Louie French
Main Page: Louie French (Conservative - Old Bexley and Sidcup)Department Debates - View all Louie French's debates with the Home Office
(2 months, 3 weeks ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Alex Norris
There is clearly much that we can learn from the Scottish approach. I have not had the opportunity to meet Medics Against Violence, but on the hon. Member’s recommendation I will seek to do that. We strongly support the idea of support and mentors in A&E and custody settings. The evidence shows that would be highly effective.
We need to end the exploitation of children and young people by criminal gangs, and that includes county lines. We need a new criminal offence of child exploitation and a new serious organised crime strategy to go after those cowards who make millions off the back of exploiting young people. To bring the change to deliver that, we need a new, proper cross-Government coalition to end knife crime, bringing together those who have key roles in tackling it and in keeping young people safe, whether they are Ministers, community leaders, faith leaders, the families of victims, sporting bodies, tech companies or young people themselves. Everybody should be brought into this fight. That is the sort of Government that we would seek to lead, if given the opportunity.
Mr Louie French (Old Bexley and Sidcup) (Con)
The hon. Member is making a passionate speech about bringing various people from across Government and communities together to tackle knife crime. When the shadow Home Secretary and the Leader of the Opposition held a summit in east London last year on knife crime, the Mayor of London, who is the police and crime commissioner, was nowhere to be seen. Can the hon. Member ask the shadow Home Secretary why?
Alex Norris
I have to say I am a little saddened by that intervention. This is a deeply serious issue about which the public expect to hear answers. I do not think the public would consider the policing of the diary of the Mayor, the hon. Gentleman or anybody else to be part of a substantive solution. I wrote my note for his intervention ahead of time, because I know that 86 days before a mayoral election, the Tories are much more interested in trying to fight that election than tackling the problem. If he really believes that is the approach—I do not, but it is for him to use his time as he chooses—let us put that to the people of London.
Mr Louie French (Old Bexley and Sidcup) (Con)
I would like to place on the record my thanks to the hon. Member for Batley and Spen (Kim Leadbeater) for her courage in speaking about her personal experience.
We have heard a lot about how this should not be a political debate, but I am afraid that the choices made have been very political. “London highlights what Labour can do in power”—not my words, but those of the Labour leader in a rare moment of consistency. For once, I agree with him. Just look at the regional crime data and at the data specifically for our capital city, London. The only “PC” Londoners are likely to come across is political correctness. The two areas where knife crime has risen the most, London and the west midlands, both have a Labour police and crime commissioner in charge. If those two areas are taken out of the national figures, they show that across the country knife crime actually fell last year, proving yet again that the shadow Front Benchers need to get their own house in order before preaching to others.
“Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime”—empty words that we have heard Labour politician after Labour politician parrot for the last 30 years. But when they were in power, those words from the pound-shop Blairites could not have been further from reality. For all the playground politics of this place, we must remember that these failures have real-life consequences for both the victims of crime and our communities.
When I was growing up in Bexley, one of London’s suburbs, life was always relatively safe, with Bexley consistently ranked in London’s top five safest boroughs. Issues such as knife crime and gang crime were viewed as a distant inner-city issue, which many families, including my own, thought they had left behind when they chose a better life for their children in Conservative-run Bexley. Fast-forward to today, and while Conservative-run Bexley is still one of the safest boroughs in London, with a crime rate approximately a third lower than that of the rest of London, fears about knife and gang crime on our doorstep are very real. Several serious incidents have tragically taken place in my constituency in recent months, and my thoughts remain with all those families, and those across London, who have lost loved ones.
The latest crime rate data highlights the fact that violent crime has been on a consistently upward trend since Sadiq Khan became Mayor, and tragically Bexley is not immune from Labour’s shameful record in London over the past eight years, which has seen more than 1,000 people killed. Life after life has been destroyed by the scourge of knife crime in London, with Londoners let down time and again by politicians in this place who are not brave enough to openly back effective policing measures such as stop and search, which take an average of 400 dangerous weapons off the streets each month. The Labour spokesman could not even bring himself to mention stop and search today. Let us not forget that it was this Labour Mayor of London who openly pledged to
“do all in my power to further cut”
the use of stop and search.
Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr French
Now look at the state of London after eight years of Sadiq Khan’s politically correct policing. Just look at the data. In London, we have seen a 54% increase in knife crime since Labour took office. According to the Met’s official data, the number of stop and searches carried out in 2023 was 18.9% lower than it had been in the previous 12 months, and at the same time knife crime offences rose by 17.1%.
Mr French
Before anyone accuses me of stoking a culture war—which, as we all know, is the left’s new buzzword to try to shut down critical debates about their woke ideas—let me also point out that the official data shows that white people were the most searched ethnic group in this period: 10,000 more over a two-year period. That is why I make no apology for my support for frontline officers using the likes of stop and search to help take dangerous knives off the streets, and why I back this Government to close the legal loopholes on zombie knives and to roll out scan-and-search technologies as quickly as possible. As politicians, we should all be showing real leadership in this place and doing the same.
Mr French
The public have rightly had enough of empty gesture politics and warm words from politicians when yet another life is unnecessarily taken. They want action. They want their political leaders to get a grip on crime and make all our communities safer again. In London, the need to get a grip on crime and get back to basic policing could not be clearer. Not only are the Metropolitan police in special measures, but their leadership now faces a confidence crisis, from the perspective of both the public and many serving frontline police officers. Morale in the Met has arguably never been lower. It is little wonder, when decent, hard-working frontline officers feel that time and again they do not have the backing of the Mayor and their leaders to do the dangerous job of being a police officer in London, whether that means using stop and search to take dangerous knives off the streets, or specially trained firearms officers still having the confidence to pull the trigger in those split-second life-or-death moments when they guard us in places like this.
I am genuinely sad to say that I was not surprised to learn that the Met was the only force in the country that had failed to hit its recruitment target, despite millions of pounds in support being provided directly by the Government. That is yet another failure on the part of the Labour Mayor and police and crime commissioner, and one that has cost London more than 1,000 police officers—1,000 extra police officers could be walking the beat, actually attending burglaries or helping to stop what feels like a never-ending rise in knife crime. Seriously, what chance do ordinary Londoners have when criminal gangs roam the streets of London targeting their next victims, with the only questions normally being whether a watch, a car or a phone has been stolen this time, and whether the police will even bother to investigate the crime?
True to form—and this is what Labour Members are trying to do here today—the Labour Mayor of London continues to deflect all of these failures on to the Government, rather than taking any accountability as the police and crime commissioner for London. In fact, I understand that the Office for Statistics Regulation recently had to correct Sadiq Khan’s misinformation on knife crime, stating that it had “significantly increased across” his tenure and not declined, as he had claimed.
Quick to plead poverty at every opportunity, the Mayor always manages to find money for his mates or money to waste on his latest pet projects rather than more funding for frontline policing. All that is paid for, of course, from the wallets of Londoners, including a staggering £200 increase in the Mayor’s share of council tax and his continued hammering of motorists across London. And look how he spends taxpayers’ hard-earned money, with £30 million for his union mates despite a record number of strikes—
Mr French
He has spent £29.5 million on additional staffing costs, including a 57% rise in Mayor’s Office costs and a 33% rise in press office spending; and let us not forget the £10 million for Met officers to learn what colour their personalities are. Now I do not know what colour my personality is, but what I do know from my experience of life is that when you see red ahead, you should follow the warning signs and stop. When it comes to crime and transport, the Great British public should look very closely at the sorry state of our capital city to see the big bright red warning sign highlighting what to expect if another left-wing, human rights London lawyer were ever in charge of our United Kingdom.
As the Leader of the Opposition has said himself, London highlights what Labour can do in power. With taxes up 70%, with London now officially the slowest city in the world in which to drive—that is, if your car has not already been stolen—and with more than 1,000 people tragically killed under this Labour Mayor, a Labour-run United Kingdom is a scary prospect indeed.
Ms Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)
I wish I could say that it is an honour to follow the hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr French), but I would not like to mislead the House in any way.
Ms Brown
No—I mean that I, not the hon. Gentleman, might mislead the House by saying that I enjoyed his extraordinary rant. Let me gently say that if he wants to audition to become the Conservatives’ failing candidate in the mayoral election that is about to be held, there are better places to do it than here, especially if he is too frit to take an intervention from the other side. I would, again, gently say that that suggests that he is not capable of listening to anyone or engaging in debate. He is very comfortable with his own voice.
Last July, in West Ham park, Rahaan Ahmed Amin was killed by a knife wound to his heart. Rahaan was allegedly stabbed with a foot-long ninja-style sword. He was 16 years old, and his death was absolutely devastating for his family and for our community. Those who have who have been charged or arrested in connection with Rahaan’s death were the same age, or even younger.
What happened to Rahaan was simply appalling, and it comes after so many other cases of young lives destroyed, families devastated, and communities broken by fear and distrust and struggling to heal. That fear and that harm continue. Just last week we had three separate stabbings in Newham. Last Monday a 14-year-old boy was stabbed on a bus. Last Tuesday one of our local teaching staff was stabbed in Woodgrange Road. Last Thursday evening another man was also stabbed in Forest Gate. It is a testament to our police and to our NHS that no one died.
For many years, this place has debated and passed laws on zombie knives and machetes, but these laws clearly have not done the job. My constituents want to know from the Minister why he feels that the drip-feed of small amendments to the law around knives has not worked. Why are there loopholes? Why have the Government not banned so-called ninja swords like the one that allegedly killed Rahaan? And why are our existing laws so poorly enforced, especially online?
I understand—most of the Conservative Members have alluded to this—that knife crime is complex. None of us thinks that all access to knives can be prevented, and we all understand that there are many different causes that prompt a child or young person to pick up a knife, so surely what we need is comprehensive action to tackle both the availability of knives and the root causes of knife crime. One cause of many young people’s deaths in Newham has been involvement with the gangs who groom and exploit young people, ruining lives for profit. Hon. Members may remember that I have been banging on about this agenda for about seven years now, but I do not think we have actually got a grip on the criminal networks that cause this massive harm.
In October 2022, I published a report on child criminal exploitation. I talked to experts across the police, the schools, social services and charities, and one of our main recommendations was for the Government to focus on disrupting those who control the organised criminals who groom our children. I am obviously delighted that my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), the shadow Home Secretary, has pledged a new criminal offence of child criminal exploitation and a new strategy to go after the gangs who are profiting from the exploitation of our children.