TOEIC English Language Tests

Baroness Brown of Silvertown Excerpts

Wednesday 9th February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Foster]

The biggest lesson that was learned was the need to transform our student visa system from one that was all too often a flag of convenience for those looking to come to work in the UK rather than for those genuinely looking to study. As we have said, the system has been absolutely transformed. It is one of our most compliant routes. It has allowed us to bring in additional benefits such as the graduate route that we created last year, plus more simplified processes for those applying for a student visa in the UK, both of which are very much rooted in the excellent relationship that we now have with the sector. Let us be very clear, we got rid of more than 1,000 sponsors, who, it is safe to say, were not meeting the high standards that the sector more widely provides.

On the specifics, again, we are waiting the determination from the tribunal. I have touched on the judgments that we have already had on the evidence that we used for the basis of our action, up to and including the Court of Appeal. Once we have the determination of the tribunal, we will be happy to confirm our next steps.

[Ms Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

One of my constituents was woken at 6 in the morning, dragged from the home that he shares with his British wife and child and detained for days. He lost the right to work and was catapulted towards bankruptcy, unable to pay more legal costs. For year, after year, after year, he was terrified of another knock on the door. Although this is the story of one constituent, it is the story of many of my constituents. All they want is a fair chance to clear their names, and, frankly, they deserve compensation as well. I would be really grateful to hear something from the Minister, as this has dragged on for too long. The Government must create a process to end this scandal. When will they do so?

[Kevin Foster]

Again, once we have the tribunal determination, we will set out more fully what our response is, rather than speculating today on what that response may be. As I have said, other people are making applications under the status of their private and family life. We have changed our guidance to make it clear that that status is not a block to the application being granted. Obviously, decision makers in the Home Office will now appropriately balance matters of eight years ago with what someone’s private or family life may be today, and look at the proportionate outcome in a case.

Youth Crime and Antisocial Behaviour

Baroness Brown of Silvertown Excerpts

Wednesday 12th January 2022 Westminster Hall

[Ms Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

It is an absolute pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson.

I thank the hon. Member for Stockton South (Matt Vickers) for giving me the opportunity to talk again about the county lines difficulties that we have in my constituency and elsewhere in the country. Much of the really violent crime and antisocial behaviour committed by young people in my patch is linked to the lines drug gangs. Just before Christmas, I introduced a ten-minute rule Bill, in which I had a number of asks, including a national strategy to end county lines criminal exploitation for good.

I became aware of county lines back in about 2015 or 2016. I was introduced to some mums of children who were being exploited. Have no doubt: those mums were amazing—they are courageous, strong and brave—and they showed me so much to enable me to understand what is happening in my constituency.

One of those women—I will call her Ashley—told me about her son, Kofi. When Kofi was 15, his neighbour started to build a relationship with him, and at first it all seemed okay. The neighbour was often to be found at Ashley’s house, watching TV and playing PlayStation. Slowly, however, Ashley realised that this man was turning her son away from school and away from her. Then, three days before Christmas, Kofi did not come home.

The next night Kofi called her, whispering. Some men had him—he did not know where he was and he was absolutely terrified. When Kofi finally returned, Ashley again called the police, and made him go to the police station, despite threats of violence against both of them. It was an extremely brave thing to do.

What Ashley told them, however, was ignored, and Kofi was treated as a criminal, not a victim. He was 15 years of age. The men who had groomed, exploited, traumatised and threatened him were, as far as Ashley knows, left alone, and no one came to check on Kofi afterwards to ensure that he was okay. Ashley told me that Kofi was never the same after that experience—his trust and hopes had been absolutely crushed. He had no support for his trauma, and the pattern continued.

A year later, Kofi was about to be accepted into the Army, to change his life for the better. But in that moment of hope, historical robberies were laid at Kofi’s door. Ashley believes it was because he was of an age to be sentenced as an adult. Ashley tells me she has seen Kofi’s groomers walking the streets, flashing the cash they made destroying children’s lives.

Five years ago, there was a bit of an excuse for not understanding what the lines were doing to our children; but there is no excuse now. The police, teachers and others have become more knowledgeable but, sadly, our response to the lines is still not based on evidence. The Government do not know how many children supervised by youth offending teams have gang memberships or criminal exploitation noted as an issue. The Government do not know how many of those known to children’s services have criminal exploitation as a risk factor, or how many slavery and trafficking prevention orders have been made to stop the exploitation of children. They do not know how many local safeguarding partnerships even have a child criminal exploitation strategy, let alone the effectiveness of those strategies.

It is only by having a real understanding of the complexity of the lines that we will make progress. We need our social workers and our police to be empowered to work with the people best able to reach the children in trouble. That means trusted community groups and charities who know their patch, but it means parents, too. The mums I have worked with over the years have been so very impressive in their dedication and perceptiveness about what has gone wrong. Social workers, police officers and even teachers sometimes have a bit of suspicious attitude towards the mums, and that has to change.

The Commission on Young Lives is working on this issue and will publish a report in the coming weeks. I want the Government to actively engage with it. If the Minister is able, I would like her to commit to meet me, Barnardo’s and the Children’s Society to talk about a statutory definition of child criminal exploitation ahead of the victims Bill. The role of a parent in a young person’s life is limited, especially once a groomer has got their hooks in them; but they are so often the best ally that we have, and they must be listened to and respected. Family has to be treated as part of the solution for preventing youth crime.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr Robertson; it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. I congratulate the hon. Member for Stockton South (Matt Vickers) on securing the debate, which has been interesting; I agreed with virtually everything he said. Antisocial behaviour has been trivialised, downplayed and dismissed in recent times. He said that we have a moral obligation to ensure that every child gets the opportunities they need to make the best of their life, that this is about more than just policing—it is about schools, local authorities and youth work—and that enough is enough. I think he will get a shock when he realises that his party has been in government for the last 11 years and has caused significant cuts that have driven a lot of the problems we face today.

I congratulate all hon. Members on their speeches. My hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones) talked about the impact of covid, which is really important in how we look at this issue. The hon. Member for Keighley (Robbie Moore) talked about youth workers and how important they are, and we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Ian Byrne) just now about the impact of cuts to youth work across the country. My hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Ms Brown) is such a fantastic campaigner on county lines and has been for a long time, and I add to her plea for the Government to look at the issue of defining child criminal exploitation. As it happens, an amendment calling for a definition is going through the House of Lords as we speak, so there is an opportunity in the Lords for the Government to support my hon. Friend’s cause, and we would welcome that.

The hon. Member for Ipswich (Tom Hunt) represents an interesting area; some good progress has been made on county lines in East Anglia. It is one of the only areas in the country where there has been some progress, but there is still a lot to be done. My hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) spoke about the wonderful police and crime commissioner, Kim McGuinness, and the work she is doing. I was up there just before Christmas and worked with her; I went to St James’s Park and saw the wonderful youth work the football club is doing to try to ensure that people have opportunities. The hon. Member for Redcar (Jacob Young) represents an important part of the country; a lot of the problems that are being debated now existed 20 years ago when I was working for Mo Mowlam.

My hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall (Florence Eshalomi) spoke movingly, as always, about the really big challenges we face with youth violence, which I have in my constituency as well. My hon. Friend the Member for Harrow West (Gareth Thomas) talked about those massively long waiting times. We cannot expect our young people to understand justice when the justice system does not work; it makes no sense and it cannot be done. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) spoke about council workers and the importance of tackling antisocial behaviour through local councils. Of course, our local councils have been absolutely decimated, so that is very difficult. Finally, my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby told a personal story about how important youth work is. I think we all collectively agree with all of that.

I am pleased to follow so many good speeches. Since becoming an MP, I have spent five years campaigning against knife crime, and in my role as shadow Policing Minister I have been around the country in the past few months, looking at antisocial behaviour and seeing a lot of the issues. We can see how antisocial behaviour, which is defined as low-level but which I do not think is low-level at all, can spread and become more serious crime over time, exactly as hon. Members have said.

Everyone has a basic right to be safe in their community. Sadly, after the past 11 years our streets have become less safe. We have talked about prosecution rates; criminals are literally getting away with it under this Government. Only 6.5% of all crimes—a little over one in 20—lead to a prosecution, and the charge rate has halved over the past five years. Those figures are extraordinary. Criminals can pretty much get away with it.

[Ms Lyn Brown]

They have never had it so good.

[Sarah Jones]

Exactly. Whether people live in the city or in the country, they worry about their kids going out on the streets and getting into drugs. People can go online and buy any drug they want; on the “Today” programme only this morning, Claire Campbell spoke about her son, who died of an overdose after buying drugs online. There is a whole world of problems. Police struggle because they have to become social workers due to the impact of mental health cuts and the like. Serious organised criminals have got a real grip, and the UK is Europe’s largest heroin market—I think that statistic is extraordinary and shows how much work we have to do.

Antisocial behaviour is up 7% in the past year, with 1.8 million incidents recorded. To say that it is ignored by this Government is an understatement. There is no way of measuring the problem because it does not form part of the statistics under the Home Office’s counting rules. The way local authorities treat antisocial behaviour varies: some areas are good, while some are hopeless. I have made a series of freedom of information requests; I will not go into them all now, because they will come out shortly, but one council had 248 recorded incidents of antisocial behaviour and did 150 investigations, which resulted in no enforcement action whatever. Some boroughs really are struggling to do anything, and some are doing good things.

When I was going around the country, I saw a lot of good activity on antisocial behaviour. Rhyl was a particular favourite: for a start, there are more police community support officers on the street there, because the Welsh Government have funded more PCSOs over and above Government funding and they are crucial to preventing antisocial behaviour. There was a wonderful project with people you would describe as hoodlums out on the street, doing whatever they were doing. Youth workers went out to where they were, got involved with them and got them involved in sport. They took them up Snowdon, which was completely out of their comfort zone—they had not done anything like that before—and now they are doing their Duke of Edinburgh’s award. It was a complete transformation—how wonderful.

I went to see the Peel project in Hull. A park had become a horrible place for antisocial behaviour, with drug taking and kids hanging around, but the police gave a local organisation some shipping containers. It put a load of sports stuff in and based a little office in the park, and now the park is now a lovely place where people do sport and come together because there are adults, some structure and some things to do. It is not rocket science, but in so many places it is simply not done because the funding is not there.

Let me move on to youth crime. A 15-year-old boy, Zaian, was murdered in my constituency just before new year’s eve in the park I used to play in. On the same day, another boy became the 30th teenager to be murdered in London last year. Research from the organisation Crest shows that between 2014 and 2019 there was a 56% rise in knife possession offences for 10 to 17-year-olds, which is extraordinary. The organisation says that those who commit robbery and use weapons before the age of 18 are much more likely to have long criminal careers than young people who commit less serious crimes. Arrests of 10 to 17-year-olds make up a growing proportion of arrests for robbery—the statistics go on.

Anne Longfield, who was such a brilliant Children’s Commissioner, brought out a report this week that shows that spending on early intervention has reduced by almost two thirds over the past 10 years. What can we do with a third of what we had before? We know that these problems start young, and the Sutton Trust tells us that 1,000 family centres closed over the same period. Youth services were cut by about 40%—and by much more in some parts of the country—and the number of children given treatment by child and adolescent mental health services was massively reduced and they had to wait for long periods. We know what the problems are.

On top of that we can add the fact that we have so few police officers compared with what we need. Some 50% of PCSOs have been cut, and the Government have no plans to bring any of them back. We are still 10,000 short of the number of officers we used to have and, as was pointed out, a lot of officers are spending time doing other roles because of the cuts to police staff.

Labour says that there is nothing more important than keeping people safe, and we have a plan to provide new police hubs that will be visible in every community as a place where the public can go and talk to the police and other agencies in person. We will have new neighbourhood prevention teams to bring together the police, community support officers, youth workers and local authority staff to tackle crime. These teams would prioritise being visible and would pursue serial perpetrators of antisocial behaviour.

I appreciate that I need to end my speech, but I will just ask the Minister a series of questions. Will she consider bringing back the 50% of PCSOs we have lost? Will she speak to the request from the hon. Member for Stockton South for antisocial behaviour to be measured nationally in a better way? Will she address the request from my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham for child criminal exploitation to become a priority, and will she look at tackling crime and antisocial behaviour with real force from the Home Office? The Home Office too often blames local police forces and does not provide leadership, and often it is not one step ahead of the criminals but one step behind. We need real leadership from the Home Office and cross-Government working to tackle these very significant and increasing problems.

--- Later in debate ---

[Rachel Maclean]

I thank the hon. Gentleman so much for raising that. I strongly support that service with all my heart. I have seen how Street Pastors works effectively, especially in the night-time economy. We have debated violence against women and girls, and the Home Office has funded a number of such schemes and enabled local authorities to roll them out in their local areas.

Antisocial behaviour comes in various forms and guises. It differs from community to community, which is why it is important that there are flexible local powers that can be used, along with local knowledge of an area from local communities and the other agencies in it.

Members will be familiar with the changes that were made following the introduction of the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014. A number of tools and powers were introduced at that time. Some of those powers can be issued by a court, and they impose positive restrictions or requirements on an individual convicted of a criminal offence who has engaged in behaviour that has caused, or is likely to cause, harassment, alarm and distress. One of those powers is a community trigger, which is a vital safety net. My hon. Friend the Member for Stockton South made a point about the burden of evidence on communities. I encourage him to come back to me to have a detailed discussion with my officials. We are very keen to hear how we can improve that so that these powers work effectively for his community and others.

I do not have a huge amount of time left. I want to focus my remarks on parenting orders, which Members have raised.

[Ms Lyn Brown]

Will the Minister give way?

[Rachel Maclean]

I am really sorry, but I—

[Ms Brown]

I just want to get a commitment to a meeting.

[Rachel Maclean]

I will save the hon. Member the trouble; I will happily meet her. However, I want her to know that the Home Office is working with and funding the Children’s Society on many of the issues that she rightly touched on. Modern slavery is a vital part of the Government’s plan.

A parenting order is not the only way in which we can require families to engage with the authorities and tackle this behaviour at the source. Very often, youth offending teams work with parents on a voluntary basis. The experience is that parents often engage readily and take part in specific programmes, including parenting programmes, and that can have a very helpful, positive outcome. However, when that does not work, youth offending teams can ensure compliance and encourage engagement by issuing warning letters and using compliance panels. Consistent non-compliance without a good reason can lead to a police investigation and proceedings in court. Non-compliance may lead the court to issue a fine of up to £1,000, a probation order, a curfew order or an absolute or conditional discharge.

The hon. Member for West Ham (Ms Brown) raised county lines. I have a huge amount of respect for her, but unfortunately, she did not credit the work that has been going on nationally on county lines. I want to update her: since 2019, the police have closed more than 1,500 county lines, made over 7,400 arrests, seized £4.3 million in cash and drugs and safeguarded more than 4,000 people. Whatever party Members are from, I am sure that they can welcome that achievement.

[Ms Lyn Brown]

Will the Minister give way?

[Rachel Maclean]

I am afraid I will not. I have such a lot to say and I have had less time than the Opposition spokesperson, the hon. Member for Croydon Central, and other Members.

We are investing £560 million in youth services in England over the next three years, including the youth investment fund, to transform the Government’s offer to young people and to level up opportunities right across the country. To kick-start the youth investment programme, an additional £10 million will be spent this year in key levelling-up areas to enable local youth providers, such as the ones that many Members have mentioned, to invest in projects and expand the reach, number and range of services that they currently offer. I think that we all agree that these types of crimes have complex roots, and they often go back generations. We must tackle the causes of crime as well as having the appropriate powers, enforcement and sentences.

I will touch briefly on the safer streets fund, as it is extremely relevant to many of the issues raised by Members. I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton South knows this, but may I remind him that Cleveland police have £366,289 from the safer streets fund, and that that project will carry out a variety of crime prevention measures, including 30 new or upgraded CCTV cameras, refurbishment of four alley gates and bespoke target-hardening measures for residents’ homes. It is these basic safety measures that can give confidence to communities that the presence and the security are there.

Overall, across the country, the Government have invested £70 million in the first three rounds of the safer streets fund. This financial year alone, the fund is supporting 107 local crime prevention projects to implement interventions such as improved street lighting, increased CCTV, increased presence of “guardians” to deter crime, and, pivotally, training to change attitudes and behaviours.

Most of these measures are set out in the Government’s beating crime plan. I encourage all Members to read the plan. It is a key manifesto commitment of this Government to get crime down and to set out how we will tackle crime and the causes of crime. It is a targeted approach to places, people and the business of crime underpinned by getting those basics right. The whole plan is supported by an unwavering commitment to the police that we will do everything in our power to combat crime and work out what actually works in keeping our country safe.

We are working with practitioners and experts who deal with this issue day in, day out. In a further strand, which is vital, we are working across the country with partners to establish principles for a strong and effective partnership response to antisocial behaviour. That is why we have undertaken the police and crime commissioner review to equip PCCs with the tools and levers that they need to drive down crime and antisocial behaviour in their areas. As I said at the start, we recognise the damage and distress caused by antisocial behaviour. We recognise the devastation to lives caused by youth crime, both to the perpetrators and the victims, and I am absolutely committed, as are my Home Office colleagues, to tackling this issue head-on.

Prisons (Substance Testing) Bill

Baroness Brown of Silvertown Excerpts

Report stage & 3rd reading
Friday 12th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Crime and Policing (Kit Malthouse)]

I express my gratitude to my hon. Friend the Member for North West Durham (Mr Holden) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Dame Cheryl Gillan), and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope) for his constructive attitude in helping us to get the Bill on to the statute book.

[Ms Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab) [V]]

I congratulate the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Dame Cheryl Gillan) and the hon. Member for North West Durham (Mr Holden), and on behalf of the Opposition Front-Bench team I thoroughly welcome the Bill.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

I support the Bill—indeed, I was present in the Chamber when we discussed the initial concern about my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Dame Cheryl Gillan) not being able to deal with the Bill herself physically. My hon. Friend the Member for North West Durham (Mr Holden) came in and helped to fill the breach, so I thank him for and congratulate him on what has been achieved.

I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham for her foresight in choosing this topic for the Bill that she wanted to promote. Few things are more important for our constituents who are sadly in prison than to ensure that although they are in prison for punishment—the deprivation of liberty—they are not there to become drug addicts or to be subjected to extortion or other illegal behaviour. If, by facilitating our keeping on top of new substances, the Bill leads to fewer people getting addicted and leaving prison fully addicted, that would be great. I have challenged my hon. Friend the new Minister to be the first prisons Minister to create a truly drugs-free prison in the United Kingdom—a dream that I very much hope will be realised.

Support for Women Leaving Prison

Baroness Brown of Silvertown Excerpts

Tuesday 9th March 2021 Westminster Hall

[Ms Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab) [V]]

It is a genuine pleasure to see you and serve under your chairmanship, Sir Charles. I am also grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris) for calling this important debate and for her stonking speech. There have been excellent contributions today from Members on both sides of the House.

This Government’s female offender strategy set out some very clear principles, and we agree totally that we need to address vulnerability, acknowledge the role of gender, treat women as individuals with the potential to make a positive contribution, and break the cycle of reoffending. To do this, the strategy made it clear that

“Short custodial sentences do not deliver the best results for female offenders”.

It acknowledged the essential role of women’s centres and made it clear that when women leave prison, the support they receive has to respond to their complex needs. Again, we agree. However, it has been almost three years since the strategy was published and, as we have heard, as many as six out of 10 women leaving prison are being released into homelessness—60%. The strategy is simply not being successfully implemented.

We know that without a home, it is so much harder to find work. Reuniting with children and family is even more difficult. Meeting probation commitments and accessing healthcare and substance misuse treatment is that much harder. Not having a stable home damages mental health. It destroys life chances and lives. It kills hope. This Government have acknowledged that the likelihood of reoffending can be as much as 50% higher for those released into homelessness. Between 23 March and 31 August last year, during the height of the first lockdown, more than 3,500 prisoners, including 275 women, were released into homelessness. During those first terrifying months of covid, 65 women were sent out to sleep rough on our streets on their very first night out of prison. Some of the most vulnerable people in our society were effectively sent by the Government to sleep on the streets, when the rest of us had been told to stay home, to stay safe and to protect the NHS. It beggars belief.

We have got to acknowledge that outcomes for women leaving prison are frankly terrible. One reason is clearly the lack of accommodation, but another significant reason is the lack of continuity of care for those in need of drug or alcohol abuse treatment when they leave prison. Last year, the national average of continuity in care in England was just 35%. When drug-related deaths are at an all-time high and when a third of people in prison are there for reasons related to drug use, surely to heavens continuing treatment outside of prison must be a priority? I am told there is an ambitious Government target to go from this derisory 35% to 75%, but there are simply no details of how that will happen. I am hoping that the Minister will tell us today how and when that 75% target will be met.

It cannot be a surprise to anyone listening to this extremely well informed debate that reoffending is rife. Of women who have served a sentence of under a year, 73% will be convicted of another offence within a year. If we are to tackle reoffending and if we want fewer victims of crime, we have to tackle the root causes of that crime. The Government’s own research tells us that often women in prison are dealing with enormous trauma caused by sometimes years of abuse.

That is why my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea East was absolutely right to highlight the need for women’s centres. The evidence is clear that they slash reoffending, they cut crime and they help many women to heal and create better lives—and, unlike short prison sentences for women, they are great value for money. Some women’s centres have managed to demonstrate that they save £2.80 for the public purse for every £1 invested, so why are the Government planning to spend £150 million on women’s prison expansion when they have committed just £2 million to women’s centres? That is 75 times more to be spent on something they have admitted does not than on something that does. Why?

Let me touch on one aspect we have not yet discussed: the specific needs of black, Asian, Gypsy, Roma and Traveller women and all of those from other minority ethnic communities. We know, and the Government know, that projects led by women from a community are best suited to develop effective resettlement within that community. There are excellent examples like the Khidmat centres in Bradford, but there are not nearly enough of them across the country. Why?

As we recover from covid, it is even more important to have additional support in place for women leaving prison. It is good to see that the Government plan to take some action on homelessness among prison leavers, but, as we have heard, only five of the 12 probation regions—less than half—are likely to receive some funding for temporary accommodation pilots, even though the value-for-money case for better accommodation is overwhelming. Why? May I gently point out that London and the south-east are two of the areas where the problems of prison-leaver homelessness are greatest, yet neither is included as a pilot?

I have been doing this job for less than a year and I have already worked out that the Ministry of Justice is, frankly, addicted to pilots, but there is no follow-through. Time and again, projects are proven successful but they are simply not rolled out. The truth is that, when it comes to women prison leavers, we need ambition and commitment. We need to provide accommodation, and that accommodation needs to be fit for purpose. Women domestic abuse survivors may need to relocate away from their area. Homes often need to be able to accommodate women’s children. If those needs are not met, women do not get a second chance, their families do not get a chance, and reoffending becomes even more likely.

Despite all those facts, in their announcement on temporary accommodation the Government went out of their way to trumpet just how basic and temporary the planned accommodation for prison leavers will be. I ask the Minister gently: how will the new accommodation address the specific needs of women leaving prison and the needs of their families? How will it stop the very expensive revolving door? I have to ask: is the priority cutting reoffending and cutting crime, or is it about dog-whistle politics and cutting costs? If it is about cutting costs, the Minister should know that that is a false economy. His own research shows that. The lack of approved premises for women around the country has been a huge problem. How many of the 200 new places planned will be in specialist women’s hostels? When will they delivered? Where will they be located? Perhaps the Minister can inform us today of the progress of the approved premises for women in the south-west.

Another public relations announcement was that of a paltry £6 million for through-the-gate support for prison leavers. Only one of the 16 prisons receiving that funding will be a women’s prison: New Hall in West Yorkshire. Why?

Frankly, when women are put into prison but are not supported to deal with the trauma and violence that they have experienced in their lives, or with the addiction that has put them there, and when they are released knowing that their only option is to sleep on the street, and they are condemned to the revolving door of reoffending because support services for drugs and alcohol just are not there, that is an injustice. It is Government failure. Women are not being given a fair chance to change their lives, or their children’s lives, for the better.

The Government must demonstrate that they truly understand their own research. They need to demonstrate real commitment to and ambition for their own strategy. They need to begin to create a criminal justice system that truly understands the root causes of women’s offending, and that starts to treat women fairly.

Windrush Compensation Scheme (Expenditure) Bill

Baroness Brown of Silvertown Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons & Money resolution & Programme motion
Monday 10th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel]

If I may, I will finish the point. To rebuild that trust, working with third parties and other stakeholder groups and organisations is vital, and we will continue to do that.

[Ms Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

On that point of trust, the phone calls to my office today are about a flight tomorrow to Jamaica, and some of my constituents believe that this Bill is being used as some kind of flim-flam before that flight goes. Will the Home Secretary assure me that she will look carefully at every one of the cases that we bring to her to ensure that only those people who absolutely need to be deported are deported tomorrow?

[Priti Patel]

Let me make a few points on that. First and foremost, we should not be conflating this charter flight—the criminality—with the issue of the Windrush compensation scheme. The hon. Lady will know that the House has heard the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster) respond to the urgent question earlier, and every person on the flight has been convicted of some of the most serious offences and has received a custodial sentence of 12 months or more. That means that under the UK Borders Act 2007, introduced by the Labour Government at the time, a deportation order must be made. These crimes cover manslaughter, rape, violence, the appalling scourge of drug dealing and sexual offences against children, with a total sentence for this group totalling more than 300 years. It is important to say that the suffering of their victims is incomprehensible, and these offences have a real impact on victims and their communities. It is important to recognise that the individuals being deported have criminal convictions, and that this is about the criminality of the acts they have participated in, not their nationality.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lucy Powell]

My new hon. Friend makes a very good point. That very much reflects my experiences of trying to coach and support people, navigating them through what are for many very difficult and uncharted waters. The original Windrush generation—I will come on to their descendants in a minute—are very isolated. If it were not for support networks, for example churches, they would have very little in the way of support services. They are very scared about coming forward.

As I said, it is really important that we recognise that the Windrush generation and their descendants are, and always were, British citizens, and that we are leaving so many people effectively stateless and feeling unwelcome in this country. I could go through many cases with the Minister—I have raised many cases here—but I will not because a lot of other people want to speak. However, the sorts of situations that I have come across include people not being allowed back into the country for one, two or three years, with them, in the meantime, losing their job and their social housing, which meant that their children also lost their homes. I met an individual who had a refusal to have their status regularised in the mid-’80s—I think it was an administrative error at the time—which frightened them so much that they have lived under the radar ever since, never having a job, never accessing public services and never having a home. They have been living among their family networks for their entire life—this is somebody who is now in their 60s. As well as those types of situations, others have been well rehearsed in the media, such as where people have served in the British Army, or worked as nurses or public servants, and have found themselves on the wrong end of this shameful, shameful situation.

As others have said, including the Home Secretary, no amount of money can compensate for the loss of life, livelihood and dignity—of people’s whole lives. People have never gone on holiday, and people have lost their home, status and dignity. However, that does not mean that we should not properly compensate them, nor does it mean that, just because no amount of money can compensate them, paltry amounts will do. We need to give people justice and be seen to be giving them justice, and I will say a bit about what that might look like.

The purpose of the compensation scheme has to be, at its core, about restoring trust, undoing some of the damage that has been done and properly compensating people for their losses. It is difficult to see how the scheme, as designed, will help to do those things. The Home Secretary has said that these cases are complicated and of course they are, but the scheme’s design has made them much more complicated than they need to be. People do not have the time, the support and, in most cases, the documentation that is being asked of them.

How do we put a price on many of the things that they have lost? How do we put a price on someone not having had a holiday for 30 years, even though they are a working person? How do we put a price on someone not seeing a family member for 30 years because they live in fear of going on holiday? How do we put a price on someone not getting healthcare 20 years ago when they were poorly and that having had a detrimental effect on their life ever since? These things are hard to put a price on. As others have said, there is an undeniable fear of the Home Office, so many people do not want to come forward and make themselves known to it. A lot more needs to be done to overcome that.

I have a few asks of the Minister on the compensation scheme, and then I will talk about a couple of other things before I finish. Others have talked about the timeline. I welcome that it has been extended by two years, but that still makes it shorter than the amount of time that people had to claim for payment protection insurance compensation. If that is our benchmark, which seems a perfectly good one, we are failing on that. People should have longer to claim for this than they had for PPI.

The documentation has to be made a lot simpler. There will have to be a certain amount of discretion. It is about people looking at an application with common sense and judging it based on the evidence that is before them. As others have said, we need more support services. If it is not legal aid, which I think there is a strong case for, let us at least put some money into the support and advice services that can help people. Can we look again at some flat rates—some amounts of money—for things that we cannot put a price on, so that we can get proper compensation?

There are a couple of other things about the scheme, which I have raised and will continue to raise, even though I know that this is not a particularly popular cause. On proving good character, if we are agreeing as a House tonight that people were British citizens when they arrived, and that their descendants were also British citizens when they arrived, we cannot then apply the legislation from 2006 and 2009 about whether people meet a good character test or not. They are British citizens or they are not. As the Minister will know, I have dealt with a number of cases of people who have had convictions, and I know that Ministers have the discretion to let them apply under the terms of the Windrush scheme.

[Ms Lyn Brown]

I repeat that Ministers have discretion, and therefore, if they do not use that discretion, we will hold them to account for that for as long as we possibly can—as I will, while there is breath in my body.

[Lucy Powell]

I thank my hon. Friend—my good friend—for that comment. Ministers do have discretion, but I suppose that I am going even further than that: this should not be discretionary, because somebody either is and was a British citizen when they came, and therefore their descendants were, and their right to be here, to remain and to have citizenship is outwith any discretionary decision about their good character, their moral conduct or whether they have a conviction. I know that this might not be as popular as the case I have of someone who served in the British Army, or of someone who was a British nurse for many years—I am talking about people who have been convicted, in some cases of very serious offences—but that is our country’s problem, in terms of getting those people to serve their criminal sentence and then rehabilitating them, because they are British citizens. We need to look at that.

There are still a number of issues about Windrush descendants. The same principle needs to apply: if somebody’s parents were British citizens when they arrived here in 1969 or 1970, with their British passport that they came over with from Jamaica, their children are also British citizens regardless. They should not have to meet tests that have subsequently come into UK law. They are British citizens and we should apply that as a consistent principle. It is only when we start applying those principles consistently that we will begin to restore trust. It is all very well to paint people as terrible criminals, which is why they have to be deported, but that still gets the moral argument wrong because they are British citizens—[Interruption.] They are. If they are a descendant of a member of the Windrush generation, or are themselves a member, they had a right to British citizenship from the day that they were born and therefore, they are British citizens. The Government are applying retrospectively their moral judgments on that to try to appease some test of being tough on deportations and foreign criminals. I am sorry that this is not perhaps the same publicly appealing call as others, but until and unless the Government recognise the core principle—that somebody is and was a British citizen from the off and that we are trying to get that right in their compensation and by regularising their status—we will not go any way to restoring trust.

The Minister can shake his head all he likes, but I can talk to him now or afterwards about the cases that he or his predecessors and I have discussed, where that principle has been recognised. However, it is still being recognised discretionarily and that is wrong. I am sorry—I know that that is not popular but I will keep banging on about it until we sort it out.

That brings me to my final point. We cannot have these conversations without the lessons learned review being on the table, being debated and discussed. Until then, he and I will continue to argue about whether the deportations are necessary. If lessons are being learnt, everything else should be on hold until they have been understood, absorbed and acted upon. More than the financial compensation, members of the Windrush generation in my constituency, who are angry about what has happened and in some cases afraid, want to know that this will never happen again and that lessons are being learnt for them, for their children and for people thereafter.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ms Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

It has been two years since the Windrush scandal. We still have not had an official response to an independent review, and the injustices continue. Tomorrow, one of my constituents is due to be forcibly deported to Jamaica. I am going to talk about him a bit, because he is facing the same kind of injustice that we have seen in the past couple of years and this Bill does nothing at all to help him.

His name is Akiva, he is 22 and he came to this country at four years of age. Akiva’s mum, dad and younger brother are British nationals. This is his home. When he was 14, Akiva started to get into trouble. He had lost his older brother to suicide, and he was utterly lost. He fell in with a bad crowd, and was groomed and exploited. He was sent off on county lines, carrying drugs, stolen property and knives. Today, we know much more about the grooming that is happening to our children on county lines. We have talked about it in this Chamber a lot, and Members from both sides have now understood what county lines has done to a generation of our children. Stories like Akiva’s have been told in this Chamber: the stories of grooming and exploitation. Police, social workers and teachers are slowly getting better at identifying and targeting the groomers, rather than the children who have been groomed by them—the victims of the groomers. These children are victims of people whom I am told are living lovely lives behind gated communities in Essex and Kent—these are people we have yet to bring to justice.

The problems of county lines were not understood by many of us until recently, and in Akiva’s case the exploitation was not stopped. So finally, in 2016, Akiva pleaded guilty, he went to prison and he served his time. His indefinite leave to remain was cancelled. Since his release, Akiva has worked as a painter and decorator. He helps his younger brother with his homework and he looks after his mum, who has serious health problems. He has a real chance to turn his life around, yet the last time he went to sign on with the Home Office, as usual, he was detained. He is due to be deported on tomorrow’s flight. The Bishop of Barking and the Archdeacon of West Ham have written to the Minister asking that he be taken off the flight. I believe, as they believe, that this has to stop.

We need to hear the Government recognise that resolving the Windrush scandal, and preventing it from happening again, go beyond what is in this Bill. If they do not recognise that, how are we supposed to believe that the lessons learned review will be taken at all seriously? Time and again, people whose lives are here have been deported into destitution. Five of those who had been deported to Jamaica were killed in a single year between 2018 and 2019—two were killed in a single day. They were preyed upon by gangs, denied the healthcare they needed and left cut off from their families, who remained here in Britain, with nowhere to go and no way of supporting themselves. Nothing in this Bill will change anything for Akiva—only the Minister can do that. Until we see the lessons learned review and how it is acted on, nothing will change to stop similar injustices being done. Unless the Home Secretary recognises the compelling circumstances of this case, Akiva will be on that flight tomorrow and he will be in danger.

We should have been able to keep Akiva safe from those gangs and offer him the life he deserved, just as we should for all those other children caught up in this. I do not want anybody in this Chamber to genuinely believe that their children could not go this way. I have sat and spoken to police officers who have cried because their children have been caught up in these gangs—it is there but for the grace of God. Instead we are going to make Akiva pay for a third time. Akiva has had a childhood without the support he needed to get him through and past the grooming of the gangs. He was not supported, in mental health, through his grief. He went to prison and now he faces deportation. How many times does a person need to be punished?

If reports are to be believed, the lessons learned review will recommend that the Government stop chartering these flights altogether. The review may, rightly, recommend that no one is deported after coming here as a child and growing up here, because this is the only home they have ever known. So much of the Windrush scandal and so many of its injustices are in these flights: We are deporting people to somewhere they will be destitute and somewhere they do not know, where they will not be safe. We are doing this without a fair process, without proper representation, and all because of what went wrong in their lives when they were just a child, here, in our society, in our communities. It is wrong. These are the injustices that are due to be done to Akiva and others tomorrow.

So I want to know: is the Home Office deliberately pushing through this flight before the review is published? If so, it is truly shameful. If righting the wrongs done to the Windrush generation is so important to the Government, why has the hostile environment not truly been dismantled? Why has it taken such a long time for policy to change? Why is Akiva on that flight tomorrow, when his parents and his siblings are British citizens? He is one of us.

Policing and Crime

Baroness Brown of Silvertown Excerpts

Wednesday 29th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Thangam Debbonaire (Bristol West) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Dehenna Davison), who clearly wants the best for her constituents. Unfortunately, like so many in her party, she appears to have forgotten the global financial crisis. The cuts were a choice, ditched when convenient, and they have had a consequence.

[Ms Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend not think that such empty soundbites are not appropriate for the Chamber today, on an issue as important as this?

[Thangam Debbonaire]

Indeed I do, because my constituents, like the constituents of Members across the House, have had to suffer 10 years of cuts.

The Minister seems to expect us to be grateful, but on behalf of the people of Bristol West, I say that we are not. We wanted investment in our police in 2011, 2012 and 2013. We have faced cuts every year. We have seen the cuts, we have felt the consequences, and the Prime Minister’s announcement of the growth in police numbers does not make up for it. In Avon and Somerset, it will mean just 403 new officers, but over three years—and we have lost 700 over the last 10.

Meanwhile, crime has not gone down, and the nature of crime has changed, partly as a consequence of other cuts—cuts to drug treatment; cuts to youth services; cuts to mental health provision; cuts across the board. All have had a cost. My constituents are smart people. They can add up, and they are not fooled by being told that we are now going to get some new officers over the next few years.

Of course I am proud that Avon and Somerset police managed to rise to the challenge of those budget cuts, but it is not what I wanted for them, and it is not what I wanted for my constituents, who deserved better. I pay tribute to our police and crime commissioner, Sue Mountstevens, and our chief constable, Andy Marsh, and to every single officer and civilian working in the constabulary of Avon and Somerset, because they have worked so hard to keep us safe; and to the PCSOs, the specials and the officers who put their lives on the line daily.

I am proud that my niece’s husband James is a serving police officer in the Dyfed-Powys police force. We are really proud of him and we are grateful to him and all our officers, but they should not have had to work in such conditions. It is the specialist services as well as the overall numbers—as the Minister said, it is not just about numbers; it is also about specialist services, and that is where a lot of the cuts have fallen. It is not fair; it is not sustainable. It is affecting our safety as civilians and our feelings of safety.

I briefly mention knife crime. Bristol had 1,237 knife crimes in the past 12 months, an 11% increase on the previous year. Like so many other constituencies, we have a knife crime problem, but when the Government first announced a response to knife crime our force was not initially among the seven allocated money; our police and crime commissioner and chief constable had to fight for it. We are grateful for the fact that we have got some now, but we should not have needed to beg for it.

We need long-term certainty. We need more attention to be paid to the other factors in responding to and preventing knife crime, particularly among young people. I hope that every word that my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Vicky Foxcroft) said today, and on so many occasions as chair of the Youth Violence Commission, will be heeded.

I am angry, because 10 years of cuts to youth services, 10 years of cuts to other help and support for families, such as Sure Start, domestic violence support and mental health services, and 10 years of cuts to drug and alcohol services have all had consequences, and we are living with them. We are living with drug-related crime, for instance.

Ministers have mentioned their concerns, which I understand. Members across the House have concerns about how we respond to drug crime. Even on the Opposition Benches we are not in agreement. I respect the different points of view, but I would like everyone to understand, when we discuss drug consumption rooms, that we already have a drug consumption room: it is called the streets of Bristol, and it is dangerous for people who consume drugs and dangerous for the bystanders. I would really like the Minister to work with other Ministers to find out what the potential solutions are. I believe they are having some form of drug safety in treatment rooms. The Minister may disagree, but I would really like to know what she thinks.

As in the areas of other police forces, one in three violent crimes in Avon and Somerset area are domestic violence and one in five of homicides are domestic. As my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, Deptford said, there is a strong connection between childhood exposure to domestic abuse and other adverse childhood experiences, and future harm and harmful behaviour. It is good that domestic abuse reporting has increased as public tolerance has decreased, and I am really grateful to the Minister for all she has done to champion responses to domestic abuse. I urge her to redouble her efforts to get the Bill back before us, because that had cross-party support. She knows—I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests—that I shall be pressing her on the responses to domestic violence perpetrators. It is not just about current victims; it is about future victims and their children.

However, our entire criminal justice system has suffered under austerity, which was not necessary and has undermined the responses to police work and prevention. I did not want us to create the posts of police and crime commissioners, but I have really appreciated the attention to violence against women, to child sexual exploitation and to knife crime that our police and crime commissioner, Sue Mountstevens, and others have shown. She has shown determined, locally focused leadership.

That is the plus side of localism, but on the downside it has many weaknesses, such as fewer economies of scale, and weaker responses to crimes of an international dimension, such as modern slavery and trafficking. It has meant passing the blame for the impact of national cuts to the local police and other services.

I want to mention the Brexit word, briefly; I am not afraid to mention it. I know that the Prime Minister would like it all to be over on Friday, but as we leave the European Union on Friday we will be hampered in the international dimension unless the negotiations for the future relationship prioritise safety and security and data sharing. At the moment, if our police make an arrest, they can share information about risk and gain information about risk with forces across the EU. They can issue a European arrest warrant, which helps to respond to the flight of criminals to other EU nations. I urge the Minister, in her closing remarks, to tell us how the Government will be prioritising, in the future relationship negotiations, those aspects which are about keeping us safe.

Finally, I ask the Minister a few questions. I hope that if she cannot address them in her final remarks, she will perhaps consent to meet me to discuss them. I ask for a focus on the preventive health approach to knife and violent crime. That covers all forms of violent crime: intervention in schools and awareness on safe relationships and the difference between safe and unsafe relationships, as well as long-term, sustainable funding structures for local authorities, youth services and police, because that is what we need to bring the number of serious violent and knife crimes down.

The Minister for Crime, Policing and the Fire Service said in his opening remarks that it was not all about numbers of police officers and he is right, but it is also about the funding of those other services. He cannot duck the consequences indefinitely. I would like a multi-year funding settlement for our police forces, so that they can plan. I would like an acknowledgment—just once—of the damage done by 10 years of unnecessary cuts and the impact on police officers, such as my nephew-in-law and his colleagues and our police across the country, who too often have had to be on single crewing in call-outs and had to deal with the fact that they knew they could not manage all the things they wanted to do. I would like the Minister to commit to an end to the boom-and-bust approach, because our constituents and our police deserve much better than this.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Victoria Atkins)]

May I welcome you to your position, Mr Deputy Speaker, and thank colleagues across the House for their contributions during this important debate on crime and policing? Members on both sides have spoken powerfully about their constituents’ concerns and, indeed, about the sad stories of those who have fallen victim to crime. One line from my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes North (Ben Everitt) struck home: his home town has seen four murders in 10 weeks. Those families and other families across the country are having to live with their terrible losses, and we all know that an act of violence may last no more than a few seconds, but it leaves a destructive legacy of human tragedy. We in this place will never forget that, which is why the Prime Minister made it clear that cutting crime and keeping our streets safe is an absolute priority for this Government—a point backed up forcefully by my new colleagues, my hon. Friends the Members for Birmingham, Northfield (Gary Sambrook) and for Bishop Auckland (Dehenna Davison). The Government’s commitment to cut crime and keep our streets safe is absolute.

However, there remains no short cut to solving violent crime. We need a clear, well-funded plan to stop violence where it appears, to identify the repeat offenders and knife carriers more likely to be involved, and to address the root causes of violence, giving young people a future that does not end on the point of a blade.

[Ms Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

Will the Minister come to update the House on the work of the National Crime Agency and what it is doing about the so-called county lines? County lines have almost become an immovable part of our landscape, and it should not be like that. We need to do something to protect our children from exploitation in the pursuit of profit.

[Victoria Atkins]

The hon. Lady is a real advocate for her constituency, which is sadly so often blighted by serious violence. The National Crime Agency, of course, conducts a national threat assessment, and I am happy to update the House on its report either orally or through other means.

We owe it to our young people to offer them a better future and to end the pervasive sense of hopelessness that drives so many into the arms of criminality. This principle was eloquently articulated in the maiden speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Danny Kruger). Representing Devizes, he is perhaps the only Member of this House who can call the great historic monument of Stonehenge a “vulgar upstart.” One sentence of his speech struck home with me:

“Our love of our country begins with love of our neighbourhoods.”

He brings to the House his experience of working with young people in prisons and of the vital role of independent civil society organisations in helping to cut crime and in helping those young people, which I will address later in my speech.

We have heard a lot today about the Government’s plan to bring 20,000 extra officers—new officers—into police forces across the country. One of the first acts of this Government was to make that pledge, and the work has already started. I am delighted that all forces have joined us in meeting this commitment to the public and have prioritised recruitment. Some £700 million from the police settlement will be made available to police and crime commissioners to help forces recruit the first tranche of 6,000 officers by the end of March 2021.

TOEIC: Overseas Students

Baroness Brown of Silvertown Excerpts

Wednesday 24th July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

Let me help the Minister maybe. If she is absolutely confident about what she is saying from the Dispatch Box—I have to say I would be very surprised if she is—can she commit to covering the legal costs of any student who has had to pay for legal representation as a result of Home Office inadequacy? Surely that must be applicable and appropriate for those who win their appeals.

[Caroline Nokes]

The hon. Lady will know that when it comes to court hearings, judges will decide whether people have a valid claim to remain in the UK. We continue to look at all the options, including whether there is a need for those who feel they have been wronged to be able to ask for their case to be reviewed. As I have said, my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary intends to make further announcements in due course. However, it is right to reflect on the fact that this is a complicated issue, and it is right that we take time to make sure we get it right—[Interruption.] The hon. Lady may chunter at me from a sedentary position, but it is important that we make the right decisions and do not just give blanket promises that we will allow people to stay and will pay their costs, when it may be the case that they have cheated.

Violent Crime

Baroness Brown of Silvertown Excerpts

Monday 17th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

It is always a pleasure to answer a question from my constituency neighbour. We might be separated by a constabulary boundary, but I absolutely understand the ripple effect of serious organised crime and of county lines gangs in areas such as ours. That is why one of our first actions to help those force areas that might not have the experience of gangland activity of some of our larger urban or metropolitan forces is the setting up of the national co-ordination centre on county lines, in order to help spread good practice. I am pleased to say that in just the few months it has been operating that centre has caused more than 1,000 arrests and the safeguarding of more than 1,300 vulnerable people.

[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

Last night my community was violated yet again by a murder; it has been a terrible few years in West Ham, with nine young lives lost. The hon. Lady talks about money but we need proper funding. We do not need projects; we need police officers. We do not need overtime payments; we need something fundamental that raises the level of police activity. We are told that there are 1,000 county lines operations in this country. I want to be assured by the Minister today that there are 1,000 investigations into who is running those gangs and who are ultimately responsible for the murder, exploitation and enslavement of many young people in my constituency.

[Victoria Atkins]

The hon. Lady has been a consistent advocate for her constituents, who have been so tragically affected by the rise of county lines. I remember a debate more than a year ago in Westminster Hall where she spoke passionately of the impact on mothers affected by serious violence and homicides in her constituency. The National Crime Agency has set county lines and the exploitation of children as a national threat; it is co-ordinating the national level operations because it has the national overview. That is where the national county lines co-ordination centre comes in, to help co-ordinate activities across force boundaries, because as the hon. Lady will acknowledge, these gangs to do not respect constabulary boundaries. We have the extra funding—the £100 million serious violence fund that is going into London and other areas affected—and of course we have just over £1 billion of extra funding for policing nationally. The hon. Lady will know from the many conversations she and I have had about this issue that it is as much about early intervention and prevention as about law enforcement, and the £200 million youth endowment fund, alongside the early intervention youth fund which is already operating and helping up to 29 projects across the country, will help reach those children she cares so passionately about.

Windrush Scheme

Baroness Brown of Silvertown Excerpts

Tuesday 5th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

Yes. When we started work on the compensation scheme, it was right to appoint an independent person, and that is exactly what we did. Martin Forde, QC, travelled across the country and spoke to as many members of the Windrush generation who were affected as possible. He asked for an extension to speak to even more, and we granted that.

[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

I cannot respond to constituents who contact me about deportations tomorrow. They and I want to know whether any of my constituents are on those flights. I have phoned the Immigration Minister and been stonewalled again and again. The flights need to be suspended so that all individual circumstances can be properly examined. I am sure the Home Secretary agrees that this is an issue of trust and that, at the very least, the Department should engage in good faith with MPs on the matter.

[Sajid Javid]

I agree with the hon. Lady. I know that she has asked our Department a question, and we are looking into that. I hope she knows that, because I believe that we have communicated to her that we are looking into it. She is right that if any Member of Parliament has a question about any constituent, we will of course help in any way we can.

Knife Crime

Baroness Brown of Silvertown Excerpts

Thursday 24th January 2019 Westminster Hall

[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

It is always a delight to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Buck.

As hon. Members may know, between January 2017 and March last year, nine young people in my constituency were murdered, mostly by knives. Since last March, we have been incredibly fortunate that no more children have died, but I have to say that that is a really strange thing to feel thankful for. The reprieve is making it possible for my community to begin to heal, and I can only pray that that lull in violence continues.

Healing is hard—not just for families, friends and witnesses, who are so devastated and traumatised by what they have seen, but for communities. In Forest Gate, children were taken away again and again. It was horribly traumatic. There was palpable fear and a feeling of shock on the streets. I would walk into a shop, and all people would talk to me about was what had happened last week, last month and the month before. They wanted to know what we were doing about it.

Last September, I gave a speech in which I made seven asks of Government. One was for a rapid and professional mental health response to be available for communities in the wake of tragedies and trauma, such as the murder of a child. With mental health services so overstretched in most areas—especially child and adolescent mental health services—that support is often not there. Even as I held in my arms a young man who was sobbing because he had held a dying friend, I knew that he was not going to get the support that he needed at the time that he needed it, and nor were his friends.

On that, I am glad to say that the Government have responded and engaged with me positively. I recently met the Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, the hon. Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price), who listened, as she does, with sympathy. I am working with the East London NHS Foundation Trust and other leading mental health bodies to try to find a model that will be effective, and I hope that we will look at piloting services soon.

My community has been calmer, but do not be deceived. The drivers of the violence have not gone away—far from it. The second of my seven asks was for the police and the courts to focus on those who are driving much of the violence for profit by grooming and exploiting children as cheap and disposable labour in the quest to sell drugs across the county lines. I am grateful that the Minister for Security has engaged with me on that, and I am expecting a confidential update on progress from the National Crime Agency soon—I hope this speech will prompt the Government to make that very soon.

I have five other asks as well. We need to safeguard children and build their resilience against grooming, so my third ask is for investment in children’s social workers and youth workers. As my hon. Friend the Member for Leyton and Wanstead (John Cryer) said, that has been decimated, and we have been reaping the disbenefits since. My fourth ask is that there is proper training and support so that everyone, from social workers to police officers, teachers and parents, can recognise the signs of gang exploitation and know how to respond.

Fifthly, we need new and trusted ways for young people to report what they know. I do not think that Crimestoppers is working. Many people in my constituency have told me that if they call it, the police will pop round, putting them in danger. We need to find a new, effective, third way of reporting, so that young people can have confidence when they pass on confidential information to the police.

Sixthly, we need far better systems to keep people safe after they have done the bravest thing and given essential evidence to the police or in court. In September, I told the House about one horrifying case of a father and son who had to leave home because they were in great danger, and about the appalling way in which they were abandoned thereafter by the system. They had no money at all—the father had to leave his job. Social services had not picked it up, and the police had not followed through on the support. We need to ensure that if people do the right thing, we do the right thing by them. Big changes are needed, such as a national system of dedicated caseworkers to support witnesses who are genuinely in danger. I have not heard anything to convince me otherwise. Young witnesses and their families should have a bright and secure future, not punishment for what they have done for us.

Seventhly, we need stronger action against incitement online. I hope that the online harms White Paper will do that job and tighten up regulation, because content that harms our communities is still being put online and staying online. In my speech in September I talked about a drill music video that clearly celebrated and encouraged violence in my community. It was celebrating the murder of a 14-year-old child in a playground in Forest Gate.

The original version had more than 1 million views on YouTube. It was taken down, but copies have gone up in its place, with pointless disclaimers on the front that should not protect the videos from action, but apparently do. By September, the copy version had received 120,000 views. Five months later, it is still up, and the view count is pushing 300,000, so, frankly, the greater calm in my constituency is no thanks to YouTube.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Leyton and Wanstead for his efforts to secure this debate, for his passion for the issue, and for the opportunity to press the Government again for the action that is needed to protect the vulnerable in my community.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in the debate, but I have to acknowledge that after 19 years in this place I am weary, depressed and upset. Here we are again: colleagues—often the same ones—coming to use our words in debates such as this. Hansard will record the issues we explore, and the tremendous number of ideas conveyed.

When I began my career in this place, Operation Trident was just getting going in London. At that stage the discussion was about whether we could get over the gun violence then happening in London, associated with gangs often described as Yardie gangs. There was a sense that we would be able to get on top of the problem, and that it would go—that the issue was really to be associated with downtown America. Almost two decades later, we might view the situation we have got to with knife and gun crime and gang activity in the UK—in London and England, overwhelmingly—as if it were a patient, being assessed by a doctor. The patient’s condition could be getting worse, stable or improving. Sadly, it has clearly got a lot worse. Something has gone drastically wrong.

I agree with everything said in the debate so far, and congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Leyton and Wanstead (John Cryer), who secured the debate. I send love, humility and respect to the family of Jaden, aged just 14, who lost his life recently. When I think of him, I cannot but think of my eldest son, who is just a year younger. It breaks your heart. I also reflect on the loss, on Easter Monday last year, of a beautiful young woman, Tanesha Melbourne-Blake, who was shot and killed leaving a newsagent in Tottenham. That led to the current debate, which is currently overwhelming us.

Things have got worse. We have heard that there were 40,147 offences in the year ending in March 2018. Today we found out that violent crime has gone up by 19%. Homicide and knife crime are up. It is all up. The problem is, in a sense, not new: we just have to read Dickens’s description of Fagin and the gangs that populated London in 1839. However, it is a problem that grips us hugely at this time.

An important issue has been touched on, in relation to county lines, and that is drug use. What we are talking about is not just kids knifing each other because they happen to be violent. Behind much of the knife crime lies a huge industry, which reaches all over the world. It begins in countries such as Colombia. I have spoken to quite a lot of young urban people aged 12, 13 and 14 and many of them cannot even tell me where Colombia is. They certainly could not organise the trans-shipment of cocaine across the Atlantic and through Spain and Amsterdam to this country. They are not the men in suits—often anonymous—who deal with that traffic. Those men are not sufficiently made the subject of debate in this House. Yes, such organised crime traffics huge amounts of drugs. However, it also traffics people—women—and guns, which is why there is an increase in gun crime.

There are many different types of young people in the urban communities affected by the problems we are debating, but I will give Members a picture of some of them. Of course, there is the young man or woman who has fallen into a gang. We talk about them a lot; but there is also the young man or woman growing up on one of the great housing estates. They are not in a gang. They do not know anything about gangs, really. They are just seriously scared.

I think about those young people a lot, because that was me once—scared. They are picking up knives and burying them in bushes, because they do not feel safe in the communities where they live. I must tell the House that if they do not feel safe in the communities where they live it is the responsibility of this place, of the Met Commissioner, of Government—the Home Secretary—and of the Mayor. We have failed those young people living on estates who do not feel safe and who pick up knives and bury them before and after school and at the weekends, to protect themselves—and then find themselves using them.

There is another group of young people. I care a lot about them. They are the kind who might be in a park after school, following the crowd. Often they have special needs such as dyslexia, ADHD, mild Asperger’s or autism. They are just following the crowd, in the park, but they are another group who get rounded up. We could be having a debate about joint enterprise. Why do we have a law that throws young people into prison, even though they did not commit the murder, because they happened to be in the same place? They are vulnerable and impressionable—like most teenagers—and some of them are in jail as I speak. Why? It is because the police are not close to the intelligence, and there is a culture of “no snitching” and not telling tales. Therefore we round them all up. To put it bluntly, because we are mainly talking about black lives, no one really cares.

There are different groups of young people, and then, of course, there are the victims. All of that is largely driven by drugs, which are prolific. The price of cocaine has dropped, the purity has risen, and it is estimated that 875,000 people used cocaine in England and Wales last year, a rise of 15%—it just gets worse—with an 8% rise among 16 to 24-year-olds and 432 deaths related to it.

All that is driving the gang activity, serving markets across the country. That struck me when I was in Highbury Corner youth court. I had a young constituent, 17 years old, and the magistrate announced that he had been arrested in Aberdeen. I have been to all four corners of this country, but I must admit I have never been to Aberdeen. I thought, “What’s he doing in Aberdeen?” It turns out there is a big cocaine market in Aberdeen. There is a lot of money coming off the oil rigs, and there was my young constituent, serving the market in Aberdeen—or rather being pimped out by an adult to serve that market.

Of course, the trafficking of that drug drives a culture of violence back home. It can affect kids who are not county lines, because it creates a culture of violence in the communities we represent. I must ask the Minister: in that context, why, oh why has the Home Office budget for the UK Border Force been cut by £110 million, or 18%, since 2012? We talk a lot about cuts, but if we cut the Border Force it will have an impact on the drug market.

Most sane commentators, who in this country stretch from William Hague, the former leader of the Conservative party, to Charlie Falconer, the former Secretary of State for Justice under the previous Labour Government, are beginning to talk very seriously about the idea that the war on drugs has failed, yet we in this place have failed to keep up in our responses. That is for another debate, but let us put that squarely at the centre of this discussion. Sadly, just as was the case when Dickens was writing about London all that time ago, where there is poverty, where there is hardship—I will return to that in a moment—there will always be young souls who can be taken up. Much can be said about prevention, but let us address the seriousness of the demand driving this whole agenda and the need to support the different kinds of young people I discussed.

Many in this debate have talked about the importance of policing, but there are other crucial services beyond policing. We require our local authorities and young offending teams to set effective violence reduction and youth strategies, but it is hard to be effective when council budgets have been slashed by 54%. Youth centres, after-school activities—gone. Between 2012 and 2016, 600 youth centres closed, 3,500 youth workers lost their jobs and 140,000 places vanished. Spending on universal youth services has fallen by 52%. Interventions at local level have disappeared. That is on top of the neighbourhood policing that we have discussed.

Let us be clear about what that neighbourhood policing is really about; my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham (Clive Efford) made this point. We have housing estates where, I am afraid, the police cannot be found. That is why the young people are scared. The police are just not there in the numbers they need to be. I think of the Broadwater Farm estate in my constituency, which has 3,500 people. The police are not there in the numbers, and that is why the young people are scared.

When those young people are making a decision about whether to tell on a young person they know who has a knife or a gun hidden in his bedroom—“Do I worry about him and his mates on the estate or do I tell the police?”—they are making a reasonable judgment. Of course they do not tell the police, because they do not think the police can protect them; they do not see them in the numbers and the police are not present on the estate. It is not an unreasonable judgment that these young people are making.

I must also make it absolutely clear what is happening in reality in these young people’s lives and those of their parents. This is not to make excuses: poverty is never an excuse for violence. I grew up poor and working-class. Many Members of this House, including some who have spoken already, grew up in those circumstances. I never, ever say that poverty and being working-class or poorer is an excuse for violence. Nevertheless, black youth unemployment in this country between the ages of 16 and 24 is currently running at 26%. The national average is 12%—it is more than twice that for this community. People say, “Oh, why is it always black youth that we see?”, but my mother would have said, “Idle hands make the devil’s work.” It is quite simple. I am sure you too have heard that saying before, Sir Graham.

Young people must have jobs, and we must do something about the housing crisis, which is also creating polarised communities: people living perpetually in houses of multiple occupation, again in the context of the housing estates I am describing, with a lack of services, polarisation and increasing poverty, against a backdrop of huge cuts to welfare—they, too, have a bearing on this—and unemployment. The cauldron in which the story we are telling is mixed starts to feel akin to what Dickens was writing about. That is the point.

Yes, we need a public health approach, but it will have to be more than just a nice slogan or phrase; I am worried that it is becoming one of those in politics. I have seen it happen before. It happened with another phrase that we started using a few years ago: “affordable housing”. Affordable housing? In London? At 80% of market value? We still use that phrase, but it means nothing to ordinary people, and I am worried that the public health strategy, which had a great name when it came out of Glasgow, is being tarnished, because it needs resource, joined-up activity and real co-ordination.

I am very pleased that I was asked to be on the violence reduction task force, but there is a hell of a lot to do. On the issue of drill music and YouTube, some of the commercial companies have a lot to answer for at the moment, but we should not focus entirely on the music that young people listen to. There are issues across social media with all young people in Britain, including young girls bullied on forums such as WhatsApp and Instagram.

[Lyn Brown]

I am not sure whether my right hon. Friend was here for my speech, but the only thing I would like taken down is the specific drill video that celebrated the murder of a 14-year-old in the playground, not all drill music. I do not intend to blame a genre of music for the deaths of children.

[Mr Lammy]

Let me put it on the record that my hon. Friend is entirely right; if my comments came out the wrong way, they were not what I meant. However, there are issues about what it is acceptable to put on social media—what it says and what it is driving—and there is a real question about regulation. That is absolutely clear.

France has just banned smartphones for under-14s in school, I think. We have heard nothing from the chief medical officer in this country—nothing. Nothing has been said. But we know that there are issues of mental health. We know that self-harm is up and anorexia is up. In a way, knife crime is a different sort of self-harm in the community, is it not? So there are some ingredients here, but we need to be careful about focusing on one particular group when actually this is an issue across the board.

I hope that the Minister might say something about serious organised crime and about cocaine—about drugs. I hope that she understands that the thrust of much of what has been said here is entirely about the resources available for the police, local authorities, youth services and families themselves to grip and deal with this problem so that we are seeing a reduction and not—as we are seeing now, month on month and year on year—a rise.

[Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Graham, and, as always, to follow my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy). I often seem to follow him in knife crime debates, which is always daunting.

I thank the Backbench Business Committee for allowing this debate and my hon. Friend the Member for Leyton and Wanstead (John Cryer) for introducing it. I agree with, I think, everyone in this Chamber; there is a lot of agreement about what the problems are, what issues we face, and what should be done. I know that the Minister is listening and that she will do all she can.

I want to remember the young men who have died in my constituency of Croydon Central. Andre Aderemi died in August 2016. Jermaine Goupall, who was only 15, died in August 2017. And Kelva Smith, whom I had canvassed during the election campaign and promised that I would work on knife crime and do all the things that we needed to do—I let him down; we all let him down—was stabbed to death on the streets of Croydon in March 2018.

Fortunately, there have not been any murders of that kind in Croydon since. We are very glad about that and hope that it is the start of a trend. I want to pay tribute to my borough of Croydon, which, in the face of very significant cuts, is doing a lot. There are community groups. There are faith groups, which we should not forget, because faith groups have people who can love one another; have money; have buildings that they can sometimes support other community groups in; and have faith, which is what drives those people who are religious and gives them a purpose. We must not forget the faith groups, because they have a huge role to play. We also have the council and the police. They are all working together. Croydon Council has committed to setting up a violence reduction unit, which is a very good thing.

The main flip that I think we need to see at national, regional and local level is that, rather than panicking every time knife crime rises and throwing a pot of money at the problem, we need to understand the problem and its causes, work out how much money that would cost to address and then implement the measures necessary. What happens, probably across all our constituencies, is that as soon as there is a pot of money, many different organisations have to compete with one another to get it. It leads to a situation in which we are encouraging people to work on their own, rather than working together. We need to flip that round.

In Croydon, we have done a review of the 60 serious cases of youth violence. That has not been published yet, but we have seen some of the findings. In the 60 serious cases of youth violence, every single child was outside mainstream education. There was a maternal absence. That was interesting because we often talk about paternal absence, but there was also a maternal absence. It was not necessarily that the mother was not there, but she may have had an addiction, may have been working several jobs or may have had her own mental health problems such that she was not able to parent.

The other interesting finding was that, of the 60, very few had a trusted adult—whether that be a teacher, someone from a state organisation or a family member—in their life. When we look at the number of times, especially as seen in the serious case reviews for most violent deaths, that the state intervenes, for none of the people to be able to be a trusted adult because they come and go and different state bodies intervene is significant. That intervention does not quite have the impact that we want it to have.

I really hope that Croydon, by setting up the violence reduction unit, will look at all these things in the round—look at adverse childhood experiences, look at the trauma-informed approach and look at what is actually going on in the streets of Croydon. We have done a bit of work looking at where violence happens in public in Croydon, and there are about 11 hotspots in the borough; there are only about 11 places where most of the violence occurs. If there are only 11 hotspots, surely we can have more policing in those areas and try to tackle some of those problems for the long term.

Like other colleagues, I pay tribute to the schools. There is a huge difference, which we have talked about, in approaches to these issues. In Croydon, there is one school that in a year made 187 temporary or permanent exclusions. There are others that make a handful, if any. Those approaches are very different. We have had many conversations about why this is happening—why exclusions are increasing, and what we need to do about it.

It is a slightly easy response to blame entirely the new academy system, as some people do. Because of the autonomy that academies have, perhaps we are not able to put enough pressure on them, and they are looking to their results. That may be true up to a point, but there are also some excellent academies that are not excluding children, so we need to understand what is really going on in that mix.

The all-party parliamentary group on knife crime, which I chair, did some work on this, as my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) mentioned. We found that one third of local authorities do not have any places left in their pupil referral units. That is not surprising, given that permanent exclusions have increased by 56% in the past three years. Almost half those exclusions are of children with special needs. It cannot be right that we are permanently excluding children with special needs without going through a whole series of interventions that should be in place to try to keep them in mainstream schools. That will not always be possible. It is not always right for children to be in mainstream schools, and we do need to have a PRU system that works, but as my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier) said, we need to look at the whole PRU world, because not enough light is being shone on the good and the bad, and how effective they are.

Knife offences have increased at pretty much the same—

[Lyn Brown]

Can I just make a tiny intervention on the point that my hon. Friend has just made? One issue with the PRU in my constituency is that mums have complained that the people they are trying to get their children away from, the groomers, are waiting outside the PRU because the captive audience is going to leave it and walk straight into their arms.

[Sarah Jones]

That is absolutely true. There is a greater vulnerability to influence. There are lots of issues with PRU systems. For example, children tend to finish much earlier than in mainstream schools; they finish at 2 o’clock, so they are more likely to be on the streets for longer. As my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Vicky Foxcroft) has mentioned before in Parliament, if we look at when knife offences occur, we see that there is a peak after school and before parents come home from work. It is absolutely tragic, but the number goes up, and then it goes down again. It would be good to keep children busy for that time, before their parents get home from work.