Emergency Summit on Knife Crime

Debate between Victoria Atkins and Mike Kane

Friday 22nd March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

We are providing up to £970 million next year in the policing settlement. We provided a further £500 million last year, and we are providing an extra £100 million through the spring statement to give the police the extra resources they need. I ask Opposition Members to do the right thing next week and support the Government’s efforts to introduce knife crime prevention orders. Those have been asked for by the police—the police want them. We have considered them carefully and introduced the legislation as quickly as we can. We just need the House to pass it.

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

The Minister rightly speaks about criminal child exploitation and tackling gang leaders—that point was made by my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell). As my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) pointed out, last year 9,500 children were off-rolled from our schools, and the Department for Education has no earthly idea where they are. That has created a lost generation that can be exploited by the very people the Minister wants to tackle. That is combined with 20,000 fewer police officers, and the fact that half of youth services and clubs have gone—that point was made by my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Cat Smith). Will those causal facts be on the agenda for this summit?

[Victoria Atkins]

As I have said, education plays a vital role in our efforts to tackle serious violence, and I know that colleagues across the House are concerned about off-rolling. There are good examples of providers of alternative provision across the country, and my challenge to those in the education sector is that if those good examples and that best practice exists, we should share it and let every child have the same quality of standards from which some children seem to benefit.