Gangs and Serious Youth Violence

Vicky Foxcroft Excerpts

Thursday 3rd March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Will Quince]

My hon. Friend makes a valid point, and he is absolutely right. There are many reasons why young people carry blades. Sometimes it is to do with fear—that relates to his earlier point—and sometimes they are a status symbol. We have to hammer home the message that not only is it illegal to carry a knife, but a person is statistically far more likely to be the victim of a knife crime if they do so. We have to get that message out loud and clear.

I believe that the answer to youth violence is threefold, involving deterrence, education and intervention. In the interests of time, I will focus on the first two. I welcome the steps that the Government have taken, such as minimum custodial sentences for repeat knife possession and the commitment on police budgets. I agree with the hon. Member for Streatham on the need for education, which has a key role to play. We need to do far more to educate our young people about the dangers of carrying knives.

I have campaigned for some time with a local knife crime charity, Only Cowards Carry, which provides weapons awareness lessons in schools. The charity, which is based in north Essex in the Clacton area, was set up in 2012 by Caroline Shearer, whose 17-year-old son, Jay Whiston, was fatally stabbed that year. Since then Caroline, who is an inspirational woman, has campaigned to show the devastating impact of knife crime on young lives and families, and she has provided weapons awareness lessons in schools. Those hard-hitting lessons show young people the dangers of carrying knives and blades. I have been to one and, trust me, they leave an impact. Students who are usually cocky and confident finish the lesson shocked and startled at the brutal impact that knives can have on lives. The images of knife attacks and knife wounds on young people hit home very hard. We need to send out the message that all it takes is one moment of stupidity for lives and reputations to be shattered.

We teach our young people about internet safety, road safety and citizenship. There is a strong case for more schools to teach pupils about the danger of carrying knives. As I have found, Ministers regularly throw back the challenge that the demands on the curriculum are great. I accept that point, but, to be clear, I am talking about one 45-minute lesson in year 9 or year 10. That would not be a huge burden on the national curriculum.

Last summer, Caroline Shearer and I presented a petition with 50,000 signatures to Downing Street to call for charities such as Only Cowards Carry to go into schools to give those hard-hitting lessons to our young people. That would be a big step forward in tackling knife crime, not only in Colchester and north Essex, but across the country. The Government should take another hard look at encouraging more schools to introduce weapons education lessons.

According to the crime survey for England and Wales, violent crime is down since 2010, but according to violence against the person statistics recorded by the police, violent crime has increased. The picture is far from clear, and the reasons for spikes and falls in violent crime are not well understood. It is essential that the police, supported by good academic analysis, do the research to enable them to understand what is happening in our towns and cities.

There has been too much speculation about the causes, and we really need to focus on the facts. In Essex, more than half of the notable increase in recorded victim-based crime in the last 12 months—4,463 of 8,165 crimes—was in the “violence without injury” subcategory of violence against the person. That has traditionally covered harassment, shouting and very minor stone throwing, but the Home Office has decided that it should also include online bullying and harassment. That is nonsense, and it will really distort the debate.

I believe that there is a strong argument for a new stand-alone crime type category for recording online crimes. If those crimes continue to be placed in the category of violent crime, it will be difficult to debate violent crime and its specific causes. Of course, online bullying and harassment are extremely serious crimes, which sadly affect young people more than people in any other age groups. However, the steps we need to take to tackle physical violence and gang violence are different from those needed to tackle online abuse and harassment, so it is important to look at recategorisation.

In my constituency, victim-based crime is up by 821 offences on the year. Within that, violence is up by 681 offences. As I have just mentioned, a staggering 93% of those crimes are violence with no injury, and much of the total is made up of online bullying or harassment. That puts the rise in a very different light.

[Vicky Foxcroft (Lewisham, Deptford) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that in relation to reported crime, particularly among young people, so much violent crime goes unreported?

[Will Quince]

The hon. Lady makes a good point. Lots of crimes up and down this country go unrecorded for all sorts of reasons. I very much support police forces, such as Essex police, that are making it easier for people to report crimes, particularly online. We must make it far easier for people to report crimes and give them the confidence that they will be followed up by the police.

To return to the point I was making—I apologise that it is a little detailed—it is really important to be able to base this debate on accurate statistics. It is almost impossible for us to have such a good, clear debate when the Home Office has provided such broad and unclear definitions of violent crime. Better categorisation is needed, including, as I have said, a separate category for online offences.

Another serious concern is to do with geography and location. In Essex, there is very clear evidence of increased violence related to gangs involved in the supply and distribution of class A and other drugs. The hon. Member for Streatham made the point about the clear link between gang or youth violence and class A drugs. Communities in Essex are consistently evolving, as they always have, with the movement of people from London. The sad reality is that some of the gang problems traditionally associated with areas of London are spreading to many, if not all, towns up and down the country, as my hon. Friend the Member for Yeovil (Marcus Fysh), who is no longer in his place, pointed out.

There have been a number of murders, often involving stabbings, where neither the victims nor those arrested and, in some cases, nor those convicted of the offences live in Essex. The London gangs are, without doubt, extending their county lines into Essex. Violent gang members have been using intimidation and violence, often against vulnerable people, to take over properties in towns such as Southend and Basildon, and even as far north as Colchester, to supply drugs to local dealers. This is not just about drugs, but about serious intimidation and threats against vulnerable people. We know what happens in London, and even outside London there is sometimes extreme sexual violence against women and girls who associate with such gangs.

It is essential that our police forces co-operate really closely on this issue. I am pleased that Essex police already co-operates well with the Metropolitan police, but it is extremely disappointing that, in 2016, most police forces still do not automatically share crime data and that they operate on different crime systems. I commend Essex for leading the way in having the first fully collaborative policing IT system, which will soon be used by nine forces. I am also pleased that the very recent report by Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary on police effectiveness judged Essex police to be good at dealing with serious crime of this sort. Other forces quite simply must follow their lead in taking a more comprehensive approach and working more closely together.

To conclude, it is refreshing to hear a sense of cross-party consensus in the Chamber—not entirely around possible solutions, but certainly around a willingness to address this most important of issues. I very much support the call made by the hon. Member for Streatham for cross-party working on this issue. A fact-finding exercise to identify the root causes would be a sensible step. As I have mentioned, perhaps a little long-windedly, better categorisation is important so that we can get to the root causes and have a debate based on facts, rather than conjecture. Education, deterrence and intervention are also absolutely key to reducing violent crime and serious youth violence. For many of our young people, delaying action to address this problem is simply not an option.

--- Later in debate ---

[Vicky Foxcroft (Lewisham, Deptford) (Lab)]

As a new MP, nothing can prepare you for receiving the call from the police telling you that a teenager has been murdered in your constituency. Once was hard enough, but within weeks of each other, it happened twice on exactly the same estate. In fact, since becoming an MP last year, four young people from my constituency have lost their lives due to the needless violence on our streets: Shaquan, Naseem, Kabba and Jamar. I have sat down with many of the family and friends left behind. Many of them are here today. Losing loved ones is hard enough. For them to have been murdered, and to not be able to understand what has happened, is even harder.

I have been calling for a debate on this subject since October last year. I am therefore grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Mr Umunna) for securing the debate, and to the Backbench Business Committee for granting it time.

There is so much we could talk about; there is so much that needs to be said—but we also need to listen. We can all stand here and give passionate speeches about gangs and youth violence, but the truth is that nothing will change. There is no speech that any one of us could give today that will stop our young people killing each other. That is the harsh reality, so what do we do? Do we accept that it happens and simply move on? No. Each one of us has an obligation to find solutions. I believe that they will come from building a stronger, more resilient community base for our country—one where we look out for each other.

Do we write another report, pull some words together and call it a policy? No. The Government need to realise that writing down 2,500 words, giving it the grand title of “Ending Gang Violence and Exploitation” and then calling it a policy simply will not work. There can be no more top-down solutions. Things have changed and we must listen and respond. There are some huge Departments looking at this: the Home Office, the Ministry of Justice and the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime in London. None of them can possibly understand the issues being faced by young people on a daily basis. They all engage with young people, but they do so in a tokenistic way. They do so to tick the box that says, “Must engage with young people.” They do not engage in a youth-led way; no, they do so in a “led youth” way. This whole approach needs to change.

Young people and our communities have the solutions, because they are the ones facing the problems. We need a far-reaching, youth-led consultation to really get to grips with the core issues that underpin the reasons for and the impact of the violence that is present in young people’s lives. This is not just about gangs. If we ask 10 people what a gang is, we will get 10 different answers. It is not just about youth violence, either. We need to drop the negative language. Young people are fed up with constantly being portrayed negatively by politicians and the media.

[Mr Lammy]

On the point about what is a gang, is my hon. Friend surprised that in the Government’s document they have not even sought to define what they interpret to be a gang? Does she not think that that would help the conversation?

[Vicky Foxcroft]

I agree with everything my right hon. Friend says. As he said in his speech, the document is so brief that it barely defines anything or suggests what any of the solutions should be. We need to transform the debate fundamentally.

[Bob Stewart]

Further to the point made my friend, the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy), as I understand it these groups often call themselves gangs. That is part of the problem. It is therefore quite difficult to define.

[Vicky Foxcroft]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point, but we tag people in certain ways too. We define groups of people as gangs, when they could just be groups of young people hanging about together. That is why we need to transform how we talk about the subject.

[Dawn Butler]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech. I belonged to a gang when I was younger. We had a uniform and a code—it was called the Girls’ Brigade. We have to be very clear when we are defining gangs. It is also our responsibility as MPs to work with everyone. I met my borough commander this week, and I do so every month so that we are all working together and, as my hon. Friend says, we are listening to young people to ensure that they are not criminalised or labelled from a very young age.

[Vicky Foxcroft]

My hon. Friend makes an extremely good and strong point. We need to talk about violence in our society. We need to forget age for a second. When someone—anyone—gets so angry they end up killing someone, we have failed as a society. We have failed the victim, failed the victim’s friends and failed the victim’s family. We have also failed the killer. What a life they must have led up to that moment when they pull out a knife and stick it into another human being.

What is our answer? What do we do to them? Police, court, prison—we lock them up for a minimum sentence of 25 years and then they are released. Then what? What kind of life have we provided for that person? We can picture the scene: dad out of work, mum an alcoholic; missed by social services, due to cuts; missed by youth workers, because they no longer exist; missed by the local police, because of cutbacks. We are creating a perfect storm. Youth work, cut; police, cut; social services, cut. What hope do we have while this Government are in power?

Shrinking the state—is that really the answer? Of course not. It is the very fabric of society that needs to be fixed in order to stop these events. I do not hold the Minister solely responsible. There is little that she can do on her own that would fix things. The problem is bigger than that. What do the Government do? They spend close to £1 billion on a citizenship scheme. They give it some clever branding and congratulate themselves on building a social movement. But what then? Once young people have completed the scheme, they are still in the same situation as before. The scheme is £1 billion of window dressing; £1 billion to change nothing. We do not need window dressing. We need to change fundamentally the way we approach society. We need to change the narrative. We need to talk about peace. We need to talk about community. We need to promote positive images of our young people. We need to give them a voice.

Running programmes for teenagers—well, that is nice, but it is not going to change much, not fundamentally. We need to start much younger. It is only when we change the lives of the youngest in society that we will see real change take place. Any psychologist or educationalist will say that. The younger we start to effect change, the sooner we can start to make change. So let us change things. Let us change the record, change the narrative, change the future.

This debate calls for a wide-ranging consultation focusing on serious youth violence. I am sure we can all get behind this. Let us do this together, because it is by working together that we will prevent young people from disappearing from our streets.

--- Later in debate ---

[Karen Bradley]

I would be delighted to meet the hon. Lady and—I am probably going to regret this; my officials will certainly regret it—I extend that offer to any Member who wants to come and talk about what is happening in their local area. I am more than happy to spend time with Members to help them build local resilience. As the hon. Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Vicky Foxcroft) said, this is about local solutions. This is not top-down; it is not about the Government imposing anything.

[Vicky Foxcroft]

I thank the Minister for agreeing with me, but part of the problem is about having the funding to enable us to deliver those local solutions.

[Karen Bradley]

I will come on to funding shortly. I am trying to be non-party political, but I might have to make some comments shortly if I am not allowed to continue in that vein. However, I am trying to be non-partisan and I want to work with hon. Members from across the House. I know that they are facing this problem in their communities and I want to ensure that the Home Office extends whatever support we can in order to get a local solution that is right for their area. That will not be a top-down solution, however, and it will not be one size fits all.