Gangs

Tom Brake Excerpts

Tuesday 11th October 2011 Westminster Hall

[Mr Lammy]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. The point I am making is that, two years ago, the assistant borough commander, the head of the youth service and her representatives, and representatives of social services, health services and schools were sat around the table—routinely, every month—discussing the group of young people who were getting caught up in this situation, and that funds were coming through to support that activity. I am afraid that they told me last week that that has ended. They are engaged—meeting voluntarily, every six weeks—because they are so concerned, but there is no statutory framework for that activity, and neither is there the support and diversion activity that needs to happen.

The hon. Gentleman will appreciate from his long experience that what those young people need is diversionary activity and intervention. That requires resources. If he speaks to colleagues in Waltham Forest—my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow might say something about this—he will hear that they are concerned about resources. I think that this is one area in which we can make the plea for resources, because the consequences of under-resourcing will cost us so much more. The co-ordination and resources that must rightly follow, so that those professionals can do their job, are essential.

[Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)]

The right hon. Gentleman is clearly drawing on his extensive experience. To return to the issue of youth offending, is he calling for ring-fenced funding from central Government to go to local authorities, or does he believe that local authorities themselves have a duty to prioritise youth offending funding within their budgets?

[Mr Lammy]

I am not calling for prescription; it is not for me to prescribe how this should be done. That must be a matter for the Government. What I am saying is that this is a priority and a real issue in London. Youth services are being cut and reduced across London. It is easy to make the point that the London borough of Haringey, for example, should prioritise youth services at a time when it has to cut £40 million in year from its budget. I am worried, however, that I will be here with colleagues next year and that the figures will have gone in the wrong direction, because we will have been unable to prioritise the service.

As I said at the beginning of my speech, although I do not recognise a picture that suggests that gangs were behind this summer’s rioting and social unrest, it is clear that gang members were part of it. I have spoken to the manager of JD Sports in Tottenham retail centre and to the manager of Comet. I have also looked at some of the video and pictures of complete lawlessness, which ran for more than five or six hours—there were more young people in that shop that night, looting and robbing, than during the day—and I do not want my constituents to get accustomed to such things, because that would be dangerous for any society—those events have to be a one-off. Those charged with intervening in, dispersing and engaging with often chaotic families, as well as those who co-ordinate pupil referral units and ensure that young people in care are properly provided for, who work with families, who think about a living wage and about our economy, and who ask hard questions about where the jobs are in a constituency such as Tottenham, recognise that this is important.

Although I am pleased that the Government have said that they want to prioritise the issue, as a Back Bencher I want to scrutinise how that is done. We should, of course, speak to those from across the pond who have experience in this area, but I have now been the MP for Tottenham for 12 years and, when I began, knife crime and gangs were certainly not a major phenomenon of the capital city. In those days, the caricature was of yardie gangs—I am sure my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington will recall reading about them in the papers.

The situation has changed completely and we have a decision to make: are we going to see gangs and that terrible youth violence as a permanent phenomenon of our economy and country, as in parts of downtown America? We are on a cusp. We can either get over the problem with proper, co-ordinated quality effort, or I am afraid that it will be a permanent phenomenon of our modern economy.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)]

I congratulate the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) on opening the debate in a well informed manner, drawing on his constituency experience. He rightly concentrated on what we need to do to stop young people from going into gangs. I would like to focus a little on what measures senior police officers believe should be in place to tackle gangs in which young people are involved. The four measures that have been highlighted by the officers are: sound mechanisms for identifying gangs and gang-related problems; the ability to track gangs; tough enforcement; and the ability to signpost gang members out of gangs.

Regarding sound mechanisms for identifying gangs, there is clearly a role for safe neighbourhood teams on the ground and for grass-root organisations. At a higher level, we will have the national crime agency, which has to play an important role in identifying gangs, particularly when they go from being a gang into organised crime.

On tracking gangs, a number of hon. Members referred to the ongoing multi-agency work, such as safeguarding hubs in London and information-sharing hubs, where different bodies that have responsibility or have contact with gang members can pool their information to ensure that they are monitoring the young people as effectively as possible and bringing positive measures to bear on them. Clearly, there is a need for that information to be cross-borough, as the hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) highlighted. Gangs cross borough boundaries, so having an information-sharing hub that is borough-based is not good enough; it needs to cross borough boundaries to work with neighbouring boroughs.

Regarding tough enforcement, there are now gang injunctions, although I have some reservations about the evidence threshold that will be used for them and about the cost, which senior officers have mentioned. That may be because we are at an early stage of using gang injunctions and there is a learning curve that has to be followed. However, I support the fact that gang injunctions have the power to compel young people to undertake certain positive activities, because that is a major plus point and will help with tough enforcement.

On signposting gang members out of gangs, a large range of organisations in the voluntary sector and in government provides activities. I understand that there is a database where such information is held, which may need updating. It includes details of organisations such as Kickz, Cricket for Change and a host of other effective organisations such as Voyage or Horizons, run by the Met Black Police Association. We need to ensure that the information is up to date so that, when a member is identified, the relevant activities can be signposted to them to help them out of their gang environment.

I know that, in such debates, it is easy to fire a long list of questions at a Minister, which he or she, unfortunately, will not have time to respond to at the end of the debate, so I will leave the Minister with just one point, which is about the Cardiff model. The principle behind the Cardiff model is that a hospital would communicate with the local police about where people with gunshot or knife wounds were coming from, to ensure that the police could bear down on a particular pub or estate where the problems were being generated. There is some confusion in London at the moment as to whether hospitals are doing that. I would like the Minister, now, if possible, or in writing, perhaps to the benefit of all hon. Members, to confirm that all hospitals, in London at least, have signed up to the Cardiff model. That model has generated a substantial drop in the number of serious injuries; I think the quoted figure is 40%. We want to see that effective model deployed across London and beyond, so that other parts of the country can experience the same drop in serious injuries.