Drug Crime

Lyn Brown Excerpts

Wednesday 20th April 2022 Westminster Hall

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Pritchard. I thank the hon. Member for Keighley (Robbie Moore) for his speech; it resonated quite a lot with my experience in my constituency. He did a really good job of introducing the debate.

I want to raise an aspect of drug crime that I believe is still massively under-prioritised: child criminal exploitation, or CCE. The Minister knows this is a subject I have raised repeatedly over recent years. Unfortunately, while some genuine progress has been made, I still do not believe enough focus is being put on this. I gently say that I am still disappointed by that.

I have spoken many times about the damage done in my constituency as the end result of child criminal exploitation: we have seen dozens of children murdered and many more who have been stabbed, and we have seen the fear that has been created and the enormous potential that has been wasted and lost to gangs and crime. The groomers and exploiters who prey on our children seem to get off very lightly. This is about how organised criminals—mostly selling drugs—conspire to abuse, exploit, and dispose of children for profit. While constituencies such as mine have seen the biggest impact from county lines, the tentacles of those gangs extend across the country—the damage they do is widespread.

I have a few outstanding issues to raise with the Minister, and I would also like to remind him about my ten-minute rule Bill from December, as he might need some bedtime reading.

Last month we saw new guidance published for inspections of local area responses to CCE, which was very welcome. The guidance understands that CCE can be prevented, that children can be supported to break free and enabled to realise their potential, even after being exploited. Most of all, it recognises that all agencies, as we have heard, need to work together to respond together—schools, councils and police. I would be glad to hear from the Minister when there will be a concerted programme of inspections using the guidance. I would also like to understand how the Government are going to use the lessons learned to inform a strategy that will bring an end to the business model that is county lines.

Another issue that the Government need to get a handle on is the relationship between child criminal exploitation and child sexual exploitation. We know that there is an overlap. Children in the grip of drugs gangs are vulnerable to sexual abuse. Both forms of child abuse are happening to both boys and girls. Sexual abuse can and is being used as a weapon by drug gangs to deepen their control over the children they are exploiting. However, children affected by child criminal exploitation or child sexual exploitation will generally need different forms of care. Confusion can cause real damage.

The recent report by Professor Alexis Jay into child sexual exploitation had some alarming findings. Some police areas were tagging all cases of criminal exploitation as sexual exploitation. In other areas, boy victims of sexual abuse were given a generic criminal exploitation tag.

Only full data can help us understand the scale of particular problems in an area, and only then can we ensure that the right resources are directed to support all children in need. It is essential to tackle drug harms to communities, and other harms that those drug harms do. We need agencies working together, so that vital opportunities to intervene are not missed. When they are missed, there are utterly appalling consequences for children and families. In the case of child criminal exploitation, there are consequences for entire communities, because of the violence and death that the county lines drug trade has brought to my constituency and others. This situation demonstrates why we need clear statutory definitions, including for child criminal exploitation. Without them, we are not getting clear data, we do not have consistent practices across different areas and there is no strategic focus on driving down both those forms of abuse across the country.

Without clarity, transparency and accountability, some will understandably worry that one form of exploitation or another is being neglected as the media agenda shifts. We need flexible laws and recognition that different forms of abuse overlap and interact, but we need legal clarity too. I do not think that we have got it right so far; I hope the Minister might comment on that point today.

We also need to recognise that the methods used by groomers and exploiters have changed. During the lockdowns, partners identified a big increase in the use of social media to groom children into child criminal exploitation. Obviously, the more traditional method of identifying and meeting children on the street by McDonald’s and the chicken shop was now harder. The Government need to provide a better account of how the Online Safety Bill will require online platforms to identify, block and report grooming and exploitation for the drug trade of county lines.

Child criminal exploitation is not listed as a priority offence in the Bill. I genuinely believe that it needs to be, if we are to give it the focus it deserves. If we get this right, online spaces could identify children who are being groomed and exploited. We would be on to the criminal gangs much earlier, preventing enormous harm. If we get it wrong, social media will continue to give drug gangs easy access to vulnerable children. I would like the Minister to tell us how the Home Office is working with colleagues at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport to ensure that the Bill will guarantee action on that.

Finally, I want to raise the importance of working with schools to prevent exclusions, which can make children so much more vulnerable to the exploitation of drug gangs. Children’s charities and experts are clear that schools need to be equipped with information about the signs of child criminal exploitation. They need to consider that risk of exploitation before they decide to exclude a child. In reality, drug groomers can, and do, actively conspire to get a child excluded by, for example, forcing them to carry drugs or weapons into school. Sometimes they spread the word, ensuring that the school knows that the child is carrying, in order to trigger an exclusion and make that child a better mule for them.

Schools need to be wise to that tactic, and provide children with real support in those situations, and not do exactly what the groomers want, which is to exclude children and send them to alternative provision, where other members of the gang often already sit. It is then impossible to get out of the grip of the groomers and make a new start in life. Will the Minister talk to his colleagues in the Department for Education to ensure that the statutory exclusions and behaviour guidance is revised? That would help prevent children being exploited and would, in turn, reduce the harms of drug offending that we are discussing today.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kit Malthouse]

I am quite short of time, so I will not, if the hon. Member does not mind.

Our 10-year, whole-system strategy, which we are implementing, is a fundamental reset in our approach to tackling illegal drugs, which is what a number of Members have called for. We expect to see results, as do the public, and that is why we have set out clear and ambitious metrics to drive progress. Those cover a number of areas, including closing more than 2,000 county lines over the next three years, seeing a 20% increase in organised crime disruptions and preventing and reducing drug-related deaths.

Much of this debate has been about county lines, and it is worth reflecting on the despicable way in which those criminals exploit young people—as outlined by the hon. Member for West Ham (Ms Lyn Brown) and my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley—recruiting them as runners to transport drugs and money around the country. We are clear that the targeting, grooming and exploitation of children for criminal purposes is deplorable, and we are committed to tackling it.

We will continue to invest in our successful county lines programme, which has resulted in more than 7,400 arrests and 1,500 line closures. Critically, more than 4,000 vulnerable people have been rescued from that horrific trade. We are also providing specialist support and funding to help young people who are subjected to, or concerned about, county lines exploitation, and to ensure that they get the protection and support they need.

We have been focused on dismantling the county lines model for well over two years and, as I have outlined, we have had real success. However, complacency is the enemy of progress, and we will continue to protect those most vulnerable and be clear to those gangs that we will keep coming at them again and again. On that note, I was pleased to hear that the Home Secretary visited the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley to discuss drugs and other matters.

[Ms Lyn Brown]

Could the Minister please refer to the child criminal exploitation definition and the Online Safety Bill?

[Kit Malthouse]

I will come to those in a moment. The hon. Lady will be interested to know that I had a meeting with the Children’s Society just this morning, in my capacity as a constituency MP, to discuss those issues. I am giving consideration to its proposals. We recognise that this trade particularly exploits young people. In my own constituency, we have had some appalling events—young people stabbed and, in one case, killed, where neither victim nor perpetrator was from Andover. Both, in various ways, were victimised and exploited in the drugs industry.

Many Members have mentioned that if we are to have an impact on drugs, we must have a co-ordinated set of actions. We recognise that the complexity of the drugs problem means that we absolutely must be effective in co-ordinating those other partners—local government, other treatment delivery partners, enforcement, prevention and education. They all must come together to form a coalition as a foundation of our strategy, and they are often best placed to establish the priorities and to devise ways of working to address the needs of their local communities as quickly and effectively as possible. This spring we will publish guidance for local areas in England on working in partnerships to reduce drug-related harm.

But we have not been waiting for our strategy or the guidance. I will finish by highlighting some of the work we have been doing already. Alongside the very assertive work we have been doing on county lines in Keighley and elsewhere, some 18 months ago we established a set of projects in 13 areas of the country that are most exploited by drugs gangs and that have the most appalling drug use statistics. Project ADDER, which stands for addiction, diversion, disruption, enforcement and recovery, has been running since November 2020. In effect, it brings together all those people who are focused on dealing with the drugs problem to focus in the same place, at the same time, on the same people, so that all their work can be leveraged. Those projects have had positive results. In particular, law enforcement plays a big part in restricting the amount of drugs in a particular geography, making sure that as the therapeutic treatments come alongside those individuals, they are less likely to walk out of their appointment with a drugs councillor and into the arms of a dealer. There have been big increases in disruptions and arrests in those areas, as well as a large increase in the numbers of people referred to treatment, and some heartwarming stories of people who have been rescued and brought into a better life.