Lyn Brown
Main Page: Lyn Brown (Labour - West Ham)Department Debates - View all Lyn Brown's debates with the Home Office
(5 years, 11 months ago)
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Mr Wallace
Here is a good example. I visited Merseyside recently to see the work it has done on organised crime groups and county lines. A particularly nasty organised crime group was operating from one part of Merseyside and sending people up into Lancashire; a 15-year-old was sent into Lancashire to deal drugs in the Rossendale valley.
We decided to take action against that organised crime group. The local police, alongside some first-rate leadership from Merseyside council and officials in the council, set about dismantling that group. They dismantled, effectively, the café where it met; they co-ordinated with Lancashire police so they could deal with the 15-year-old who was in Rossendale; through the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 they targeted the huge amounts of cash being used by that organised crime group; and they dismantled the whole group. We used the local authorities in both Merseyside and Lancashire and both police forces, and we used imaginative methods and the powers that POCA and other legislation have given these people to make sure we took apart the money that enabled them to operate. That crime group is no longer active, and that community has taken back control and managed to deliver a successful response.
Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)
The Minister knows that there are difficulties in London at the moment. He is also aware that Cressida Dick has requested additional resources to deal with them. I came here today in the hope that we would have a fair and balanced debate about what we need on our streets, rather than this Punch and Judy nonsense. What he has suggested is that it is okay for nine children to have died in my local authority area because we do not have the money for the police force. May I ask him to be a bit more sensitive in the way he is dealing with this debate?
Mr Wallace
Is the hon. Lady suggesting that I said it was okay for nine people in her constituency to die? That is the worst example of Punch and Judy and immature politics I have heard in this House for a very long time. It is fine for her to ask about resources, and it is fine for her to say that she does not think the response is correct, but she seems to suggest that a Government Minister is saying it is okay for nine people to die. Is that the measure of the debate we are going to have today from the Opposition? She insults the police, the local authority and her own constituents. The reality is that people are dying on the streets because of a whole range of issues. Tragically, people were dying on the streets long before the Tory Government or the Labour Government were here. I remember patrolling the streets where people had died, and people were not going round half the time saying that it was purely the Government’s fault. There are lots of factors involved.
One of the factors behind the rise in violent crime is the use of smartphones and encryption, where we have seen a big shift. Those networks empower people to trade drugs and to communicate in a safe space. They allow connections between groups in a way that never happened before and that makes those groups much less vulnerable to the work of the law enforcement agencies.
In the old days, if anyone wanted to import huge amounts of cocaine to this country, somebody had to go to Colombia and meet people there. They had to physically go there and order the drugs. Then they had to take the cash and launder it. In the space of about eight years, these changes have meant that no one has to do that anymore. People can sit at home and order and deal drugs, and they can launder the money almost instantaneously through Bitcoin and elsewhere. That is a real challenge for the police, and it will not be fixed purely by putting more patrols into communities. It is also about changing how policing is done and investing in upstream National Crime Agency issues—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown) is right to say that there are issues of resource, and that is why we have increased some of the resource. I am informed that £49 million more is going into the Met, and the violent crime strategy comes with some new money.
Will Quince (Colchester) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Nuneaton (Mr Jones). As I listened to his oration, I was struck by the comparison between his constituency—which, incidentally, I have never visited—and my own, and by how many shared experiences we have. It is of course also a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Vicky Foxcroft). Although I do not agree with everything that she says, she speaks with such passion and is clearly so very dedicated to this most important of issues.
I think I speak for every single Member of this House in saying that there is no question but that we want to tackle and have a passion for tackling the scourge that is knife crime and youth violence. I wish to touch on a couple of specific points in respect of the serious violence strategy. Several Members have already made the case so passionately and compellingly for why it is so important to get this right: because of the impact of knife crime, violent crime and murder on not just families but whole communities. I particularly remember the cases in recent years of two young people, Nahid Almanea and James Attfield, who were stabbed to death in my constituency. They were horrific murders that really shook and affected the entire community.
I am going to focus on young people and children. Why? Because, in too many cases, children and young people are not just the victims of knife crime and youth violence but, tragically, the perpetrators, too. This problem is not unique to London and our major cities, as my hon. Friend the Member for Nuneaton said. If we went back 10, 15 or 20 years, we could have probably said that. Would we have seen and heard Members of Parliament for Nuneaton and Colchester making a contribution such as this to these debates? Probably not because instances of this nature were a rarity; they were not commonplace. However, one phenomenon that we have seen, particularly in the past three to five years, is the growth of county lines. It is really concerning how this issue is stretching out further and further from our major cities. First, it was just south Essex, then it moved up to mid-Essex, and now it is prevalent in north Essex and beyond; I reference, of course, Colchester, my own constituency.
Up until there were incidents in my own constituency, I had no dealings with or knowledge of county lines. When we see some of the activity that takes place, of course, it all revolves around drugs. Colchester is just one example; there are towns up and down the country that are being affected by county line operations. When we talk about the individuals who operate these county lines, they are not, in effect, the drug dealers; they are the kingpins—they are the people who never touch drugs. It is the people further down the line who are actually peddling the drugs and bringing to our towns, up and down our country, not just their drugs, but their violence and the intimidation that comes with it.
In one particularly striking incident in the town that I represent, there were six knife attacks in one evening. It was not particularly late—I think that it was about 6 pm in the evening in Colchester. Interestingly, all six were committed by, and perpetrated against, individuals who were not from my town; they were all from London and they were rival drug gangs. They came to Colchester, bringing with them that violence and intimidation to sell drugs on what they saw as a fertile patch—a market that was not, and is not, saturated in the way that London and so many other places are.
The other concerning development, which is also related to county line activity, is cuckooing. This was touched on by my hon. Friend the Member for Nuneaton. Again, it was not something that I had come across until a constituent raised it with me on a Friday in my constituency office. Without being over-disparaging, I could see that he was clearly a drug user himself. He said that his flat had been taken over by individuals from London whom he had willingly let in. They were threatening him with a firearm, had huge quantities of class A drugs and were using his property as a base from which to deal and to peddle their drugs over the course of a week, and sometimes two. Sadly, we are seeing that pattern of behaviour repeated.
More worrying than that is whom these vicious drug gangs are preying on in terms of their targeting for the cuckooing activity. It tends to be prostitutes, people with mental health issues, those who are in social housing and particularly isolated and existing drug addicts. They know that these individuals are vulnerable and can be targeted.
That is worrying enough in itself, and an issue that we should tackle, but the greatest concern is the use of children in county line operations and cuckooing—whether it is blackmail or bribing them with money. They may initially be bought a pair of trainers, at which point they have been bought. Seemingly the trainers are a gift, but at that point those children are forever indebted to the drug dealer. There may be threats to their family, or intimidation and violence either on their family or on their person. As my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr Hayes) said, it may be that the young person wants to reach out and look for somebody who will give them that sense of belonging. It does not really matter; these are young people who are victims.
I want to give the House a hypothetical example—it could easily be real; it is real up and down the country—of a cuckooing activity in which an individual preys on a vulnerable drug user or prostitute. They will pick on social housing, because they know that there are a lot of comings and goings in such blocks of flats and that the dealing of drugs would not be noticed in the way it would in a regular residential property. In that block, there is a young child—perhaps as young as eight, nine or 10—who may have been, as I said, offered trainers or a small amount of money as an inducement to help the individual to sell drugs. The child may have been threatened personally, but more commonly the threat will be against somebody they love, such as their mother, who could be the person in the corner who has just had their hit of heroin. The drug gang targets the one person on whom the young person relies more than anyone else in the world. That threat is enough to force the child to go out and sell drugs, because they are terrified.
We must intervene. What should we do when we get the opportunity? I am not pretending that this is easy, but why are we still treating young people—in many cases, they are children—as criminals? Yes, they have gone out to deal drugs, but what message does it send out when we criminalise a child who has been groomed, threatened, abused and blackmailed with threats against their mother, for example? We need to send out a clear message that children in such situations are not criminals, but victims. Until we treat them as such, things are not going to change.
Of course, that has to be within reason and we need caveats. If a young person or a child has committed a serious offence, particularly one against another person, such as a knife attack, it is right that the police and the criminal justice system take appropriate action. However, it is not hard to identify where these children and young people are clearly victims. It is important that we treat them as such, if no other reason—although there are many—than that the cost of getting things wrong is so great. Not only would the young person or child be set on the wrong path for the rest of their life, but we are labelling them as a criminal. What are their future life chances if they get a criminal conviction at a young age for trafficking or selling drugs? What message does that send out?
We know that drug gangs are increasingly using children as young as eight, nine or 10, as I said, because the gangs know that they are less likely to be stopped and searched and that they tend to be more vulnerable and easier prey for grooming. We know that such things are increasing, and we know that we must break the cycle and intervene. The question is how we intervene.
I welcome the £11 million for an early intervention youth fund, the £3.6 million for a national county lines co-ordination centre, and the cross-party taskforce, which is a good thing, but I encourage close working between police forces up and down the country and the Metropolitan police to break the county lines, which are effectively phone lines up and down the country that are bought and sold like franchises. I also encourage the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins), who is hugely passionate about this issue, to work with the Ministry of Justice so that we ensure that we treat the young people and children whom we identify as victims as victims, not criminals.
Moving quickly on to sentencing, I am sure that none of us wants to throw vast swathes of young people and teenagers into prison for possession of a knife or an offensive weapon. We all know that it is far better to rehabilitate them in our communities, but that has to be meaningful if it is to work. I would like any under-18s who are convicted or cautioned for a first-time knife-related offence to be sent on a mandatory weapons awareness course as part of any caution or sentence.
I am not making a direct comparison, but we already do this when people are caught speeding at a low level. Instead of paying a fine, people can go on a day’s course. I have not done it yet—I wonder how many Members across the House can say that—but those who I know have been on the course have told me that it is quite hard-hitting. Attendees are shown, very graphically, why it is important not to speed. This includes seeing the impact of drivers doing over 30 mph in areas with a 30 mph speed limit if they were to hit a pedestrian, including a child. The point is that the course is a graphic reminder of why we should not speed. Why should we not send under-18s who are convicted—or indeed just cautioned—of knife possession on a mandatory course, so that they have to see at first hand the impact that their actions could have?
Lyn Brown
I get where the hon. Gentleman is coming from—it is wholesome. My young people tell me that they carry a knife because they cannot be found lacking. We do not keep them safe, and they therefore feel that they have to keep themselves safe. Although I can see where he is coming from, I am not sure that we are really getting to the root cause or understanding of the problems that we are facing in the inner city.
Will Quince
The hon. Lady makes a valid point. I entirely understand where she is coming from, but I respectfully disagree. I will come to exactly why I disagree in just one minute. I first want to touch briefly on weapons awareness.
The hon. Lady is right when she says that young people carry a knife because they believe that it keeps them safer and they have to carry a knife because everyone else is carrying one. Yet we know that that is a hugely ignorant position because every single statistic out there tells us that people are more likely to be the victim of the knife crime attack if they are carrying a knife themselves. We have to get that message across to young people through numerous mediums—not just in schools and not just to people who are caught carrying a knife. We have to show them what it looks like to be stabbed with a knife and what it would look like to see their mother crying over their body. People need those hard-hitting lessons. As much as I agree with the hon. Lady, we have to give it a go. I think that the bang for the buck would actually be worth while.
Lyn Brown
That is where I was a few years ago, but time has moved on. My little sister is a solicitor. She used to take people into schools to talk about the unlucky stab—that is, when people did not mean to kill somebody, but they cut an artery and so on. These people would talk to kids about the impact of the unlucky stab on their lives and the lives of others. But I am not sure that that is actually where we are now, because of what the hon. Gentleman is talking about: county lines and organised crime, which have changed the whole gang situation entirely.
Will Quince
The hon. Lady again makes a very valid point. I do not disagree with her. She is almost certainly right when we are talking about mid-teenagers, late-teenagers and people in their early 20s, but we need to reset the dial and start this education in primary and secondary schools now. I am not suggesting that this is a panacea. I am not even suggesting that it is a quick or easy fix, but it has to be part of a solution and a package of measures that will help to eradicate knife crime in the medium to long term.
There is an organisation in my constituency called KnifeCrimes.Org, which is run by a lady called Ann Oakes-Odger. In the neighbouring constituency, a lady called Caroline Shearer runs another organisation called Only Cowards Carry. These inspirational women each lost a child to a knife crime attack—hugely tragic—but they have harnessed that energy and set up charities that are doing such great good around weapons awareness, particularly in schools. I look to the Minister because these organisations need funding in order to survive. In some cases, that comes via the police and crime commissioners, but I want to see more central funding made available for these organisations, which do such good work at a grassroots level.
I have been on one of the courses. I sat in a school and watched one of the presentations, it was really hard-hitting. Everyone leaves thinking, “Wow.” We were shown on a huge projector what numerous knife wounds look like. We learnt about the impact on families. If I had watched one of those presentations as a seven, eight, nine or 10-year-old, or even in the early stages of secondary school, I would have found it quite compelling.
Too many young people are carrying knives, and we need to understand why that is by getting in early. That is why primary schools are so important. We need to show these young people, as I mentioned to the hon. Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown), that a knife does not keep them safe; statistically, it makes them far more likely to be the victims of a knife crime attack. We must hammer that message home—not just in schools as part of weapons awareness education, but as part of social media activity and in TV ads like those being run in Scotland. There has to be an overall package of measures to show them how it feels to have a life shattered by a member of their family losing their life through a traumatic weapons attack.
May I gently push the Minister on a couple of things? We need weapons awareness classes in school. We must support the organisations up and down this country that are providing that and support the creation of new ones. I would like to see mandatory weapons awareness sessions as a condition of a conviction for someone caught carrying a knife. It is not acceptable just to give them a caution, a slap on the wrist, and an “Off you go”. We have to do more by sending them on a mandatory course. Yes, there is a cost to that, but I think it would pay dividends in terms of the number of people for whom we could break the cycle. I also encourage the Minister to push for closer working between local police forces and the Metropolitan police to tackle the growing issue of county lines, which we desperately need to resolve.
Finally, probably the most important message that I can impart to the Minister is this: please, please can we treat the children and young people who are caught up and groomed, victimised and intimidated into county lines activity and drug dealing as victims, not as criminals?
Sir Edward Davey (Kingston and Surbiton) (LD)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Colchester (Will Quince). The House is indebted to him for a speech that showed great understanding of the problem of county lines and how this new way of distributing drugs is harming individuals, families and communities; and also for the fact that he had some very constructive proposals to put to the Minister. I support him in that. I dare say that he might not like this comment, but it almost sounded like a Liberal speech. He was right to focus on county lines. I think that the strategy is very good on that problem. His point about co-ordination between different police forces is really important.
I will be very interested to see whether the Minister has any comments to make about the drug dealing telecommunications restriction orders that are now being rolled out. In his opening remarks, the Security Minister talked about some initial signs of real success in that they are seriously disrupting county lines. We must hope that they will continue to do so. I hope that Ministers will be able to report to the House about the success of those orders as we go forward in tackling county lines.
I wanted to start my remarks by remembering the victims of the terrorism in Manchester last year, as spokespeople for the other parties have done. I very much agree that those victims should be in our thoughts today, not least as we discuss this particularly important issue. We saw the tragedy of the families who were bereaved—the mothers, fathers, daughters and sons. That must be in our thoughts. The fact that the people of Manchester responded so powerfully together in their unity is something that we should celebrate.
I also want to talk about real people in the rest of my speech. In my constituency we have had people suffering from the effects of knife crime. I have been particularly engaged with a family who lost a son in June last year. Derick Mulondo was in his 30s. He was stabbed by a former partner. He was one of those people who everyone loved. He was a community activist. Young people would see him as a leader. He would go and organise football matches at the local park. After he was taken from us, the young people would go to his mother’s door and say, “Now Derick’s gone, who do we look to?”, so we doubly suffered as a result of that awful murder.
His mother, Sophie Kafeero, is one of the most courageous people I have ever met. She is still suffering, and she goes to her son’s grave very regularly to talk to him. She, in her grief, has had support from Derick’s friends to set up a campaign called “Drop a Knife, Save a Life”. That campaign is in its infancy, and I hope that in due course it will make an application to the Government’s community fund, because it could do a lot of good work with other organisations such as Oxygen in my constituency, which is also tackling the problems of knife crime.
We must learn from these victims and listen to them—listen to their pain and their strength, and listen to what they are saying about what needs to be done. The Government have done some good things to support community initiatives, but I urge them to go further, because I am afraid there are too many mothers like Sophie.
The strategy has many positive aspects. I will come to some criticisms in a minute, but the positive aspects are worth focusing on. Some of the analysis in it, written by good Home Office officials and with lots of evidence, is definitely worth reading and debating, because we need our policies to be evidence-based. I wish more of the Government’s policies were evidence-based. Let us hope that this one will be.
The fact that the strategy puts prevention high up the agenda was welcomed across the House and the country. There are some issues with putting money behind that, but ensuring that prevention is a priority is important. A few Members have touched on the international aspects we are facing, which we need to say more about, and I will come on to that.
Some of the Government’s initiatives deal with new aspects of the debate, including not just county lines but social media and its link to drug distribution, and the glamorisation of drugs; young people are told about the money they can make, but they are not told that they could lose their lives. Social media is having such a big impact. I think the Government are taking that seriously. I may question their judgment and their decisions at times, but I do not question their motives on this at all.
As other Members have said, two big things are missing from the strategy. The first—I am sorry to say this to the Minister, but I have to—is the lack of acknowledgment of the impact of police cuts. If we look at the evidence printed in The Guardian, which was not published and which the former Home Secretary said she had not read, it is absolutely clear that the cuts were likely to have been a contributory factor to the rise in violent crime.
The other key problem, linked to that, is resources. This puts a challenge to the Government. They talk about the need for prevention, but a lot of the activities in local government, the health service, schools and the police that were focused on preventing crime in the first place have been cut, and the Government’s welcome extra funding mentioned in the strategy does not come close to replacing the money that has been lost.
Let me return to some of the policies, which are important. The strategy refers to the
“large potential benefit to preventative intervention”.
It talks eloquently about the need for both universal preventive interventions and targeted interventions, and that is worth focusing on. The strategy talks about looking at young people and families where there is a combination of high-risk factors, and where it is very beneficial for the local authority, Government and police to come together to intervene really early. We hear about early intervention on so many subjects, but here it is about saving lives. The Government should talk more about that and then put the money behind it. Other Members have touched on the importance of helping children who have had chaotic lives, whose health and education have been affected and who are so vulnerable to the drug gangs that prey on them. Unless we intervene to help them, we are setting the whole of society up for failure.
Lyn Brown
I have been working with mums whose children are or have been involved in county lines, and one of the messages they are very keen to get across is that this could happen to anybody, whoever they are. A police officer who spoke to me the other week told me about how the child of one of their colleagues had got involved. I want us to be very aware of the fact that this could genuinely happen to anybody, and we should not stereotype any group of people we think may be involved.
Sir Edward Davey
The hon. Lady makes a fair point. She has actually anticipated what I was going to say next. One of the other groups who are very vulnerable and are preyed on are those with mental health issues. As she said, this could happen to anybody or any family. That comes back to the crisis in child and adolescent mental health services. As I am sure is the case in colleagues’ constituencies, CAMHS are absolutely on their knees. If we are talking about prevention, we really must tackle that as quickly as possible.
I want to talk about the positive international aspects of the serious violence strategy. Some of the statistics, particularly those on pages 19 and 20, show that Britain may not be alone in experiencing such a rise in violent crime. I know that the Government are planning an international symposium in the autumn, and that is very important. It may well be that issues such as austerity—the cuts in state spending not just in the UK but in other developed countries—have had an impact. Let us be frank about that. Linked to this are the growth in social media, strengthening organised crime, bumper coca crops in Colombia and the reduction in prices. All these international elements wash up on our shores and affect our communities as well as other countries.
We need to work with other countries; in doing so, let us learn from them—their successes should be shared with the House—and remember the importance of international co-operation. I forget which colleague said that Brexit may undermine such co-operation. The right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr Hayes) brushed that aside, but he is totally wrong. I had the privilege of going to Eurojust and Europol in The Hague 10 years ago to see how with them, and tools such as the European arrest warrant and joint initiatives, we could be far more effective in catching criminals and bringing them to justice. Let us remember that the sort of criminals Eurojust and Europol go after, using the European arrest warrant, are the organised criminals who span boundaries. I know that colleagues who think Brexit is a terribly good idea will say, “Don’t worry. It’s in everyone’s interest to work together”. Yes, it is, but we will not be in the room or making the rules for Eurojust and Europol’s use of the European arrest warrant. These are relatively young tools that will be more and more developed in the future, but we will not be in the room.
Anyone who goes to see how Eurojust operates will find that there is just one representative from each member state, and when there is an investigation—such investigations often involve drugs—a representative just calls those of the other member states through which the investigative forces will have to travel to arrange the right warrant and so on. Such co-operation can happen at lightning speed so that we can catch the criminals who try to escape justice by playing people off against each other and going across jurisdictional boundaries. By not being in the room, we will undermine our ability to take on such organised criminals, so although the Government are right to talk about international co-operation, they are not really in a very good place.
My final point about international co-operation concerns the Border Force. We often think about the Border Force in terms of stopping illegal immigration, but it is actually critical in stopping drug trafficking. The Border Force has been devastated, particularly when the current Prime Minister was Home Secretary, which is not a good policy if we are trying to tackle serious violent crime, county lines and the Mr Bigs behind such vulnerable people. We should be most worried about the Mr Bigs, but dealing with them requires an international response.
Before I finish, let me talk a little more about some of the problems in the strategy. I have talked about resources, but I want to come back to that issue. The strategy itself says:
“The recent downward trend in arrests and charges for some crimes lessens the certainty of punishment.”
In other words, because there are fewer police officers, fewer people are being arrested and charged. [Interruption.] I accept that the strategy does not say that, Minister, but I quoted it directly initially. The downward trend in arrests and charges has come only because there are fewer police officers. I say to the Minister that we need more detectives, as serious crime is rising and we need to go after the perpetrators. Not only that, but if we cannot arrest the perpetrators in the first place because there are fewer officers, that will reduce the deterrence against crime because people will think that they will not be caught. That is a real issue.
I lament the fact that the Government have not reacted quickly enough to the uptick in serious crime over the past two years. We have learned how to use police officers more efficiently, particularly with the new technique of hotspotting. The evidence shows that that can be very effective against drug dealers and all sorts of criminals. We know more about getting the best value for money out of the police, and reducing their numbers at this time just does not make sense. The shadow Home Secretary quoted Cressida Dick, and Ministers should be learning from her.
Finally, I know that the strategy includes an inter-ministerial group but, as other colleagues have mentioned, if we are going to take the approach that the Government rightly set out in the strategy, we have to see more cross-departmental work. This will come from the top only if Cabinet Ministers are sitting around the table regularly chasing the issue and making sure that their departmental officials see this as a top priority. I am afraid that I will not be convinced that the Government are treating this as a top priority in the cross-Government way they should until we start hearing the Secretaries of State for Education, for Health and for Housing, Communities and Local Government talking about it. When they talk about it, we will take the Government seriously because they will really have got the message.
Let me end by reminding the Minister—I am sure that she knows this, but I will remind her anyway—about why we need to take the issue seriously. Families out there are grieving and they want to know that we are responding as a Parliament and Government to the crisis; and it is a crisis. People have been taken aback by the rapid rise in violent crime, whether that involves knives, guns or acid. There is a sense that things are slipping out of control.
The serious violence strategy and the Mayor’s measures could not come early enough, but we have to redouble our efforts. When Ministers are sitting around the table with the Chancellor making representations, they really have to see that this must now be the top priority. They will have the support of the whole House if they do that. They will certainly have the support of the British people.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
Order. We are not doing very well on the target of 10 minutes per speech, which Members were asked to aim at some time ago. Speeches have ranged in length: 15 minutes, 16 minutes, 18 minutes, 19 minutes and 17 minutes—quite a lot more than 10.
Madam Deputy Speaker
I am glad that the hon. Lady approves of my arithmetic. I am sure that we can manage this debate without the need for a formal time limit, which limits how the debate works. Will colleagues please try a little harder to stick to around 10 minutes? Then everyone will get in and it will be fair and equal.
Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)
It is an honour to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham West and Penge (Ellie Reeves). She made some very good points, and made them passionately—and I know that she is passionate about the security of the community she serves.
For the past year, my community in West Ham has been haunted by violence. Since the start of 2017, nine young people have been killed in my constituency alone, and today I want to remember them. They are Titu Miah, Pietro Sanna, aged 23, Ahmed Deen-Jah, aged 21, Beniamin Pieknyi, aged 21, Taofeek Lamidi, aged 20, Abdul Mayanja, aged 19, Sami Sidhom, aged 18, Lord Promise Nkenda, aged 17, and Corey “CJ” Davis, aged just 14, and shot in a playground.
That is not the final roll-call. There have been so many more children and young people with life-changing injuries caused by the dreadful, almost unrestrained violence over the past 18 months—saved just by luck, or by our amazing national health service. I want to think about all of them today.
Our latest young man to die needlessly and tragically was Sami Sidhom. He was stabbed last month on the street outside his home when returning from a West Ham game. He was a bright, well-loved, quiet young man, studying at Queen Mary’s College in London. He was doing really well, and was not involved in any crime or any gang. His neighbours rushed out of their house to help him. They were talking to him and comforting him when he died from his wounds. I have seen the pain, the anger and the fear of the community in which he lived. His father’s heart broke in my arms.
The whole community are traumatised. Their only outlet so far is talking to each other, because there is absolutely no support for them. There is no aftercare. The young man who told me about how the blood was running through his fingers, how he did not know what to do and he could not save Sami’s life: there is nothing available to him today. There is no one I could pass him to, who could take some of that trauma away. So people in the community are gathering together for comfort and looking for things to do, but I think we can do better than that, which is why I agree with many who have spoken today that this is a joined-up cross-Government issue; we need somebody from the health service to help us out, give us some money and make sure proper counselling is available for those who are traumatised.
We in this place need to face up to some truths, too. All of us of all parties have allowed these circumstances to be created. Those who are dying are so young, and so are many of those who have blood on their hands, but they did not create these circumstances for themselves; effectively, all of us—I am gesturing a huge circle now—helped to create them. We as adults, we as people in authority, we as policy-makers, we as budget-holders, we who did not see what was happening, have allowed our streets to become what they are.
Let us face some facts. Too many of our children now live in fear, convinced that the authorities cannot, or will not, protect them from harm. Too many of our children have no trust whatsoever in the systems we have created so they simply do not engage. Too many of our children believe their potential will not be recognised or nurtured by our society. Quite simply, they have so little hope that they see no future for themselves. That is why they take such massive risks.
These facts make our children far more vulnerable to exploitation by criminals, including those who run county lines. These people have created a cruelly efficient business model to distribute and sell drugs, using our children as expendable cheap labour to enable large profits. It is a cycle of exploitation and grooming that has become an industry. Often the children targeted are bright and charismatic with such promise, and that is why the gang leaders want them so much—because they make such great sales people. We need to find a way to empower our young people so they know how to recognise the power and the tactics of the groomers who are using them to sell the drugs. They need to know how to say no; they need to be given the skills and tools to resist the manipulation of the groomers.
As has been said in the debate, for many of our people who end up selling drugs, or even killing or dying because of a drug gang, the downward spiral starts with something simple like being befriended by a cool older boy—a new best friend who gives them chicken and chips or new trainers. They take the older boy’s gifts and respect, but it does not take long before those gifts become debts and that respect becomes domination. By the time realisation dawns, it is too late. We must find a way of giving our young people the resilience to resist grooming, and that requires peers, teachers, youth workers and role models making them aware of where accepting that gift of chicken and chips may lead. That will take resources; it will require improving training for teachers and social workers so that safeguarding becomes as much about looking for signs of gang grooming as about spotting child sexual exploitation.
In truth, we do not have a handle on the scale of the exploitation and grooming that drug dealers are engaging in. Even if children and social services are aware of the scale of the problems and the tactics deployed by those running the county lines—and some of them, woefully, are not—they are already massively overstretched. We need to expand their role and give them the training, and that, again, is going to require some resources.
Some young people know or suspect who is responsible for some of the terrible crimes I am talking about, and they might well hold evidence or be able to provide eyewitness accounts that would be helpful to us in a court of law. The information is out there that would help us to catch the people responsible, but the young people who have that information live in a really uncertain, dangerous and deeply scary world. They do not trust; we have done nothing to earn any trust.
I say to the Minister that we need to find a safe space where young people can report this information, and I do not think that that safe space is Crimestoppers, however much my local police encourage people to use it. Young people simply do not believe that it will be confidential. They assume that, if they ring, their call can and will be traced and that a police officer will come knocking on their door. They know that if that happens, they and their families will be punished for snitching by the gang members and drug dealers. They do not trust us to keep them safe, and who can blame them? Third-party reporting, run by a trusted organisation, would be a really good step. It would help us to gather information and address some of the unsolved murders in our communities.
We also need to have a genuine, believable and appropriate offer for those young people who do the bravest of things—namely, give evidence in court against gang members and really serious nasty criminals. They need to know that we will look after them and their families and keep them safe afterwards. They need to know that we will help them to make a new life. We do not do that at present. I know a young man whose life was completely destroyed because he did the right thing. He gave evidence, and then he ran. He was terrified, and he ended up in a community that was completely different from home. He was lost and frightened, and then he was attacked one night. He fought back, but he did so disproportionately, according to the court. So despite the fact that it was he who was attacked and the initial victim, he is now serving time in jail, and I understand that he could well be deported to a country that he has never known after he has served his sentence. We should have done better by him. We owed him that much. His story is known in my community, so why should other young people put themselves at risk in order to give us the information that we need? Why should they help, when that would only make their lives and their families’ lives much worse?
Most of the people in this place have grown up knowing that they have choices and that many opportunities will be open to them. Tragically, most childhoods in my community are just not like that. Sixty-five per cent. of the children in Newham grow up in poverty, knowing that their parents are always thinking about how to pay the rent and the bills and how to put food on the table. Children live with that stress. They watch their parents struggle day in and day out, and they see their future as being the same. It chips away at their dreams, because they know that their parents are working every hour and trying so hard but that it is not bringing them prosperity or security. Our children need some hope for the future.
In West Ham, we have had the worst of it. My community is, as I say, traumatised. We need to work together to make real changes so that we can keep our children safer than we have managed to do thus far. But we also need the resources that we currently lack if we are to destroy the criminal base that is blighting our communities and provide the hope and opportunity that our children deserve. I will work with absolutely anybody in order to get that.
Vernon Coaker (Gedling) (Lab)
I have sat here throughout the afternoon listening to many people, and I look forward to the contributions that are to come. We have heard descriptions of what has happened in our country, not least from my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown) just now. We have heard about children and young people being murdered on the streets. We have heard of county lines and of the horror they bring. We have heard of the desperation in communities about what can be done about that.
As someone said at the beginning of the debate, why are we debating this only now, perhaps months after we should have been debating it? Why has not the House—all of us, including me—been roaring about this for months? My right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) is an honourable exception, as are one or two other Members, but why has this House not been at the heart of the nation?
My right hon. Friend the Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) has been speaking up about the black community and about some of these issues for years, but why have we, as a collective, not been roaring about it? A massive 67 people have been murdered in London this year. That is an unbelievable figure. Imagine if the figure were aggregated and spread across the country—astonishing.
Serious violence is rising everywhere. It is not just about policing, but policing is part of it; it is about all of these things. Of course everyone cares, but this is a national emergency. This is a crisis for our country. If this were happening in any other context, there would be emergency statements by the Prime Minister and calls from both sides of the House to do something about it. The county lines are a relatively new phenomenon, and who knows how many children they affect? Children in our country, some as young as 10 or 11, are being exploited by criminal gangs to move drugs. I do not know what law it will take or what should be done, but I do know that that is totally and utterly unacceptable to every single Member of this House of Commons.
I know the Minister wants to do all she can, and I know the Government want to do all they can, but I honestly believe that we all have to wake up. We all have to say this really cannot continue. After this debate, people out there expect to be able to see something being done. Early intervention, schooling and parenting matter, and all of that is right, but what are we going to do now?
My hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Matthew Pennycook) talked about the long summer evenings. A young person was stabbed to death in Islington at 6.30 pm last night. It was not down some murky alleyway at 1 o’clock in the morning; it was on the streets of Islington in front of people going about their everyday business. This cannot be acceptable, and it cannot be right.
I passionately argue for us not only to debate the issue and not only to show to the people out there who might be watching that we care—I think everybody does care—but to show that we get it and that we understand it. We must tell the mothers, the families and the communities across this country who are crying that we will stand with them and do something about it.
I was a Home Office Minister when we were faced with some of these problems before and it is a sterile argument. My right hon. Friend the Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington has argued about police numbers. She has not said that that is the only solution—nobody on either side of the House has said it is the only solution. Of course it is also about youth services. The best people to get involved are the reformed gang members. Get the people in who understand what is going on. Get them in to talk about it—once they have been subject to the law, I hasten to add.
I want to make two more points. This is from the Government’s own evidence. We can see this in the documentation that the Government have published in their serious violence strategy. It totally vindicates what my right hon. Friend the Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington has said: targeted stop-and-search is absolutely a part of what we should do, but there is no evidence, even from the Government in their serious violence strategy, that blanket stop-and-search makes any difference. It is in the document the Government have published. What is crucial, it says—I know this as a teacher who dealt with fairly minor instances—is that there is certainty of a consequence. The strategy states:
“We also know that the certainty of punishment is likely to have a greater impact than its severity.”
That is the Government’s own evidence. People have to know that they cannot just act with impunity—
Vernon Coaker
Exactly. They have to know they will get caught and be held responsible for what they have done, be it carrying a knife, smashing a window, swearing at somebody or acting in a racist way. If they do not know they will get caught, it is like a kid at school, or your own son or daughter: they will mess you about, but in a much more serious way. So we need certainty of punishment. The Minister has to get hold of the Ministry of Justice, or whoever is responsible, and say, “Get it sorted out. We are the Government.” We are the Parliament. If we cannot sort it out, who is going to sort it out?
We have heard the argument about police numbers. Of course police numbers are not the only reason for this situation, but policing makes a big difference and police numbers make a big difference. It is obvious. Do not accept what my colleagues have been saying; the Government’s own serious violence strategy says exactly that. It says the fall in police numbers is partly a driver—not the only driver, as I totally accept—for the rise in serious violence.
I will finish with this in order to keep to the 10-minute limit. I wish to make one plea to the Minister. This is what I want to happen in the short term. The longer term will sort itself out, but the communities I represent in Nottinghamshire—in Nottingham and around there—and those represented by other Members need something to hold on to now. So I say to the Minister: go to the Treasury and demand, to deal with a national emergency, a pot of money that will allow hotspots to be identified across the country, where police resources can be targeted. That is what works, according to what the Government themselves say: putting money into hotspot areas, so that the police can increase their resources, target those resources and work with youth services and with the community, brings down crime. Crucially, again according to the Government’s own evidence, not only does it bring down crime—it does not result in a displacement of crime from one area to another. Would that not be a price worth paying, Minister? Would that bill not be worth the Government’s picking up? We are talking about a bill of tens of millions of pounds to give to the hotspot areas in London and around the rest of the country where we know the majority of these offences occur. What a statement it would be to those communities to say to them, “We are going to provide some additional resources for the police you need, and to support the youth services in the community alongside them, in order to target what we now accept is a national emergency and a national crisis.”