Violent Crime

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Monday 17th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

There is an understandable tendency to focus on the law enforcement response and on our early prevention strategy, but an important part of this formula is the behaviour of serious organised crime gangs. These are the people who exploit our young people and children, these are the people who try to extend their drug markets across the country, and these are the people whom we absolutely must target if we are to bring an end to this. Along with the Minister for Security and Economic Crime, my right hon. Friend the Member for Wyre and Preston North (Mr Wallace), I have emphasised the need to target serious organised crime, including the profits that the criminals make from their disgraceful, disgusting business. I shall be happy to discuss the issue with my hon. Friend in more detail after the urgent question, but I can assure him that tackling serious organised crime is an essential part of our overall efforts to target serious violence.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

Yet more lives have been lost, more families are devastated, and there are disturbing reports of older gang members paying young people to stab, maim and kill. However, the letter that the Minister has just sent to the Home Affairs Committee suggests that the surge funding for policing is for only one year, which limits police forces’ ability to recruit the officers they need, and also that the youth endowment fund will support only £6 million-worth of projects this year, which is a drop in the ocean compared with the scale of the cuts in youth services and interventions. Does the Minister not understand the real concern about the lack of grip, the lack of urgency, and the lack of scale in the Government’s response? Can she really put her hand on her heart and say, in the light of this escalating violence, that the Home Office is doing enough?

[Victoria Atkins]

In the letter, we made it clear that while the spring statement included £100 million for police forces, the Home Secretary had committed himself to making resources for them an absolute priority in our spending review. In our conversations with chief constables who are either already setting up violence reduction units locally in, for instance, the west midlands, or are beginning to do so as a result of this announcement, we fully acknowledge that the funds cannot be just for a single year.

As for the youth endowment fund, we have locked in the money over 10 years, precisely because we have listened to local charities and those who work closely with young people. They say that it is often the short-term resourcing that is a problem, so we are investing £200 million, although it is expected to be more over the 10-year period. To demonstrate the urgency that we have ascribed to this issue, we have managed to move £200 million off the Government books in, I think, an almost unprecedentedly short time—a matter of a couple of months—which will seem pretty extraordinary to anyone who has not served in a Government Department. We have put the fund into an independent charitable trust, which is running it. The bids for the first round will close on 23 July, so if there are local charities that Members think should apply, I ask them please to press them into doing so. We expect the trust to make the first announcements of bids in the autumn.