Knife Crime

Steve Reed Excerpts

Wednesday 6th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[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.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sarah Newton]

Of course resources are important, but let us be clear: the Government are not cutting the money that goes to police forces. Since 2015, their money will have been going up in cash terms, especially if they use their precepting powers. It is not fair to say that we are cutting that money. Police officers—police leaders, with the police and crime commissioners—make the operational decisions. It is the Mayor of London, working with the Metropolitan police, who decides how London is to be policed and how communities are to be kept safe. Of course the Home Office has a role to play in supporting them, and, since 2016, our modern crime prevention strategy has focused on the reduction of violent crime, including knife crime. That strategy is very clear. When we meet the all-party group—in the few minutes I have got this evening, I cannot do justice to the breadth of work the Government are doing to bear down on this issue—I will, with officials, explain to the hon. Member for Croydon Central and other members of the APPG across the House who want to come along our strategy and the actions that we are taking now. As the hon. Lady says, the Home Secretary announced a whole series of measures that we are about to consult on, and of course her contribution to that will be very welcome.

[Mr Reed]

The Government have directly reduced funding for youth offending services and indirectly reduced funding for early intervention and family support through the cuts delivered to local government. This has become so severe that those working in youth offending services can no longer devote the time necessary to prevent young offenders from reoffending, so we are still seeing reoffending at extremely high levels. That is putting those young offenders at risk and risking future victims. Will the Government look again at these very short-sighted cuts which are not only causing such damage to young people’s futures, but will cost more in the long run because of the consequences of the crimes they commit?

[Sarah Newton]

I absolutely agree with the hon. Gentleman that prevention is vitally important—working with young people to explain the risks they are taking if they carry a knife and, once they get into the criminal justice system, making sure they get all the support they need to be diverted from such harmful behaviour. A key part of the announcement we made in July was that we will be doing more work at a community level. We are setting up the new £500,000 community fund to support those very successful grassroots organisations we have heard about this evening, which are key partners for us in the Home Office, such as St Giles and Redthread. I am sure the hon. Member for Croydon Central has had meetings with those excellent organisations in London. We work with and partner such organisations and part-fund them, along with the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime and the Mayor of London, to make sure the services are there, and that we are identifying the most vulnerable young people and giving them the support they need to make different choices in their lives.

Building on that evidence base and what we have learned in London, services are being expanded across the United Kingdom. We have heard about the excellent work done in A&E departments—the “teachable moments” that happen in our major trauma centres here in London. The Government are part-funding the expansion of that into cities around the UK this year. So we are working at pace with determination using the evidence base of what works—a lot of that has been learned in London—to make sure other parts of the country and communities that are experiencing such problems are getting the support they need.

That brings me back to the hon. Lady’s primary ask that we work together across the House to look at both a national and a local response. Since we launched our strategy, we have been building the capacity in the system to understand this very complex issue: it is sometimes driven by gangs, and sometimes by organised and serious crime; and whereas carrying knives and participating in knife crime disproportionately involves young people, people of other ages are involved as well. We have funded a whole series of local and area-based reviews. One was done in Croydon; the hon. Lady might not have had a chance to speak to the chief executive of her local authority or her borough commander about that work, but it was very useful. We have had very good feedback from boroughs and places all over the country, enabling all the agencies in the community—social services, youth offending services, schools and teachers, voluntary groups, communities and counsellors—to share data and build a picture of what is happening in their communities, so that they can properly target their resources to join up those services to support young people in the communities to make different choices.

That work extends beyond the immediate localities to deal with the county lines issues. This sort of crime is being exported out of London, Manchester and Liverpool to other parts of the country, so we are funding not only local area reviews but national strategic reviews. With that better intelligence and data, we are making a real difference by joining up the different parts of the public services with businesses and voluntary sector organisations, which are so capable of working with young people, to restrict access to knives. That work is being scaled up at pace to meet the challenge that we undoubtedly face today.