these figures who are falling through the cracks. When we do, we see so many similar issues in the stories they tell, which is why this debate is so important. The right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith) is right to say that this is not a new phenomenon. The gangs might be changing, but we know what works. We know how we can help and step in to support families—not to demonise them, but to recognise their value to our communities.

We know that the motivations for joining gangs and getting involved in violence are complex. Yes, poverty and racism play an important part, but it is also about schools, geographical communities and the support networks—the strong and weak ones—around our young people. We see the grooming process start early, often with children as young as 10. Frankly, sometimes the interventions that we see are just too late in that chain of process, which is why I pay tribute to my local authority for the work it is doing. It recognises that young people under 18 who are involved in this activity are being criminally exploited and that they need protection and support. I also want to put on record my thanks to Gedling Council for the work it has been doing not just to support Jaden’s family, but to recognise some of the interconnections.

I know that Members will talk about early trauma, about a public health model and about how contagious these problems are. My local authority, like the Mayor of London, recognises that our schools are struggling to cope with the early presentation of these problems. How do we help young people who might be struggling at school and who have problems in their family? We need more than warm words; we need funding, and we need to recognise what we are fighting for: not just to stop the violence, but for a future for each of those young people.

The hon. Member for Hornchurch and Upminster (Julia Lopez) mentioned exclusions, which is really what I want the Minister to comment on. Looking at the many letters that she has written to me about this issue, it feels like we look too often at what happens when violence occurs, yet we know that exclusions are a common theme in some of the stories we are talking about. Indeed, 41 pupils a day were permanently excluded last year from schools in this country. There were 19 permanent exclusions in my local authority alone, which is actually below the national average. There are 115 children in our pupil referral units, which suggests that there are many more children who need support and intervention but who are not being picked up through the process of being categorised as excluded.

The all-party parliamentary group on knife crime found that one in three local authorities has no vacancies in their pupil referral unit. Those young people are the most vulnerable. They might be a minority of the school population, but they go on to be a majority of our prison population. They are 10 times more likely to have a mental health need, 20 times more likely to be subject to social services intervention, and 100 times more likely to commit an offence of knife possession. If we work with these young people now and recognise their value, we can stop many of these problems and break some of these cycles. I also say to the Minister that, frankly, we can save money. Every excluded pupil will cost £370,000 over their lifetime in terms of extra education, benefits, healthcare and the criminal justice system. That is a total of £2.9 billion lost to the Exchequer by permanently excluding just 7,000 pupils.

The Pitts research on Waltham Forest bears out what we are talking about in terms of those young people who are vulnerable and being exploited. One professional said:

“That’s the level of ruthlessness of these gangs, they will recruit these kids and basically just use them as a piece of meat for whatever purpose they’ve got.”

Another said:

“Youngers are normally easier to influence, when they are at school.”

However, the honest truth is that the Home Office’s work on violent crime—it is very commendable that the Home Office has started to look at it—is not working in schools and does not recognise that localised approach. A gang’s position in my local community will be different from a gang’s position south of the river, in south London. That work needs local people who see those young people, who see the warning signs and who see why it is worth fighting for their future.

I know the Government will talk about social media and the money they are putting in to tackling violent crime. I know they have recognised the amazing work that my hon. Friends the Members for Lewisham, Deptford (Vicky Foxcroft) and for Croydon Central (Sarah Jones) have done on knife crime and a public health approach. However, we also want a preventive approach, as we have with healthcare. A legal duty to a public health model will mean little if there are no organisations to work with it and do the preventive work.

The right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green talked about people who are in a desert of decent people. We in Walthamstow are a decent community; I know that not only because of the good families here with us, but because of the amazing people from the voluntary and community sectors who have come today. They, too, are committed to solving this crisis. Organisations such as Spark2life, Access Aspiration, The Soul Project, Gangs Unite, Boxing4Life, Words 4 Weapons, the Waltham Forest community hub, Break Tha Cycle, Worth Unlimited, the Ken Tuitt Football Foundation and Walthamstow Youth Circus all see that those young people need our support. They need a Government who join the dots and recognise that too many of our young people are struggling in education, are vulnerable to exploitation and are therefore vulnerable to such challenges.

Yes, I have seen the letters from the Minister, for which I thank her. We keep talking about exclusions and mental health, but we need to join up the Department of Health and Social Care and the Department for Education. We must ensure that young people receive alternative provision, that referral units are not seen as some sort of sin bin; and that we see those young people as worthy of fighting for. Please, Minister, I do not want another child in our community to be buried because of knife crime ever again. It is preventable, and if we work together, we can stop it.