03/03/2016 House of Commons

and I feel sure she will use the I have suggested to try to secure

satisfaction. If not, no doubt, we will hear from her again. If there

are no further points of order, we come now to the backbench debate on

gangs and serious youth violence. To move the motion,... Before I start,

I would like to say how grateful I am to the Backbench Business

Committee for granting this very important debate today. I am also

grateful to the 19 other members of the house who supported this

application, in particular, I have worked with the honourable members

for louche and Deptford, Croydon North and others on several years of

these issues. The issues we are discussing how difficult, they are

not easy, there is no single cause further violence we have seen, nor

one single solution, and what we are seeing on the streets of our country

is leading to a senseless loss of lives. That perhaps explains why the

digital debate, which the House of Commons digital team organised on

Twitter ahead of this debate, was the House of Commons' most

successful Twitter debate, in terms of the number of accounts, or for

reached. It is important that we acknowledge

that are young people are amongst the very best in the world. Their

creativity knows no bounds. Their energy is infectious. They put the

great in Great Britain. They give us confidence in our future being even

better than our glorious past. It is also important to note when

discussing these issues that the violence we are talking about is

committed by a minority but a significant minority, but a minority

nonetheless, after young people. So we should not draw the conclusion

that all of Britain's youth are engaged in serious youth violence. I

say this because too often the youth of our country are demonised. They

are demonised to often in our national media and I do not want to

add to that today so it is important during our debate to recognise how

wonderful our young people are and to celebrate them. And it is because

we care so much for them and we don't want to see their talent and

futures wasted that we are holding this debate today. In 2007, the

violence in different communities in urban city centres in particular

across our country was put into sharp relief in broad daylight by

the stabbing, sorry, the shooting, of a young man in my constituency at

Streatham ice rink. To this day, no one has been charged with his murder

but his mother continues to fight for justice and is now working to

prevent other families going through what she and her family have gone

through through a foundation. Tracey Ford has voiced her strong support

for this debate today. She is joined by many other parents, families of

victims like Richard Taylor, for example, the father of the young boy

who was also lost to this violence. He set up a trust to celebrate our

young people. We pay tribute to all of them. And all of those working to

better the lives of young people. What followed from the deaf in my

constituency in 2007 was a catalogue of tragedy with 2019 ages losing

their lives to this in London alone in 2008. -- from the deaf in my

constituency. The number has abated since that time but the problem has

never gone away. Following falls between 2009 and 2012, we have seen

the number of serious youth violence offences in London increased by

13.4% and the number of offences the Met tags with its kind violence

indicator measures increasing by 25% over 25%, since 2012. A lot of this

goes unreported. You go to any eight and EMP kind -- in the kind -- you

go to any eight and E in the kind of communities I am talking about and

they talk about incidents which do not feature in the figures.

According to a non-for-profit organisation which collect data on

this issue in different areas, 17 teenagers lost their lives to this

violence last year, up from 11 in 2014. Just two weeks ago, I was

notified by police of gun shots being fired on a Friday in a

location in the north of my constituency. On the Saturday after

there was a multiple stabbing of a young man in the south of my

constituency. And then just outside my constituency on the Sunday after

that Saturday, there was a drive-by shooting. I will give way shortly.

On Monday this week at 530 in the afternoon, a teenager was stabbed in

the north of my borough after a fight at a chicken shop. And so it

goes on. I give way. But I also congratulate him on securing this

important debate? I am pleased we have been granted three hours to

debate this crucial issue. Does he agree with me that there are far too

many firearms in circulation in London where previously perhaps a

fist or dare I say a knife will now be replaced by a very large gun? And

increasingly sophisticated firearms are being used, which make the

situation even more difficult to manage? I completely agree. I wrote

an article when I was a trustee of a Brixton youth charity in 2007 about

the availability of guns and knives, and I did a kind of focus group with

some of the young people in our area. What shocked me was the level

of detail that some of our young people were able to give me in terms

of guns. They could tell me how many bullets different guns could spray

in a minute or a second. My honourable friend is right to raise

that as an issue. She also made mention that this is not just a

London thing. This situation is serious and it is currently getting

worse. And it is not confined to London. Last Sunday, a teenager was

stabbed in Bristol. We hear of this happening all over the UK. I will

give way to the honourable gentleman. I thank him for giving

way. One of the things that I have seen in my constituency of Yeovil

recently is the impact of large city drug crime moving into the regional

towns. And I'm very concerned to make sure that a them and Somerset

police actually devote enough resource away from the big cities

like Bristol to being able to combat that because what I don't want to

see happen is that to deteriorate into violent crime which thankfully

we haven't yet really seen, but what the honourable gentleman is saying

about the increase in London is a worry, and in Bristol. I am grateful

to him for his intervention and I think his intervention highlights,

and this will come through through the rest of our debate, the way in

which... That our whole suite of issues which hangs heavy over this

debate and of course the drug trade hangs heavy over this entire

dialogue that we are having today. I want to say something about the

title of this debate, and in some senses, I put in using the word

ganged quite deliberately because we need to talk about the use of this

term. We refer to youth violence and gang or gang-related violence very

often but I do think it is pertinent to ask the question whether we

should be using the word ganged at all, in spite of the title of the

fate that we have. Ian Joseph, watching this from the gallery, at

Middlesex University, has done some interesting work in this area and he

argues that the official definition of a gang distorts the focus of

interventions and promote an understanding of everyday behaviour

that does little to permanently avert young people from the real

causes of violence. He argues that to be effective, interventions must

give greater account of how cultural norms and social processes impact

young people'sfriendships and the local neighbourhood -based

relationships that they have. This is backed up by others. The Centre

for Cronulla Justice studies has also questioned whether we should be

using this term. -- Criminal Justice Studies. I wonder if by using this

term and labelling young people as gang members, we reinforce this

notion that they are a gangster. I mean, what is a gangster? So

should... I wonder how helpful it is for us to be using this term, and

let's face it, using this term also enables officialdom to put all these

young people in a bracket. Oh, they are part of a gang. If they lose

their lives, that doesn't matter, they are part of the gang. I am not

sure we should be allowing this to carry on. I will give way. I do not

know if my honourable friend is familiar with the work of Harriet

Sergeant, a journalist who has gone to great trouble to engage with gang

members in this underclass, perhaps gang is the wrong word, but one

comes out from reading books and articles on this matter with

profound feeling of regret at the Gulf of misunderstanding between the

bodies, the official bodies, and those who are in part of this

underclass themselves. And great sympathy for the problems involved

and the depth of suffering by these gangs who are, I am afraid, in my

and her view, been very badly neglected. I am grateful for the

intervention. I am grateful to him for referring to her work and

hopefully those watching using the hashtag can post a link so those

watching can read more of her work. I am not sure how helpful it is to

use his word any more because just in my horror, things have changed a

lot. When I was first elected in 2010, we had large groups of young

people who had labels for their groupings. -- just in my borough.

Now the situation is more parochial, often confined to a particular

state, and you have much smaller groups of young people, so the

situation is far more fluid, too. The CEO of Project 507, also

watching here today, works to prevent young people from engaging

in this kind of violence. She said to me and put it really well, we

give them that label but we never give them a way to get rid of it. We

give them that label but we never give our young people a way to get

rid of this gang label. Senators consign it to the bin and not refer

to it again. -- so letters consign it to the bin. The reasons for

serious youth violence, it is not new. We know what so many of the

reasons are and yes, some of the violence is carried out by young

people from dysfunctional, often chaotic families with a history of

domestic violence in the background. But very often, a lot of young

people who get wrapped up in this come from quite stable families.

Sometimes there is an issue there because you might have two parents

who are just struggling to make ends meet, holding down two jobs to pay

the bills, and then of course there is a link to that because often, I

was hearing from some young people this morning there is a desire to

help provide for your family, help provide for your man, and you end up

getting wrapped up in this kind of activity as a way of making money.

-- help provide for your mother. The usual suspects in the media start

saying, you are excusing this. We are not providing excuses today but

unless we actually look at why this is happening, we will not be able to

stop it from happening. I can see the headlines, MP says children are

trying to help pay bills so they go and live people. I'm saying let's go

and understand the underlying reasons for this if we want to stop

the violence from happening. I thank him for making a very good speech on

this subject. Is not fear the real reason why people join groups? If

you are a young person living on an estate in an area where these groups

operate, and you are not a member of that group, you would be very

fearful that this group would set upon you and do you great damage,

and in my view, in my limited understanding of this problem, it

seems to me that fear is the spur for young people to join such

groups. I think the honourable gentleman has made a very important

intervention. I agree with him. I think this is a major factor and I

will come onto it very shortly. Fear definitely, definitely plays a role

in this, as does trauma, and I will come onto that, too. One of the

common things, and me and my honourable friend for Tottenham have

talked about this, as has the honourable member for Westminster

North. We always hear, time and time again, at every community meeting

you go to on this issue, how there are simply not enough young things

for -- things for our young people to do. I get fed up of saying this,

but nothing ever seems to get done about it. We have got to ensure that

outside of school hours, there are more meaningful things for our young

people to do, and I am not talking about some windy church hall with a

table tennis table. We need decent, proper things which will expand our

young people'shorizons and give them things they will enjoy giving in

their local areas. Because otherwise, you have this other

problem where the collectives of your peers become your selected

family, and that does take me to the issue that the honourable gentleman

was talking about, but first I want to go through some of the other

factors. Popular culture. I think it is too easy to blame rap music or

whatever. I actually think it is a society thing. We live in our

society that promotes and glamorises violence.

It is too easy to say it is the fault of the creative industries. We

let this go on and we have got to deal with it. We've creasing we have

a society where young people are encouraged to engage in violent

activities. It was promoted amongst us and we have to deal with that.

There is another thing here, which is a consumerism thing, as well.

Undoubtedly, helping your family to get on is definitely an issue, but

I'll so think we live in the society, which promotes and

glamorises violence, but also promotes this idea that we have our

young people to define themselves by what they have as opposed to who

they are. And I think that is a major problem as well. I will give

way. Would he acknowledge the role, not just in providing for one's

family, but as he rightly says, the desire to have things, and the role

of criminal gangs in offering young people quick money to be able to buy

those things that, because of their low income, they're not otherwise

able to have? There are so many big elephants in this

room of issues, but one is poverty and deprivation. You cannot ignore

the part that this plays. And what you end up with, and he is right to

raise this, is that you end up with this cycle of violence, where you

have young people who don't have anything, often robbing from other

young people who don't have anything. Then there is revenge and

then you get this cycle of violence. That definitely is part of this

thing that we see happening. Part of the reason that too many of our

young people do not have enough money, is because of the rates of

unemployment among our young people. We have an education system which is

producing a generation who don't always have the skills that are

employers need, particularly their technical and vocational skills that

are employers need, so in the schools ecosystem and that is

happened under governments of all persuasions, and I don't see this as

a party political issue, and not interested in scoring points. But we

do have to deal with the school system that is not getting our young

people that they need, that employers need, that they need to

get a job. Let's not forget, youth unemployment is double the main

rates. The things I talked about are fairly obvious. But I think we

needed to delve far deeper into the causes than we have. This goes to

the point that he was making. Which is this belief among many young

people that they are safer in a group than they are on their own.

This perceived need for safety and protection, as academics have

argued, tens to validate behaviour and levels of violence in ways that

can obscure the boundary between right and wrong, bullying being

bullied and how this into relates with carrying by using a weapon. We

don't like to talk about this. We should. You have this semi - formal,

often unsupervised daily routine outside of school, but sometimes

inside of school, that can incubate the production of the kind of

behaviours and values that lead to the kind of violence we are talking

about, and juxtapose expected norms of school and wider mainstream

society against the life that leads to this kind of violence. The second

issue, in addition to the fear he was talking about, is the trauma,

this year, that many of our young people experience in their daily

lives, which requires much greater consideration than you see reported

in our media. This issue, as I mentioned earlier, needs to be seen

not just as the violence prevention issue, but as a health issue, in

mental health issue. When you look at some of the experiences of our

young people have, this is traumatising them. They have huge

amounts of trauma that they are given no support, no support to deal

with. And unless we start engaging, not only at the level of the

obvious, but the level, this deeper level issues, then we are not going

to be able to resolve the violence we see on our streets. So what

should be done? Labour in government introduced the notion that every

child matters, we had a strategic aim to provide wraparound care for

young people from long before they went to school to long after they

left school. That did bring in teenagers, but I think we need to

adopt an approach that is every teenager matters. Although it has to

be said, and this is something that was said earlier, we are seeing this

impact in younger and younger children, not just teenagers.

Secondly, I think we've got to elevate the standing of youth work

in our country. It's about time we put it on the same pedestal of

teaching. Yet often youth workers spend as much time with our young

people as teachers, but we don't talk about that occupational

profession in the same way. We have got to do so, we have to put it on a

pedestal and we can't just look at it as an add on. Too often, youth

workers left other people who have other jobs in their lives, providing

youth work on top of the daily job. We need to properly fund this, so

people can do youth work full time and we regard our youth workers in

the same way with regard teachers. Thirdly, I do believe the government

has done some good things on this and that's why want to see them

disband at -- reversed the decision to disband the network that was

helping. I think it was a good network, I have had very good

feedback about it, from all over the country, including Lambeth and I

would like to see it continue. Fourthly, I fit with got to make

sure our young are properly taught in schools about the consequences of

what they and provided with support for the experiences outside of

school. I would like to see us get more role models, more people who

have been through and been part of these groups and maybe been victims

are perpetrated acts of violence and then suffered consequences. And like

the one of them going into our schools and telling their story, so

that the future generations don't take the wrong turn that they did.

There's nothing like having somebody who has been through it, who has

lived that life, telling you what will happen if you carry on down

that avenue. We need to provide much more support to schools and being

able to do that. This is quite controversial, but I'm going to see

it anyway. A lot of the young people who get wrapped up in all of this,

alternately have quite commercial and entrepreneurial instincts. But

that energy they have is simply not channelled in the right way at all,

with the result that they turn to criminality, they turn to highly

illegitimate, terrible ways of doing things. Perhaps if we had more

enterprise teaching in our schools, perhaps of setting up your own

business and doing your own thing and working for yourself in a way

that would deliver the goods and deliver you some money, if many of

our young people were provided with inspiration, more access to these

kinds of opportunities, then perhaps we'd be able to stop them taking a

wrong turn. I can see the write-up, MPs says gangsters should start up

businesses. Frankly, I don't care, because I want to make sure they

don't end up taking the wrong turn and doing illegitimate business. If

they have that instinct, I'd like to see them go and set up a business.

I'd like to see them going on to be the next Richard Branson. I give

way. That's a very important point, but would he agree with me that the

Evening Standard campaign is to be congratulated, because of the work

they've been doing in supporting people to turn away from gang crimes

is precisely what he is recommending, which is turning their

skills into business and making sure they are unable to make something

better of the lives. I completely agree and I think the work the

Evening Standard has done with its campaign has been excellent. They

have plastered this on the front page frequently and I would like to

see other publications and media outlets following their example. One

thing I should say finally, obviously, none of us here today are

going to excusable when we see it being done. None of us are excusing

the violence we see and none of us would argue that if you commit these

kinds of offences, but there should not be sanctions. Of course there

should be sanctions, but I suppose the point of no one is going to make

today is, if we can make sure we prevent people from doing things in

the first place, then we would have to apply those sanctions as we do.

Too often, the debate is on clamping down, zero tolerance, banging them

up, when actually, it is harder to focus on how do we prevent them

doing it in the first place. And that is ultimately why I would like

to see the government set up an independent cross - party commission

into these issues, involving a wide-ranging consultation,

importantly including young people. Too often, we are talking about

them, but they are not at the table as we do so. I would like to see

that consultation identify the root causes, effects and solutions to

this youth violence, so we don't see more death on our streets. Finally,

I think we should be honest and upfront about this. If we were

talking about predominantly middle-class children from

comfortable, middle income families from wealthy neighbourhoods, this

issue would be much higher up the national agenda. If you had the

murder of young people by other young people, fitting that middle

income demographic and talking about, it would, and many many more

column inches. I think it is a disgrace, I think it is a damning

indictment of our society, that increasingly, our society is

becoming immune to what is happening on our doorsteps, and it is ignoring

an issue and putting a whole generation of young people into a

corner and saying, that's what happens with those kind of young

people from those kind of videos. I want to be very clear in having this

debate today that this House of Commons recognises that it doesn't

matter what your background is, whether you're growing up in a

comfortable neighbourhood or an estate, every single young life

matters, and we will not stand by while we continue to see violence

and fatalities hitting the next Generation, because they are our

future. Firstly, may I congratulate him for securing this debate on this

most important of issues. I think he gave a very powerful and articulate

speech. 188 people were killed with a knife last year, 119 sexual

assaults last year that the point of a knife. Attempted murders and

threats to kill with a knife as well. Thousands of Britons have

feared for their lives through stabbing. When I was elected in May

of last year, I pledged to residents in my constituency I would do all I

could just tackle the scourge of knife crime. Colchester has seen too

many young lives involving weapons destroyed. Each one a personal

tragedy. It is still the case that too many people, and in particular,

are young people, still feel it is acceptable to carry blades and

knives. They wrongly believe it will keep them safe. Let us be clear,

carrying a knife does not keep you safe. It is illegal, it puts you and

others in grave danger. I believe that some people carry weapons like

that because they feel it gives them status. He makes a very valid point

and I think he's absolutely right. There are many reasons why young

people carry blades. Sometimes it's in relation to fear, sometimes it's

status symbol. But the message we have to hammer home, not only is it

illegal, statistically you are far more likely to be the victim of a

knife crime if you're carrying a knife yourself, and we need to get

that message out there loud and clear. I believe the answer to use

by others to be threefold, deterrence, education and

intervention. But I want to focus on two of those, deterrence and

education. I welcome steps which the government has taken on this issue,

such as minimum custodial sentences for repeat knife possession, as well

as the commitment in relation to police budgets. But I also agree

with the honourable member for Streatham regarding education, which

has an important role to play. We need to do more in educating young

people about the dangers of carrying knives.

I have been working with a charity based in North Essex, set up in the

Clacton area. It was set up in 2012 byte Caroline Shearer, whose

17-year-old son was fatally stabbed in 2012. Since then, and this is why

Caroline is so inspirational, she has been campaigning to show the

devastating impact that knife crime has on young lives but also on the

families. She has been providing weapons awareness education in

schools. These are really hard hitting lessons, but shouldn't

people be dangers of carrying knives. I have been to one of these

lessons and they really do leave an impact. Usually cocky, confident

students finish the lessons shocked and startled at the brutal impact

that knives can have on lives. Having seen images of knife attacks,

knife weans on young people, it does hit home very hard. The message that

we need to send out is that all it takes is one moment of stupidity and

lives and reputations can be brilliant and shattered. We teach

our young people -- can be destroyed and shattered. We need to teach more

in schools about the dangers of carrying knives. The demands on the

curriculum are great but this represents 145 minute lesson in IDUs

nine or ten. -- this represents a single 45 minute lesson in year nine

or year ten. A 50,000 name petition was presented to Downing Street by

Caroline for these lessons to be given in schools. It would be a big

step forward in tackling knife crime across the country. I truly think

the Government should take another hard look at encouraging more

schools to introduce these weapons education lessons. Coming up to the

point about violent crime. According to the crime survey for England and

Wales, it is down since 2010 but according to violence recorded by

police against the person, it has increased. The picture is far from

clear. The reasons for violent crime, these spikes or false, are

not well understood. It is important that the police supported by good

academic work, do the research. There has been too much regulation,

in my view, about the causes, and we really do need to focus on the

facts. In Essex, more than half of the very notable increase in

recorded beating -based crime in the last 12 months, 4463 of 8165, is in

violence at against the person category. But where the

subcategories of violence without injury, like shouting and

harassment,... The Home Office has decided that this category should

also include online bullying and harassment. In my view, this is

nonsense and distorts this debate. I believe there is a very strong

argument for a new stand-alone crime type category for recording online

crimes. Continuing to record these crimes in the category of violent

crime makes it difficult to debate violent crime and its causes. Online

bullying and harassment, for example, are extremely serious

crimes, but sadly it affects young people more than any other age group

and we know that, but the steps we need to take to tackle physical

violence and gang violence is different from what we need to

tackle online abuse and harassment and that is why it is important that

we look at week at a gradation. Focusing on my own constituency of

Colchester. -- that we look at categorisation. A staggering 93% of

the crimes in Colchester are violence with no injury. Much of it

is made up of online bullying or harassment so it does put this right

in a very different light. Delighted to give way. In relation to crimes

that are reported, violent crime is particularly among young people,

would he agree with me that so much of it goes unreported? The onboard

member makes an important point. There are lots of crimes up and down

this country which go reported for many reasons. I support forces like

Essex Police that are making it easier to report crimes,

particularly online. We have to make it easier and give people the

confidence that it will be followed up by police. Coming back to the

point I was making, and I apologise that it is a little details, I think

it is important that if we have this debate we have it based on accurate

statistics. It is almost impossible for us to happen really good, clear

debate when the Home Office has provided such broad and unclear

definitions of violent crime, so I think better categorisation is

needed, including a separate category for online offences.

Another serious concern is to do with geography and location. In

Essex there is a very clear evidence of increased violence related to

gangs involved in the supply and distribution of class A drugs and

other drugs and the honourable member for Streatham made this point

about the clear link between gang and youth violence and class A

drugs. Communities in Essex are consistently evolving, as they

always have, with the movement of people from London. The sad reality

is that some of the gang problems traditionally associated with the

area of London are spreading too many towns up and down this country,

a point made by my honourable friend from Yeovil. There have been a

number of murders, often stabbings, where neither the victim nor those

arrested live in Essex. The London gangs are without doubt operating

the county lines into Essex. Gang members have been using intimidation

over people even as far north as Colchester to supply drugs to local

dealers. So this is not about drugs -- just about drugs but also

intimidation and threat. From London we are now seeing even outside

London sometimes extreme sexual violence against women and girls who

associate with these gangs. It is essential that our police forces,

operate on this and Essex do already cooperate really well with the

Metropolitan Police but it is extremely disappointing that in

2016, most police forces do not automatically share crime data and

operate on different crime systems. I commend Essex for leading the way

and having the first fully collaborated policing IT system, and

that will soon be used by nine forces across the country. I am also

pleased that the very recent HMI see report on police effectiveness

judged Essex to be good at dealing with the sort of crime we are

talking about today. Other forces must follow their lead and take a

comprehensive approach and work more closely together. To briefly

conclude, it is refreshing to hear a sense of cross-party consensus in

this chamber. If not entirely around the possible solutions but certainly

around the willingness to address this most important issues. I very

much applaud the honourable member for Streatham in his call on

cross-party working. I think an exercise to establish the root

causes would be sensible. As I mentioned, better categorisation is

also an important part of this so we can get to the root cause and have a

debate based on facts rather than conjecture. Education, deterrence

and intervention are absolutely key to reducing violent crime and series

youth violence. For many young people, delaying action is not an

option. I am very grateful for the opportunity to participate in this

important debate, and I congratulate my honourable friend the member for

Streatham for having the debate and I know that the member shall

Lewisham Deptford has been quite quietly campaigning in the tea rooms

to have such a debate because of the concerns in her own constituency,

and it is fantastic to be joined by the member for Westminster North,

who has huge experience on these issues and has brought them to the

attention of the House continuously, certainly over the years I have been

in Parliament. But that is where I start. This issue is not new. And in

a sense, it is very important that we don't have this debate like a

year zero moment. We have now been having it for several years. I want

to say that problems with young people getting caught up in crime,

particularly in urban and deprived areas, is absolutely not new. Anyone

who was at home over the Christmas period right have landed on the show

Dickensian and would have seen an adaption of many of Dickens' books

and will be very familiar with both great expectations and Oliver twist

and will know that in London, we had gangs. In London, we had groups of

young people getting up to criminality. At the centre of gang

activity is usually adult activity above it, running those gangs. So

these are not new issues. I was born in a period just coming out of huge

public concern about mods and Rockers. Congregating in different

parts, I see the front bench opposition spokesman, who is

absolutely... Absolutely aware of that. Ever so slightly older than

me. And again, there was real concern about gang activity,

sometimes in seaside areas of the country, in urban areas of the

country. So debate in this House about young people and crying and

about gang activity is not new. -- young people and crime. So what is

new? I think the level of violence is new. I think the age profile is

worrying. And the geographic spread feels out of control. So just on

that age profile, if we look at the Met police matrix that is really the

Met's Central Way of recording who is caught up in what they describe

as central gang activity, they say there are 3459 individuals on their

matrix, this is at the last foot of publication in May 2014, over 500

are under the age of 18. That includes two 13-year-olds, 21

14-year-olds, 71 15-year-olds, 130 816-year-olds, 268 17-year-olds, 356

18-year-olds. 55% are aged between 18 and 22. Something is going on.

Something is going on and it is something we should be very worried

about. Any member that has a significant or significant housing

estates particularly will talk about this phenomenon, which we often

associated with America, arriving in this country, of young people,

teenage, running drug activity on behalf of older individuals. I thank

him for giving way. Would he agree that serious violence against women

and very young girls can be -- is not presently appropriately recorded

or understood as part of gang activity and not enough action is

being taken on this very important part of this specific problem? I am

so pleased my honourable friend has also raised that issue, because that

is the other issue that is new, but I was just going to come onto. That

young profile has got something to do, I think, with the enforcement

side of this national problem. The police are locking people up. We are

serious about carrying a knife. We have been historically serious about

carrying a gun. But because they have locked up some of the older

individuals, and that particularly happened, I might say, after the

2011 riots, all it has done is driven the crime down to these

younger individuals, and then become to my honourable friend's point

about the definition of gangs. Very, very dangerous to call any

congregation of young people a gangs. I might say it always feels

like to call any congregation of young black and brown people a

gangs. Because actually, for those of us in the House that have

children, and particularly getting to that teenage point, actually, 12,

13-year-olds are quite attracted to joining gangs. So we need to be very

careful about the gang description. Thank you to my friend Michael

giving way. I want to touch on the point he raises, what happens when

police target older gangs, I mean criminal gangs, not younger people,

target them in operations and leave a vacuum which triggers a spike in

violence amongst the younger lower orders of those gangs who have been

drawn into the reasons that he cites? My honourable friend is

completely right. What is being said, unfortunately, is that some of

the moral compass of these young people is incredibly worrying. They

are impressionable, young. And for some of the reasons that my

honourable friend has also raised, one I say impressionable, I mean,

because we live in a society that has preference choice above

everything else, we live in a society where you have the choice

not frankly to be exposed to quite serious violence, in social media,

on television, in parts of the games industry, not all and it is quite

hard for modern parents, however much money they have, to delineate

between access to some of those images and that impression. So we

have young people stopping almost as if they don't realise the

consequence of that stabbing. It is quite quite bizarre that you might

not realise that puncturing skin and causing blood loss might not lead to

a loss of life but I've seen images, they are on YouTube, you can see

them, of young people being stabbed almost as Boston. And my honourable

friend is right, much of it goes unreported. It never turns up in our

hospitals. It is solved most by self-medication, go to the pharmacy,

get a Band-Aid and it is sorted out, in community. So there is a real

prevalence in violence. A real indication that the spectrum is

going down. And as my honourable friend has just raised, the other

thing that is new and worrying and not something that is strictly we

would associate with mods or rockers back in the time of Charles Dickens

is beef and Umunna now viewing women, young women, being at the

centre of the action. If you looked at some of the individuals running

these gangs, and actually you can still run a gang from prison, let's

be clear, you can bring in the younger folk, wide, because they are

less likely to get a sentence and they are caught, and you bring in

the women on the estates. You pray on the young women. Tremendous work

historically by the children's Commissioner, raising issues of

women and sexualisation of women all gang at 230 and the way that women

become victims in this but you can hide the knife in your girlfriend 's

bedroom. You can hide the staffed with her. -- the stash. She can walk

quietly to the opposite state and perhaps not get picked up in the

same way. -- the opposite state. The profile is changing. I'm grateful to

my honourable friend for giving way in a powerful speech. The other

issue of course is not just the role of girls and women being used to

conceal weapons but straightforward exploitation of women in our

communities, who are passed from one group of young lads to another. This

just doesn't get talked about almost enough, in my view, as my fellow

Lambeth MP said. David Lambie. Absolutely. So there is a deeply

disturbing pattern of sexualisation of these women. These women who are

victims, who have not been picked up, and this has been a matter of

debate in other places, and all of it leads to a very disturbing

combination of violence, of sexual activity, of real victims, both

young, both female, and of criminality in our areas. And it is

not just members saying that, the head of Scotland Yard's major

command said that the presence of 13-year-old and 14-year-olds on gang

territory is more concerning and it is very worrying that 17 men aged 18

or under were fatally stabbed in London last year. So then we get to

the strategy that my honourable friend published very shortly. Very,

recently. This is the strategy. It was published in January 20 16. I

say to the Minister as gently as I can, does this problem merit an

eight page strategy or something more considerable? On the back of

the strategy there is a description of the constituencies described as

being within the end gang violence areas. My first point in relation to

that is what do we mean by" end". We dedicated to ending this? I say this

because I have now been in the House for 16 years, and this story began

around about the time I came here. I would say, in 1995, 94, around about

the time Tony Blair became leader of the Labour Party and John Major came

to the end of his stage as Conservative leader, we wouldn't

have been having a debate about youth violence and gangs. It just

wasn't present in the British Mexican AbFab point in our history.

Towards the end of the 1990s we started to see an upsurge of gun

violence particularly. Operation Trident, there was another operation

that was termed black on black violence. That morphed into some of

the strategies we saw particularly and the leadership of Charles Clarke

was secretary in the Blair government. And certainly after the

riots under this government there was also an upsurge. I am talking

about annex a because we have to decide if we want to end this

because I'm afraid it's going in the wrong direction. I've talked about

the young people, about the women, but the violence. Other honourable

members have mentioned trauma. Look at the geography. In April 2012 the

areas identified were like Hackney, Lewisham, Liverpool, Manchester,

Nottingham, Sandwell. Not areas that I think that honourable members

would have been surprised when included in the areas we wanted to

deal with. By June- December 2012 and had moved on to include

Hammersmith and Fulham, Merton, Leeds. The barn ats the Brom ats.

That was starting to get worrying. Thanet. Last we had Basildon,

Grimsby, Harrow. High Wycombe. Southampton, Swindon. What is going

on here? Something that was bourbon, inner city, has now become

incredibly suburban. Problems that were traditionally black have become

white. It is the whole reflection of our young people that have been

caught at in this violence. The picture is not unique to particular

communities. It is spreading. There a geographic spread. By comeback

too, is with just an eight page strategy? We will continue to

prioritise the reduction of gang-related violence including

tackling knife crime. How, what, when, by when? Local areas were

encouraged to develop and effective response to gang violence. How will

we know the best practice? We've already got evidence that some of

these gangs straddle different local authorities. There is real spread.

Gangs in London, adults are running young people into the suburbs to

sell drugs. So the strategy in Lewisham, how does it relate to the

strategy in Kent? What is that pattern? And isn't mentioned. -- it

isn't mentioned. The Ministry of Justice has brought together and

analysis, how is this shared, where do I get hold of this? How are we

coming together, as the honourable member has suggested, to deal with

it? It does not feel it is commanding the level of grip for a

spreading epidemic that is taking the lives of young people, and

inflicting real pain and hardship amongst very different communities,

it does not feel quite like that is being gripped. I think that is why

the honourable member has brought this debate today. So what is

required? We need much better understanding of best practice.

We've got to get into these issues of violence, and violence in

society. Any social worker, will tell you that domestic violence is

often going on in these homes. We have the troubled families

initiative, how is it impacting in this area, given that it seems to be

getting worse? The statistics are very, very worrying. We had an 18%

increase in assault with injury, the figures add to January 20 16. The

22% increase in violence against the person in and on. Data from the

London Ambulance Service. And we know that our profound problems with

data from the London Ambulance Service so this is not necessarily

the best data and yet they show a 9% injury in the number of assaults

involving knives. 14% up my scream in London as a whole -- app knife

crime, over the last 12 months. Urgent, and yet not figuring in our

national conversation and our response in the way I believe it

ought to. After the 2011 riots there was a huge fanfare because of course

the Mayor of London, now the MP for expert, he's obviously very good at

fanfare! -- for Uxbridge. He brought in a Bill Bratton, the Commissioner

from New York. The honourable members will remember that he had

all these strategies and plans. What happened to that? There has been

some discussion previously of the Glasgow model, because Glasgow had a

significant problem, and they have done particular things with their

violence reduction unit, how does that have a bearing on these plans?

We've heard about what's happened in Jakarta goal and Boston. The ideas

are out there to end. There are solutions but where is the sense of

coherence in relation to strategy which is actually going to deal with

this problem. I'm sorry to challenge but if you live in one of these

areas represent one of them this strategy document feels like a civil

service exercise. It does not feel like the kind of deliberate action

we will require, particularly not around enforcement but around

diversion activity, particularly for our very young souls indeed. The

next speaker, we want to start the wind about half past one and we have

three more speakers to go so if we can keep within ten or 15 minutes

everybody will get in. Current Back. May I begin by congratulating my

honourable friend for introducing this very important debate and for

his very powerful speech which sets out the challenges we face. We've

had some extremely strong speech is already that make the point that

this is not year zero as my honourable friend the Member for

Tottenham says, there is a long tradition of violence in this

country and groups that go back of the in different manifestations. But

it is changing, the nature of the problem is changing, growing anger

and more female and spreading to other areas. Yet within that, it

remains true that it is largely, though not exclusively a crisis

affecting black and minority operations, not exclusively yet it

is a problem and it is one largely of deprivation, largely, though not

exclusively. A great shame that we don't have more members of

Parliament president to discuss this today because my honourable friend

is right, if it were not a problem that is so overlaid with issues of

deprivation, I would hope we would have more people here to discuss it.

It is absolutely critical that we exercise our duty as members of

Parliament to all our constituents in the country, and we echo the

cries of pain that we herewith an our communities to address this

problem. We know because it is not year zero that after a sharp

increase in deaths from serious youth violence in London in 2007 and

2008, action was taken and we saw an improvement of the situation over

the years of 2011 and 2012. I had my last debate in my name on youth and

gang violence in 2007. After that period, I don't say those facts were

connected but we saw genuine progress, a welcome reduction in the

number of deaths, certainly in London.

We are now seeing a reversal of that success and these facts are

extremely worrying. It is absolutely right, as others have said, that not

all incidents are reported to the, no know means is that the case. In

Westminster North, which is not... It is not Haringey. It is not one of

those areas which has been most usually associated with pressures

and not south-central Los Angeles. Let me tell you about some of the

incidents which have happened over the last couple of months. Last

month, in fact, January, just after the removal of the security cameras

in church Street in my constituency a young man was stabbed in the

street in front of witnesses A constituent e-mailed me to say this

brutal and bloody event was shocking to witnesses and occurred out of two

shops belonging to the trading association. I understand the victim

was in surgery and he was lucky a deep stab wound just missed his

heart. Two days before Christmas. A young man I know well, who did work

experience in my office, was surrounded by a group of 20 young

people and stabbed in the chest. The knife entered the fatty tish slew of

his heart. He was ex-- fatty tissue of his heart. He was lucky to

survive. I was e-mailed by a constituent, who said, "I heard

shouting and saw a young lad on the phone. He was saying to someone on

the other end, I have been stabbed. I called 999. It took me a long time

to persuade them it was a serious incident. I understand he had four

stab wounds. He was 14 years old." In seventh, there were violent

clashes in St Mary's recreation ground. They tweeted to me, we need

control. There is a huge gang fight behind the Little Venice. A few

incidents and that gives an indication of how real the problem S

it is true, as my friends have said, that you can be completely, you can

live in these communities and be completely oblivious to this. As a

middle aged woman, I can walk those streets and live in a different

world and the world that our young people live in, in this city, but

increasingly in our towns too is different. Their experience of it is

different. We need to wake up, as an adult community, to who those

challenges are. This is a very important point - every single one

of those incidents may be something that most adults are oblivious to,

but they have ripples. Those ripples spread out. The 20 young people who

stabbed the young man who did work e peens in my office. They know what

happened. Their families know there are risks and dangers. That young

man's family. One thing I discover is going into schools in my

constituent, talking to nine year olds and eight year olds and asking

them how they feel about their community. One of the things they

raise is gang violence. They say, can the gang violence be stopped?

They fear for their own relatives... Yes, I will give way. Thank you. I

thank my honourable friend for giving way. That is, my honourable

friend makes a powerful point n my constituency, Brent central. The

youngest gang member is 13 and the oldest 61 years old. It is shows the

breadth of the problem in Brent Central. Many people will be

oblivious to what happens on the streets.

My honourable friend is absolutely correct. We know the relatives, the

parents of those children who are injured and tragically murdered.

They are in the community. They are in their churches. They are in their

neighbourhoods afrnd their agony is something -- and their Agassi gony

is echoed through the communities. She is making a very powerful point.

My constituents this week, a young lad of 11 years old was hit-and-run

by a vehicle, by young people in a vehicle and was killed outside the

mosque in front of his father. The whole community are in mourning. Yet

sometimes a lot of the time our young people, as I said before,

don't understand the consequences of the weapons they use and they feel

it is part of being a gang or being part of youth culture. That has

serious consequences for the rest of their lives and for the whole of the

community. I absolutely agree with the honourable member about that

point. I don't want to go into some of the issues around causes because

they have been well set out and time is pressing. A lack of understanding

about the consequences of violence behaviour is right. The causes we

have explored. One of the community groups ran a campaign called oop

fear and Fashion. That encap lates the story. People are frightened and

by fashion they mean the tendency to be aware these things are going on

in the community, to be part of something they consider to be

normalised. But these every single one of these incidents, even though

which are nonfatal are tragedies and they have ramifications and they

impact on the communities. I will give way. I am most grateful. She

will know is a former member of the Home Affairs Select Committee, that

the committee conducted an inquiry into this. I think she was a member

at the time. Given what the honourable member for Streatham has

said today, isn't it important that we revisit some of these

conclusions? Some of this is already there. It just needs to be revisited

and acted upon. I think my Right Honourable friend

is absolutely right. We know that there are changes, as we have heard

in the debate so far this afternoon in the way that gang and serious

youth violence is working itself out. Many constants from experience

and we need to learn from them. There very positive things going on

too, in terms of the work which has been done in community

organisations. Westminster Councils, I don't often praise them, but I

will when they have a gangs unit which include excellent members who

work intensively with young people. Red This red which is working out

for Accident Emergency units a and trying to catch young people at a

teachable moment, the moment an injury has been inflicted and they

can learn from this. There is much which is good. I will break with

consensus now by saying how much we are in danger of losing, at the very

point we need to be gaining. I am deeply worried, Madam Deputy

Speaker, about the crisis in our youth offending incidents which are

ridden with extreme gang violence and the cost pressures bite in the

youth Justice Secretarior. The more there is overcrowding in our prisons

the more dangerous this situation becomes. I was asking for figures at

Medway. ?138,000 a year to keep a young person. In Feltham ?69,000 a

year. That is the kind of money we will spend in locking up a young

person who... Obviously by no means because of gang and serious youth

violence, but we spend that money and yet we are doing something

dreadful, which is we are removing the investment which is necessary to

prevent this kind of behaviour. And I will say today, I am horrified

by my own local council which is not alone from withdrawing all funding

from its youth service. If we talk about intervention, we are talking

about catching young people at a teachable moment. It is critical. My

honourable friend made that point about youth workers. The continuity

and expertise of our youth workers is critical and we are losing them.

My honourable friend makes a very, very important point, so many of the

activities which are provided for young people are not stat Tory, a

lot of this youth provision is not statutory, so it is often first in

the line for cuts. I am trying not to be political -- party political

about this. But the grant, inevitably is going to have an

impact on the support that local authorities can give to

organisations working on. This My honourable friend is absolutely

right. We are in a very dangerous situation here, as the pressure on

youth services bites. It is that early intervention and early

intervention we think about as being for under the fives. Early

intervention is as important in the teenage and adolescent years as it

is among the under fives. I thank my friend for giving way on this

powerful point. As a former minister for youth engagement it was part of

our hope that it would have been made statutory that youth services

be ring-fenced in each council it is disappointing that position has been

scrapped by the Government. It is disappoints we don't invest in all

of the youth services that were going and doing excellent job in the

communities for many, many years. I absolutely agree with this. It is

not just youth services, it is also the pressure on child and adolescent

mental health. For all of the talk about giving collarry to -- clarity

to mental health services we have seen a squeeze on mental health

services. My honourable friend for Streatham made a point about health.

Westminster again, I praise them when they do good things, they

commissioned a report into gang and mental ill health. This is a vastly

unexemployered area of importance in -- unexplored area. It said" street

gangs and growing violence has been a concern over the past decade and

in Westminster concentrated in areas of high crime. The mental health

needs of young people in gangs have been overlooked. This report

demonstrated extremely high level of mental health need in young people

involved in gangs. Compared to nonviolent men, gang mens has

increased personal disorder, 57 times higher than the average.

Suicide attempts 13 times higher. Psychosis 14 times higher." Gang

members significantly more likely than nonviolent men to have utilised

mental health services, with gang members eight times more likely to

have consulted a psychiatrist and five times more likely to have used

Medvedevation." We have a mental health crisis which impacts on the

very people that we need to deal with. Yesterday at the same singed

we are seeing a reduck -- same time we are seeing a deruction in the

services and the school-based systems. I am particularly worried

that the mental health intervention in my own local authority is half

the level it was two years ago and is only funded to next year. Of

course, the whole pack enter gang initiative is only funded until next

year and there is this uncertainty. I am drawing to a close. , very,

very briefly, she's making a powerful case. 35 gang-flagged

incidents in Greenwich and Woolwich in the few months I was elected last

May and many deaths around the Woolwich area. Given the

circumstances and the epidemic, does she agree it makes no sense for the

Government to pull them out of the gang and youth offending programme?

I totally agree. I think we understand a great deal about what

is going on, even when the changing dynamic. We are in danger of doing

all the wrong things. We are scrapping youth intervention in some

places. We are cutting child and adolescent mental health services

and so many other areas of early intervention and we are also fate

ally, in my view, ensuring that the ver viss which do work for children

and young people at risk of gang involvement are short term and end

very quickly. In the last line, I believe two things. I think it takes

the village to raise a child. Those of us who live in the city, which is

diverse, mobile and so disconnected know we have to build and rebuild

that village every single day. And voluntary endeavour cannot do it

alone. Our village has to include neighbourhood police. Child

adolescent services, schools, churches, mosques and individual

family. We should treat gangs and serious youth violence as a public

health nergesy, as much as we should a criminal justice one. Mental

health services are at the front line.

Thank you very much. Can I begin by congratulating the honourable member

from Streatham for securing this debate and for his very excellent

speech which outlined the complexities and the difficulties in

this area? It is a privilege to follow on from a powerful

contribution from the member of Westminster North. Today, I want to

focus on the phenomenon of county lines in which urban criminal gangs

groom and coerce children and young people into selling Class A drugs,

particularly heroin and crack cocaine. Young people travel many

miles from their home, often to quiet market and seaside towns,

where they are set up to deal drugs, sometimes from the home of a

vulnerable person there. Last July I attended the launch of the first

major report into county lines Running the Risks, it was published

jointly by catch 22 and Missing People. A month later the National

Crime Agency produced an assessment which said county lines affect most

forces and almost always involves exploitation of vulnerable people.

In January the Home Office published a report entitled Ending Gang

Violence and Exploitation. This showed that gangs otherwise took to

police tactics and were making it harder for police to disrupt

activity and safeguard vulnerable people. The report also said young

girls are groomed for both involvement in criminal behaviour

and harmful sexual behaviour as part of gang culture. Indeed the recent

Rotherham trial show the connection between organised crime and drugs

and child sexual exploitation. We don't yet know the scale of the

county lines problem and where it was discovered. Agencies are not

clear how to deal with it. Children from Greater Manchester have been

found selling drugs in flats and seaside and other provincial towns

some as far as Devon. Children are used to reduce the risk to older

gang members. This may go unnoticed by police particularly if they have

no record of offending. The gang leaders are like modern-day versions

of Fagin or Bill Sykes, hard men who groom youngsters and use them to do

their dirty work. This is serious and recognition of the county lines

phenomenon which I believe is the next big grooming scandal.

Just as with children groomed for child sexual exploitation we need to

recognise that young people drawn into criminality and drug dealing

have in the first instance been groomed and many belated. The young

people end up charged with criminal offences, putting them in the same

relationship with the law as the adults are groomed them. And this

leaves them vulnerable to further exploitation, continuing to be

victims at the same time as offending. This needs to be seen in

the context of organised crime and systematic grooming of young people.

Often the people at the centre are long-term hardened criminals. The

Catch-22 report stressed the link between gang involvement and young

people going missing and said young people are too often criminalised

rather than safeguarded. The report said that while missing incidents

were children and younger people are usually underreported, this is

especially true of young people recruited into gangs, also true of

young people placed into care miles away from their home town with

little support, leaving them vulnerable to getting drawn back

again into gangs. An additional issue with county lines is that

young people involved may often be aged between 16 and 18, and

according to the Children Society there is massive and reporting of

young people missing in this age group. Understanding of county lines

is developing at a national level and the use of young, vulnerable

people to traffic drugs across county lines is flagged up as a

major issue by practitioners. Organisations who work to turn young

people from gang crime, notably the St John's trust charity in London

which works with young people to break the cycle of offending have

also been working on this subject was on time and have some harrowing

stories to share. And was told by Saint Gyles's Trunk that young

children use plastic containers from chocolate toys to carry drugs in

their own bodies, a serious risk to health and it is hard to imagine a

more graphic metaphor for the provision of childhood. I was also

told of young girls dressed in school uniforms used as drug mules

because they are not likely to be searched, and the ages that young

people get involved in a gang is very concerning. There have been

reports of cases involving children as young as nine. The trust has been

given one warning of a child aged 12 involved in county lines. There are

increasing stories about gangs setting up their own members to be

searched and then told they must work off their debt by engaging in

drug trafficking for free or engaging in sex. This is nothing

less than slavery. The threat of child sex exploitation of the girls

in gangs is known but traffic being moved to remote locations compounds

the vulnerability. Using people are at risk of physical violence, child

exploitation and emotional and physical abuse. This involves

arguably but trafficking and modern slavery. These children are seen as

bad children who have chosen a criminal lifestyle. One national

newspaper recently reported a court case about a 13-year-old Manchester

boy sent to Cumbria by a gang and set up as a heroin and crack cocaine

dealer. There was a court saying that the boy revelled in his role as

a little gangster. He was a child. The recent Home Office report

indicates that we have somewhere to go into acting county lines. Action

is needed at a national level to set out where responsibility lies for

law enforcement in disrupting county lines and how information should be

shared so that when young people are found, they are supported in the

appropriate manner. We need to know the skill of involvement of

vulnerable young people in county lines. I asked and above questions

to try to establish numbers. The Home Office responded that because

the National Crime Agency does not conduct county lines operations they

do not have this information. We also need to know how much use is

being made of anti-trafficking and slavery laws to charge older members

with grooming younger gang members and finally we need to know how best

to support these young people and have been found. Information that

needs to be cross-referenced with information about possible gang

involvement to stage an early intervention and try to disrupt

involvement after early missing incidents. I offer a practical

suggestion to the Minister, that would help in disrupting the

grooming of children and young people to sell drugs at a very early

stage. Currently we have numerous civil orders available to the police

to combat grooming for child sexual exploitation including sexual risk

orders, sexual harm prevention orders and child abduction

prevention orders. I want to see the creation of similar orders for use

where children are being groomed by criminal gangs to act as drug

runners. Perhaps they could be called Fagin Orders? The reality is

that many children initially groomed into criminal activity then groomed

for sexual exploitation, or alternatively I initially groomed

for criminal purposes and then child exploitation. Both forms of

exploitation are inextricably interlinked and young people are

reluctant and frightened to disclose either. Returning to children who

have gone missing, an important source of not only a stab at in the

risk to the young person but also gathering information about their

associates and intelligence about county lines. It's important that

this information is used to safeguarding by both police and

children's services, where young people are found after involvement

in county lines the approach should be holistic. The Saint Gyles Trust

have suggested a framework where young people who are former

offenders accompany police and raids and immediately offer support to

young people who are more likely to listen to people who've been in the

same situation as they have. To return to the point made at the

beginning, we must learn from the CSE scandals that have ruined so

many lives. We can't afford to make the same mistakes again, blaming

young people, saying they have made their own bed, failing to ask the

right questions and failing to respond even when we know what's

happened. Missing people have been working with a mother whose son

began going missing aged 12 and was being groomed by a gang to sell

drugs away from his home in county lines operations. The mother was

desperate not to lose the sun to this and reported it every time he

went missing and yet it took six months to receive and is a board

from services. How can that be right? He repeatedly went missing

for periods ranging from overnight to three months. He ended up taken

into care and in numerous distant placements. We need a response to

county lines which means that children are safeguarded from gangs

are the adults who groomed them are published to egg banished to the

full extent of the law. Until then it will continue to be the young

victims who are punished as their abusers continue with the trade that

brings them thousands of pounds a day. Vicki Foxcroft. Thank you,

Madam Deputy is. As a new MP nothing prepare you for receiving a call

from the police telling your teenager has been murdered in your

constituency. Once was hard enough but within weeks of each other, this

happened twice, on exactly the same estate. In fact, since becoming an

MP last year, four young people from my constituency have now lost their

lives, due to the needless violence on our streets. I sat down with many

of the family and friends left behind and many of them are here

today. Losing loved ones is hard enough but having them murdered, not

being able to understand what has happened, is even harder. I have

been calling for this debate since October last year, and I am grateful

that the honourable member. Has brought this forward, and that the

business committee has granted its time. So much that we could talk

about, so much that needs to be said. But we also need to listen. We

can all stand up here and give passionate speeches about gangs and

youth violence but the truth is that nothing will change. There is no

speech that anyone of us could give today that will stop our young

people from killing each other. That is the harsh reality. So what do we

do? Accept that it happens and simply move on? No. Each one of us

has an obligation to find solutions. I believe that these will come from

us building a stronger, more resilient community base for this

country, one where we look out for each other. What do we do, right

another report, but words together and call it a policy? No. The

government must realise that writing down 2500 words, giving it the grand

title of ending gang violence and exploitation and calling it a policy

simply will not work. There can be no more top-down solutions. Things

have changed and we must listen and respond. There are some huge

department is looking at this. The Home Office, the Ministry of

Justice, none of them can possibly understand the issues being faced by

young people on a daily basis. They all engage with young people but

they do so in a tokenistic way. They do so to tick the box that says,

must engage with young people. Dick! They do not engage in a youth led

away -- tick. They do so in a lead youth way. This approach needs to

change. Young people have the solutions. Our communities have the

solutions. Because they are the ones facing the problems. We need a far

reaching youth led consultation to really gets to grips with the core

issues that underpin the reasons and impact of the violence that is

present in young people's lives. And it isn't just about gangs. If you

asked ten people what a gang is you will get ten different answers. And

it's not just about youth violence. We need to drop the negative

language. Young people are fed up with constantly being portrayed

negatively by politicians and the media. David Lambie. On that point

about what is a gang, is she surprised that in the document the

government has put out they haven't even sought to define what they

interpret as a gang. That would help further conversation. I agree with

everything that the honourable member said, and indeed the

document, as you said earlier with your speech, is so brief that it

barely defines what anything is what any of the solutions should be. So

moving back to my speech, we need to fundamentally transformed the

debate. Further to the point made by my friend, the Honourable member for

Tottenham, as I understand it, these groups often call themselves gangs,

so that is part of the problem. They call themselves gangs and it is

difficult to define it. The Honourable member makes a good

point but we tag people in certain ways and define people as gangs when

they could just be groups hanging about together. This is why in my

speech am talking about transforming the way we talk about this debate.

Par my friend Maggie is making a powerful speech. On that issue of

gangs I belonged to a gang when I was younger, we had a uniform and a

code and it was called the Girls' Brigade. So we do have to be clear

when defining gangs but and is our responsibility as MPs to work with,

I met with my borough commander this week and I will meet my borough

commander every month to make sure we are all working together. To make

sure we are listening to young people and making sure they are not

criminalised or labelled from a very young age. I thank the Honourable

member for the intervention and she makes an extremely good, strong

point. We need to talk about violence in our society. We need to

forget age for a second. When someone, anyone, gets so angry that

they end up killing someone, we have failed as a society. We've failed

the victim, we have failed the victim's friends and failed the

victim's family. But we have also failed the killer. What a life they

must have led that leads up to that moment. The moment they pull out a

knife and stick it into another human being. And what is our cancer?

Police, court, prison. We lock them up -- our answer. The minimum of two

defenders and then they are released. Then what? -- the minimum

of 25 yours. What have we provided, picture the scene, father out of

work, mother and alcoholic, missed by social services due to cuts.

Missed by youth workers because they no longer exist. Missed by the local

police because of cutbacks. We are creating a perfect storm. Youth work

cut, police cut, social services, cut. What hope do we have wireless

government are in power? -- wide dish while this government is in

power? Shrinking the state? Of course not. It is the very fabric of

society that needs to be fixed to stop this. It is not the minister I

held solely responsible. There is little she can do alone that will

fix things. It is bigger than that. They spend close to ?1 billion on a

citizenship scream, give it clever building. What then? Once young

people have completed the scheme thatry in the same situation as they

were before. ?1 billion of window-dressing. ?1 billion to

change nothing. We don't need window-dressing. We need to

fundamentally change the way we approach society. We need to change

the narrative. We need to talk about peace. We need to talk about

community. We need to promote positive images of our young people.

We need to give them a voice. Now, running programmes for teenagers,

it's nice, but it will not change much, not fundamentally. We need to

start much younger. Only when we change the lives of the youngest in

society will we see real change take place. Ask any psychologist, any

educationalist. The younger we start to effect change, the younger we can

start to make change. Let's change things. Let's change the record,

change the narrative, change the future.

This debate calls for a wide-ranging consultation, focussing on serious

youth violence. I am sure this is something we can all get behind.

Let's do this together. It is by working together that we will stop

young people disappearing from our streets too early.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. Can I thank the honourable member for

bringing forward this debate on something which has been seldom

debated in this House. The reality is that the topic is not about gangs

specifically. Not about young people, it is aboutvy lents and how

we deal and how we -- about violence and how we deal with that violence

kismt have a devastating effect on the communities and the young people

involved. Not exclusively the young people, but it is their futures and

their lives which hang in the balance while we debate the subject

and change nothing at this point. Despite the difficulty which comes

with legislating to tackle the problem, it is through legislation

but through a variety of other measures that we can in fact deal

with this issue. Scotland recognises the noo ed to tackle this issue and

take measures, particularly in areas of Glasgow where incidents of

violence was reoccurring, it was serious and in many cases it was

severe. However... Will she give way? Thank you very much for giving

way. The East End of Glasgow was once a by word for violence.

Significant work and education and a cohesive approach has reduced gang

membership and weapons possession. I am sure the honourable member would

join me in congratulating the Scottish Government and the violent

reduction unit have done sterling work to reduce gang violence in

Glasgow. Will my honourable friend agree that members across the House

could learn value lessons from the work done in Glasgow over the past

decade? Absolutely. I thank you for bringing foreword that point. The

project in 2008 in Glasgow East, where the worst incident of gang

violence occurred, entitling Scotland one of the worst places in

Western Europe, particularly Glasgow for violence. 600 gang members were

presented with a choice, they could train others or they would face

"zero tolerance" approach and possibly a prison sentence. Through

this work and through the on-going commitment and the support they

received, we witnessed remarkable results. I have lens was halved.

Weapon possession was down by 85%. This group have now gone on now to

establish a charity to create employment for other young people.

Madam Deputy Speaker, there are examples of where positive work can

be done to reframe and reapproach this which is not simply through

legislation but working with young people to provide the support that

they require. Can I ask the honourable lady, what

do they actually do to reduce the violence? What did they actually do

on the streets? There was a number of projects, but this particular

project focussed on bringing the young people in, engaging them,

giving them opportunities to go into further education, training and

support them throughout that process so they could reach sustainable

employment as other routes out with the confines of the environment they

had grown up in and where they themselves experienced violence or

being party to that violence. This Government must recognise that where

legislation is proving ineffective it must consider changing the course

and lessons must be learned from where we have been successful. I

assure the sentiments of the honourable member that young people

have been given a bad name in this discussion. More often than not we

Tarnoffish them where they are the perpetrators but don't seek to

address the root cause of this issue, which I know many members of

this House have addressed in their speeches. I have spoken to members

who have spoken of the impact on their lives of heart-breaking

accounts of loved ones and lost years and lost lives. The honourable

member spoke about the level of violence in London. Houfr this is

not unique to one particular area. It is not unique to one particular

city. We must do more to address the policy. The fablingors of poverty, I

have lens, drugs and the incident -- the factors of poverty, I have lens

and drugs - it must be looked at in a holistic way to address these

problems. If I can acknowledge that it was only ten years that Glasgow

was named "the murder capital of Western Europe" something the then

Scottish Executive could not ignore. Despite the number of convictions

obtained in relation to crime, they were, there was still this need to

tackle the root of these serious problems. In Scotland we have been

successful in reducing the number of incidents T campaign known as Better

Lives, raises awareness and seeks to education young people on the

consequences and it has been one way in which the measure has contributed

to the success in reducing violence. In my own constituency in South

Lanarkshire, a local community established a drama venue, the

Streets, produced by young people and many of whom have been involved

in this violence, tacking issues of violence, knife crime, drug and

alcohol abugs as well as sexual violence. In this hard-hitting way,

this message can be delivered by young people to young people,

addressing the ramification and consequences of actions they take on

a daily basis on the streets, in which they are faced with.

Madam Deputy Speaker, under the stewardship of the Justice

Secretary, he focussed on early intervention on improving life

chances and integration of police within the community, working with

young people. This has resulted in a clear reduction in crime andvy lenss

and let me be clear the incidents of violence continue to exist on a

daily basis. We must tackle these issues. I hope the Government will

take this into consideration. THE SPEAKER: Lynn Brown. Thank you.

Can I make it clear that I was not around with the mods and rockers. I

heard about it from my mum and dad. Just to be clear. Thank you Madam

Deputy Speaker. A couple of years ago, I was driving home and to my

horror, I saw the body of a young man curled upon the pavement around

the corner from my home. Several police officers were with him and I

could hear the sirens of ambulances that were on their way.

That young man was the victim of a stabbing. He was clutching a stomach

wound, but thankfully that proved not to be fatal. That incident shock

me to the very core, it was so, so clous to my house and it wasn't even

really late on a Friday night. There are some in my community who live

every day with the pain and the worry as a result of knife crime and

gang violence. They worry about their children's safety and they

have been robbed of a basic sense of security.

They want, they need weapons off our streets for themselves and they want

their children to be safe. I therefore am really disturbed by

the recent rise in recorded crime, up 9% in England and Wales last

year, after a long downwards trend. If we look at the numbers in more

detail, s involving a knife are up by 26%. Threats to kill by 20%. And

attempted murder by 24%. Gun crime is also up by 4%. I think

these numbers are absolutely chilling.

I know we need to treat recorded crime numbers with caution. The

police should not be discouraged from improving the reporting and

recording of crime which can explain such fluctuations. Sadly there is

also evidence that the increase in recorded knife crime reflects an

increase in criminal activity using knifes. I give as an example the

data from the London Ambulance Service, which shows a 9% rise in

the number of incidents relating to assaults involving a knife. Not only

do we have the knife, the rise in knife crime, but there is some

evidence too that it is related to the number of gangs. Recent Home

Office research suggests there's been a sharp rise in the number of

gangs in the capital and the number of offences that the Metropolitan

Police associations with gang activity has increased by 25% in the

last three years. There are 225 recognised gangs in London. 36000

gang members. In a city that is a relatively small amount of people.

They account for 17% of seriousvy lenss within the capital.

Give -- serious violence within the capital. Given these numbers it is

clear that the member of strat ham is right to draw this -- Streatham

is right to bring this to the attention of the House and call for

a debate. There have been staggeringly good speeches on this

debate. I really do pay tribute to my colleagues who have contributed

to this debate. The stuff has been good. I am aware that the number of

police services have chosen to focus on significant resources and

activity to deal with knife crime. Last week I went to visit

Bedfordshire Police to see how they have cut knife crime by 21%. Offices

from Bedfordshire's operation Boson, told me they have adopted best

practise from across the country and relentlessly tried to attack knife

crime from every angle. They believe they have reduced the number of

knifes on their streets by inspectors, carefully deployed

surrender bins and the use of stop and search powers. They have also

supported diversion schemes, in partnership with the likes of Luton

Town football club, which offer alternative ways in which young

people can deploy their abundance skills and energy. Despite their

magnificent performance it is done on a shoestring. I was told that

balancing all the demands of the service with ever decreasing funding

and resources was like trying to balance spinning plates - always

worried something would become unstuck. It is a clear testimony to

his skill and determination and the commitment and professionalism of

serving police officers in Bedfordshire, particularly those in

Operation Boson, that the Bedfordshire Police service is so

successful with their assault on knife crime. But we know when it

comes to much crime, prevention is always better than cure. I know that

some first-class work already goes on up and down the country to try

and stop these crimes from happening. If you will forgive, I

want to do a plug, because in Newham, we have a carry a basket

board, not a initiative run by the Newham sports academy. It was

started in tragic circumstances by Anthony after two of his friends

were lost by knife crime. He helps young people Bihar necessarying the

power of sport to provide a counter narrative to the poisonous idea that

gang life is in some way glamorous. It is a sort of to be prevention

service which works so incredibly well and the Home Office Select

Committee thinks that we should be - thinks that should by-election

panneded and commissioned far more consistently across the country.

I thank my honourable friend for giving way and for her powerful

speech. With regard to prevention I thank Reverend Rose Hudson who is

present today for all the work she has done in Hackney around

prevention and all the families she has comforted, who have gone through

violent crime. Absolutely. It's these types of people with this type

of commitment and programmes that require our support. They require

staff who have expertise and require people who have the trust of their

communities. They also, let's be serious, require investment. We

discovered last month that the Home Office are pulling the plug on

funding the ending youth gang violence peer review network. That's

a practical programme which brings together academics, local government

officials and police to develop and share knowledge and best practice

about her to reduce gang violence. Governments last and will report of

the peer review network described it as successful, low-cost, high

impact. So why then is it being cut? Two weeks after the fact that it was

being cut was leaked to the Guardian newspaper were told by the Minister

that the network would be replaced by a new forum. The network had the

resources necessary to establish it as best practice. Will this new

forum be equally well resourced all its funding be reduced? I would be

grateful of the minister today would answer some of these questions

because let me tell her, Deborah and George Kinsella, the parents of the

murdered teenager Ben Kinsella, said "We are extremely disappointed to

hear the government is making further cuts to funding to tackle

serious youth violence, when there are so many of us trying to make

better things for others after losing our only children." The

grandmother of 17-year-old Marcel, murdered by a gang on the Hoxton

housing estate, said, "The government seems to be cutting

everything. Children have nowhere to go. They need clubs to go to rather

than hanging out on the streets where they can get into trouble.

They get left behind." Mr Deputy Speaker, we have a situation where

knife crime is creeping up. The undeniable truth is that this has

happened after five years of deep cuts in spending on youth clubs and

crime prevention. There will be naysayers who say it is nothing to

do with the cuts. And that is why I fully is a port my Honourable

friend, the Member for stratum's call for an all-party commission. We

need to get to the bottom of white youth violence is on the increase so

that we can begin to turn the tide. I ask the Minister, who is not about

woman, can -- not a bad woman, can we please have an all-party

commission? Please? LAUGHTER

Goodness me, I don't think the Shadow minister has ever been quite

so nice to me across the dispatch box! I don't think it will ever be

repeated! I am speechless! She will be glad to know that it won't be

full long that I'm speechless. Can I start by congratulating the

honourable member for stratum has a curing this important debate. --

stratum! Stratford is another place. His perseverance in getting this

debate after it was unable to take place due to time restrictions,

finger number of urgent questions answered, it shows how determined he

is to raise and highlight this issue. His long-standing interest in

tackling gangs and youth violence is well-known and I congratulate him

for debate and also all right honourable and Honourable members

who have taken part in the debate. We've heard some powerful

contributions with some in-depth local knowledge. That is so key to

tackling this issue. I want to start by issuing the House that tackling

gangs and youth violence is a priority for this government. I have

met victims of youth violence, of gang violence, I've spent time with

those victims and I know the devastating impact it can have on

families, and diminishes and on young people, whose lives were ahead

of them, and maybe are no longer, and we must remember that that is

the case. We have heard many references to the government 's

approach. I think if the House will allow me, we will spend a free

minutes talking about what we've done on this matter and what the

future holds. The House will know that the government published its

refreshed approach to tackling gangs in a paper. Only a paper. I want to

come back to that point later. Ending gang violence and

exploitation. The paper sets out on how the government 's approach is

focused on reducing and ending gang violence including knife crime and

preventing the exploitation of vulnerable individuals by gang. It

builds on the programme we established in 2012, ending gang

violence. At the time we established the programme so many areas were

only just starting to understand the issue of gangs in the area and the

programme is about getting to understand the problems and build

local resilience. It was due to end in March last year but because we

are starting to see new ways that gangs operating, in particular the

exploitation of vulnerable young people, we extended the programme

for a further 12 months so that we could understand where gangs

operating and could help local areas to build that resilience. Of course

I will give way. I think the Minister for giving way on this