Gangs and Youth Violence

Debate between Stephen Phillips and Karen Buck

Friday 10th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Ms Buck]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. If intelligence of such activities is not passed on, young people will die. It is as simple as that. I could not agree more with him.

My hon. Friend underpins the point I was making. The relationships between young people and the police, who in this context are represented in the best way, in most cases, by safer neighbourhood officers, are critical, but above all are the relationships between young people and youth services. We are most likely to build the relationships of trust that ensure that intelligence flows between young people and voluntary or statutory youth services.

One of my big concerns is that the scaling back of youth services is leading to reduced capacity to provide diversionary activity and to work and build connections with those young people, but in addition there is an increasing tendency—this did not start in May 2010, although I sense that it is becoming more entrenched—for so many projects on gangs and young people who are at risk of being drawn into violence to be short-term, piecemeal and fragmented, although I pay tribute to the quality of those projects. In Westminster, the Brathay project works with young men in Queen’s Park. The UNCUT project went and came back—but for how long? A local scheme called ENDZ United does mediation work, which is one of the most constructive ways in which we can deal with gang violence, but its funding is for only 30 weeks. It is almost counter-productive for young people to build up a connection with a scheme that will be gone after six months or a year, and those relationships of trust between youth workers and young people are dissipated.

When I talk to young people after such projects end, they respond by saying, “I’m afraid that just goes to show how little anybody cares about us, because no sooner do we get connected with important schemes than they are over.” The consistency of project work is critical, as is the scale of the work that we do with young people. Despite the good work that I have mentioned, sadly, Westminster is cutting £225,000 from its youth service this year. Although around £100,000 is being put into various anti-gang initiatives, Westminster managed a few weeks ago to find £100,000 just to replace railings in Sussex gardens, and it has spent £144,000 to send managers on away days. That is a problem with spending priorities.

We need to do better than we have been doing on cross-border liaison. Brent council, which is central, has such major problems on the Stonebridge estate that it has been unable to focus as much as I would like on south Kilburn and Paddington. Kensington council, I am afraid, has something of a head-in-the-sand attitude—it seems to think that it does not have a problem at all.

In conclusion, I want to ask the Minister a few questions. Is he satisfied that there is a coherent, strategic approach to gangs and youth violence across Departments, and if so how is it demonstrated? Will he take steps to satisfy himself that boroughs such as mine that were not previously regarded as high risk do not sink into complacency, but develop their own strategic plans and monitor progress towards them? Will he liaise with his colleagues in the Department for Communities and Local Government and the Department for Education to review the impact of spending cuts on youth services, especially in higher-risk areas? How can the Government help to ensure that interventions aimed at those at risk are not always short-term, fragmented programmes whose premature end undermines so much of the value that may have been achieved? Far too many lives are being lost on our city streets, and an even greater proportion of young lives are being blighted under the shadow of violence, at least some of which is accounted for by the growing problem of gang association.

[Stephen Phillips (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

This is an extremely important debate, and I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing it. The House spends an enormous amount of time talking about the bad things that young people are responsible for, of which this is one, but does she agree with me, and no doubt the rest of the House, that there are many things for which young people are responsible that we should, and do, celebrate? Neither this debate nor the bad things we read in the media are indicative of what young people are for.

[Ms Buck]

I absolutely agree with the hon. and learned Gentleman. In an way, it is because I see so many young people whom I admire and love, and because I see the damage that violence and the fear of it are doing to them that I am motivated to come here and raise this issue. Many—almost all—of the young people whom I see who commit crimes do bad things but are not bad people, and they deserve the chance of an alternative life and rehabilitation.

That is the context. We have heard much about the many tragedies affecting south London, Nottingham, Manchester and so on. That was confirmed again by my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham. I know that many of my parliamentary colleagues will want to return to this issue, but I have to tell the House that when a problem this grave affects even the streets of a place such as Westminster, we have a graver problem than anyone has recognised, and I look to the Government to help us respond to and deal with it.