Public Services

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Wednesday 16th October 2019 Commons Chamber

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

The Home Secretary will know that the Home Affairs Committee conducted an inquiry into serious and violent crime, looking particularly at knife crime. In Castleford this week, two teenagers have been stabbed, following a pensioner being stabbed to death in Pontefract. Our Committee has warned for some time that serious and violent crime is spreading to towns; it is not just concentrated in cities. We recommended in our report not only a big increase in policing but a big investment in youth services, which have been cut by £1 billion since 2010. What is she doing to urgently invest in youth services, before more lives are lost?

[Priti Patel]

I thank the right hon. Lady for her comments, and I agree with her in terms of serious and violent crime. Far too much of it is taking place on our streets, across all our constituencies. We have to do more to invest in youth provision and young people. That means not only giving them hope and opportunity, but providing services for them, which is why we have invested more than £200 million in the youth endowment fund. There is much more work coming, but there is more to do to ensure that our statutory services—through safeguarding, Ofsted and public services—support our young people, so that they are not only protected in every single way from criminals, but given opportunities and alternative provision, if they are not in school, to help them to get on in life.