Knife Crime Prevention Orders

Debate between Victoria Atkins and Dominic Raab

Monday 4th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

I am pleased the right hon. Lady appears to support these orders. The Mayor of London also supports them. This is what I mean when I talk about a cross-party consensus. People out there, including the bereaved families I meet, such as the Goupall family, whom I met last week, are not interested in the back and forth over the Dispatch Box; they want us to work together to stop this happening, and so I welcome her support for the orders.

As I am sure the right hon. Lady knows, having read our serious violence strategy, we have set out the factors that we believe underpin the rise in serious violence. We note, for example, that other countries across the world have seen similar rises. Last year, we held an international conference to discuss with other law enforcement agencies and healthcare providers across the world what they were doing to tackle serious violence, because of course we want to learn from other people’s experiences.

On intervention, we are as one; we want to intervene earlier. Families worried about their children and young people walking around, whether in London or further afield, want us to deliver results. That is the absolute reason for the strategy and the serious violence taskforce, which, as I said, is a cross-party initiative—I am extremely grateful to Members across the House for helping us with it.

I should have said to the hon. Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker) that I very much take on board his point about the House being updated more regularly on what we are doing. I am conscious that we are busy working quietly in the background with our partners, and I agree that we should inform the House more, so I undertake to do so.

[Dominic Raab (Esher and Walton) (Con)]

I welcome my hon. Friend’s answer to the urgent question. We need to be unflinchingly robust on enforcement, but we also need to draw youngsters away from the risks of knife crime in the first place. Having served as a volunteer and later a trustee at Fight For Peace, a groundbreaking charity in Newham with a stellar record of getting at-risk NEETs into training and work, can I ask the Minister what work is being done across Whitehall to invest in the preventive expertise and experience of groups such as Fight For Peace in order to cut the risk of knife crime in the first place?

[Victoria Atkins]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his question, partly because, in highlighting the work of his charity, he gives me an opportunity to correct a misreport in The Sunday Times this weekend about the early intervention youth fund. It erroneously stated that we had cut the amount available to that fund. We have not. We have spent the first tranche—£17.7 million—on 29 projects across the country, and the rest of the money is to be invested in due course later this year.

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for highlighting the work of his local charity. Many charities large and small do invaluable work, and we very much hope that their knowledge and intelligence will feed into applications for knife crime prevention orders, where those are in the best interests of the child and the local community, so that we can draw them away from criminality before it is too late.