Knife Crime in London

11:00:00

I beg to move, That this House has considered knife crime in London. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Efford. Violence behaves like a virus. It spreads among a community and wreaks havoc not just on our streets but on our lives. There is a particularly virulent strain in London: knife crime. It was once said by a Prime Minister-in-waiting that real action on this issue means being “tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime.” Three decades on from those famous words, talking about violent crime as a social issue has fallen out of political fashion, as though sociologists and social workers on the ground are too misguided, too soft and even too woke to address it, but the notion that we have all been too soft on crime has a dangerous implication: that the surging knife crime on London’s streets can be punished away with tougher sentences and stronger deterrents.

To my mind, the upward trend is worrying. There must be a zero-tolerance policy, so that if someone leaves the house with a knife in their pocket or coat, a custodial sentence is necessary. Does the hon. Gentleman not agree that that has to be part of the strategy?

I fully agree. The community-based approaches that I will come to later in my speech recognise that point. I intend today to state the case that a false premise has been advanced; that successive Governments have failed to invest enough in a whole-of-society approach to reducing knife crime and young people are dying as a result; and that if we are to have any hope of getting a grip on the crisis, we must get serious about a public health approach and the restoration of true, old-fashioned community policing. The pillars of such an approach are threefold. First, we must reinvigorate visible policing by restoring police budgets and get more beats, not just more bobbies. Secondly, we must rescue the early intervention space, protect it from short-termism and ensure that it has the resource it needs. Thirdly, we must get serious about incorporating a public health approach, with greater cohesion between civil society institutions, and willingness to try community and victim-led solutions such as restorative justice. Let us start with restoring community policing. The data shows that the number of police community support officers in the Metropolitan police force declined from 4,247 in 2008 to a mere 1,215 in 2023. That failure, which occurred on the watch of consecutive mayors from both main parties, highlights the scale of the crisis.

I congratulate the hon. Member on securing this debate on such an important topic. Everyone deserves to feel safe, yet over the last 14 years we have seen police numbers being decimated. In the borough that encompasses my constituency of Ilford South, we used to have five police stations. Now, there is only one, for four constituencies. What we have tried to do is to bring engagement and enforcement hubs into the community. Does the hon. Member agree with me that bringing police into the communities they serve is a vital part of keeping our communities safe and of restoring pride in the police?

I could not agree more. I was interested to hear the hon. Member’s speech the other day about including council enforcement officers in these hubs, too. Having them present in the community and accessible to residents is incredibly important. I am keen to have a conversation with him about the measures that he has achieved. To follow exactly the point the hon. Member just made, at the time when we should be getting more police embedded in communities to halt knife crime, we have instead let numbers crater. We know that research consistently shows violent crime dropping significantly in areas where the police are present, visible and proactive. In December 2023, when, tragically, a knife cut short the life of a young man in my constituency, Ilyas Habibi, who was just 17, he was just minutes away from a local police station. Just as worrying is that the fact that in my constituency and across London, we see safer neighbourhood officers being abstracted from their beats—a quirk of the Met police set-up that results in vital officers who should be on our streets, making our neighbourhoods safer, being pulled away for major police operational events, typically in central London. It is, in effect, robbing outer London to pay inner London and it has to stop. These officers want to be doing great work in the community, but the failure to recruit across the Met is letting them and, by extension, us down. There can be no doubt that recruiting into the Met is challenging. The Casey report outlined the scale of the failures that have occurred in recent years far better than any of us can—the failures to get a grip on damaging internal cultures, to protect the victims of crime, and overall to carry the confidence of the very communities they serve. I have met Commissioner Rowley and I acknowledge his undertakings to reform the Met. Nobody in this place can pretend that his role is easy; we must recognise that he needs the full backing of Government to reinvigorate the force and repair its image. As yesterday’s ruling on vetting clearance and dismissals shows, the hurdles in front of these reforms are immense, and the single greatest tool to smash through those hurdles is the powers that the Secretary of State holds. To bolster a new Met for London and drive knife crime down, it should be a priority of this Government to expedite the reforms we all know the Met needs. Without these reforms, how can we expect recruitment to bounce back? I urge the Minister to today outline what steps the Government are taking to get back to proper community policing, to work with the Metropolitan police to reduce abstraction rates, and to support Commissioner Rowley as he embarks on his package of reforms. We cannot look to policing alone, though. The whole-of-society approach that is so desperately needed will require an “it takes a village” attitude, and requires a Government committed to supporting early intervention initiatives. A key first step is diversionary programmes, which we know can cut out knife crime before it can metastasise across our streets. The targeted early help and integrated support teams at Sutton borough council do excellent work with young people in my constituency. Their approach is targeted; once a potential young offender reprimanded by the police is brought to their attention, they work tirelessly to build positive relationships with the child to stop the otherwise steady and depressing downward spiral into criminality. It is vital to remember that these schemes offer opportunities to young people who are often not afforded the luxury of such attention elsewhere in their lives. In London, these intervention programmes rely heavily on grants from the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime, the Ministry of Justice and the violence reduction unit, but youth services across London often face uncertainty about how and when these grants will be allocated. The team we spoke to at Sutton council is still waiting to see if its grant will be approved for March, which is only a few weeks’ time. In addition, these grants are typically only allocated for 18-month to two-year periods, leaving little space for local authorities to plan ahead. All the evidence shows that young people susceptible to committing this form of violence require sustained relationships with skilled youth workers to help them to choose safer paths. Such a relationship can take months to form, but it acts as a critical antidote to the peer pressure and social circumstances that are otherwise weighing on the child. It is therefore utterly misguided to continue with this short-termism. Skilled youth workers are deterred from engaging in local authority work due to temporary contract conditions and the lingering threat of grant termination, which could see the shattering of crucial relationships between London’s youth workers and young people at risk of committing knife-related offences. I am therefore keen to hear from the Minister whether she will consider ringfencing funding for local authority early intervention services in London. Without multi-year funding to improve planning and put these services on a more stable footing, this vital first step in preventing knife crime will fall by the wayside. Backing early intervention is just one of the arrows in the quiver of a wider approach that we must shift to. Young people will continue to die if we do not take heed of our Scottish counterparts and finally embrace a public health approach. Famously, Glasgow took thousands of knives off the streets, and rallied organisations at every level to intervene before a crime was committed. That approach breaks down the silo walls between bodies, putting teachers, A&E doctors, social workers, sports clubs and many more stakeholders in partnership with law enforcement.

The hon. Gentleman is making an excellent speech, and he has identified that there is no one solution to this. The Scotland example shows what can be done, but there are some practical measures that can be taken. For example, half of all homicides with sharp instruments are done with kitchen knives, and that simply has not been tackled. It might be tackled, or the problem might at least be alleviated, by encouraging the transition to blunted knives rather than pointed knives. Does he support that?

Introducing blunted knives is a very good example of thinking differently about this crime. The tabloid approach of looking for popular, big and visible solutions, such as banning zombie knives, while important, often ignores the statistics of how crimes are most often committed. The hon. Gentleman makes a good point, so I thank him. The public health approach sees the problem of knife crime in three dimensions and recognises that violence begets violence like an illness. Returning to my argument that violent crime is like a virus, I remind hon. Members that when a contagious, dangerous virus broke out in this country half a decade ago, we rallied every aspect of civil society to fight it. Public services, the police and the third sector were all brought together to work as partners rather than in silos. Implicitly, we recognise that this is the right way to tackle an emergency that threatens life and limb, so why do we fail so consistently to bring that approach to bear in dealing with knife crime in the capital? A hallmark of this approach is the creation of violence reduction units and the provision of serious financial support by Government to make them the hubs of proactive action they need to be. In London, we have done the first part by creating a violence reduction unit in 2018, but its potential remains woefully unrealised. The Centre for Crime and Justice Studies told me that it fears that the unit remains limited in its ability to engage with wider civil society and is still entangled in the paradigm of enforcement rather than engagement. Funding for the VRUs, including the one in London, is just too low to make this strategy a reality, so it should surprise none of us that it has not borne fruit. There is a wider problem in that politicians of all stripes have paid lip service to the idea of a public health approach, but have utterly failed to implement it. The last Conservative Government, keen to be seen to do something, embraced the language of public health and crime reduction, but we have seen none of this effectively put into practice. Instead, they piloted controversial new powers that increased suspicionless stop and search, which evidently did little to stop knife crime, although the findings from the pilots have yet to be brought before Parliament. It just is not good enough—not for mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters all over London whose lives have been ripped apart by knife crime. They deserve a public health approach. We must join up public bodies, the police and the third sector so that young people are supported before they slip through the cracks. We have to consider the principles of restorative practice, too, because they underlie and echo everything that is good about the public health approach. Earlier this week, I met with Ray and Vi Donovan, who lost their son in a violent attack in 2001. In his memory, they created and have for many years run the award-winning Chris Donovan Trust, which works with police, public bodies and charities across the board to highlight the value of restorative justice in preventing reoffending. They told me that their work takes the restorative principles not just into prisons but schools. That approach, which is grounded in embedding empathy and victim awareness in young people, is like a light in the dark in London It awakens in young people on the cusp of gang life, and even in young people already drowning silently within it, an awareness that carrying a knife will inevitably one day ruin their life and the lives of others. Restorative practice is too often overlooked, even as part of the wider package of public health reforms to tackle crime, yet it is vital to winning the war for the hearts and minds of young people at risk of picking up a knife. Will the Minister consider putting victim awareness on the curriculum? I encourage the Government to publish all the findings from the serious violence reduction orders that were trialled by the last Government, as well as detailed conclusions about the impact of suspicionless stop and search trials under the knife crime prevention orders. If these punitive and controversial methods worked, surely this information would have already been shared; none the less, Parliament deserves to see the findings in writing, so that we can hasten the end of this troubled approach and speed up the saving of young lives through a better approach, grounded in public health. Too many young people are being failed before they even set foot into adulthood, and Londoners have had enough of senseless stabbing after senseless stabbing, but the truth at the heart of this crisis is that people carry knives because they fear becoming a victim themselves. The only way to combat that climate of fear is with a public health approach that actually gets results. I reminded the House earlier this month, and I do so again now, that success in this area is measured in something more important than profit or efficiency; it is measured in lives saved, lives nourished and lives reinvigorated.

Before I call the Minister to respond, I remind the Member in charge that he will not have the opportunity to wind up the debate, as is the convention for 30-minute debates.

11:16:00

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this morning, Mr Efford. I thank the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Luke Taylor) for securing this very important debate. I think that we both took part in a Westminster Hall debate a little while ago about knife crime in the west midlands, which was another important opportunity to shine a light on this very concerning problem. I want to mention the other hon. Members who have spoken, too. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) talked about zero tolerance, my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South (Jas Athwal) talked about how important it is to have the police in our communities, because they are vital to keeping those communities safe, and my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith and Chiswick (Andy Slaughter) talked about practical suggestions to address knife crime. I have said before that I am willing to look at any of the issues that might help us to address knife crime.

I am grateful to the Minister for being so generous with her time, as she was in meeting the safer knives group to discuss this issue. I am not expecting a policy position today, but perhaps she could say when the Government are likely to come forward with proposals on the scourge of knife crime that is affecting us.

It is fair to say that we are looking constantly at what more we can do. Although I cannot give a timetable, perhaps I can reassure my hon. Friend by saying that the issue is under active consideration, and we are keen to look at evidence and consider what more we might be able to do on the particular point that I know he is interested in. The hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam powerfully illustrated the depth of concern about knife crime, and I am grateful for this opportunity to set out the Government’s approach to tackling it. It is important to say that it is a whole-of-Government approach, which fits very well within our safer streets mission and with our clear objective to halve knife crime over the course of the next 10 years. Before I talk a little more about the particular policies that we will adopt, I want to remind all hon. Members that we must keep at the forefront of our minds the people who are directly affected by this dangerous and, in the worst cases, deadly threat. The victims of knife crime and their loved ones must all be in our thoughts and prayers, today and always. I was really interested to hear about the excellent work of the Chris Donovan Trust. I really would like to find out more about that, and perhaps meet the trust to see what more I can do to support it. First and foremost, as I said, this has to be about keeping people safe. It is about ensuring that more families do not go through the agony of that empty chair at the dining table. The tragic truth is that knife crime destroys lives and, too often, young lives with futures that should have been filled with hope and potential are lost. That is why we described it as a national crisis in our manifesto and why, as I said, we set ourselves the aim of halving knife crime in a decade, as part of the safer streets mission. I will talk a little about the coalition to tackle knife crime, to set the context. The Prime Minister launched the coalition in September. It brings together campaign groups, families of those who have tragically lost their lives to knife crime, young people who have been impacted, and community leaders—united in their mission to save lives. We are very pleased that there is representation from London in the coalition. It will work with the Government to help us identify the children and young people at risk of being affected by knife crime. It will help us to design policy changes and reforms based on the best possible evidence and, most importantly, tackle the root causes of knife crime. I heard what the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam said about the importance of education. I recently wrote to the Secretary of State for Education about the curriculum review, including on relationships and sex education, to ensure that knife crime and what it means can be part of that review. I must also say to the hon. Gentleman that, to be frank, half an hour is not long enough for this debate, so I will take away a number of his asks and come back to him with information and a way forward. When it comes to tackling this most dangerous of threats, it is essential that we have resources going into our neighbourhood policing. Few things matter more than the presence of community policing, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South referred. That is why the restoration of neighbourhood policing is at the heart of our plans to reform policing, and why we have committed to delivering an additional 13,000 police officers, PCSOs and specials in neighbourhood policing roles. As the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam will know, as part of the police settlement, we have doubled to £200 million the amount of money going into neighbourhood policing for next year to kick-start the neighbourhood policing guarantee. That will apply to the Metropolitan police as well. I heard loud and clear his concerns about abstraction, but the neighbourhood policing guarantee is about those additional officers who will be in neighbourhoods. They will not be abstracted. There will be a named police officer that the community can reach out to. I absolutely agree with the hon. Gentleman that the Metropolitan police faces some very big challenges. It is important to note that progress has been made on the “A New Met for London” plan. In recent weeks, the Met came out of the “engage” process with the police inspectorate, so progress is being made. As a Minister, I have regular meetings with the Metropolitan Police Commissioner and other officers to ensure that the Home Office is providing all that we can to support Sir Mark in his work. This morning, I heard Sir Mark on the radio talking about the judicial review case yesterday. I assure the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam that work is ongoing to deal with the particular issue that Sir Mark was talking about this morning. I think we all agree that we want to have police officers—in the Met and every police force—who are able to do their job effectively and are properly vetted, and that anyone who cannot hold vetting as a police officer should not be in the police force. Please rest assured that that work is ongoing. I want to talk a little bit about Young Futures, which the Government are putting forward as part of the solution to knife crime. Too many children and young people today face poorer life outcomes, including becoming involved in knife crime, because they are not effectively identified and supported early enough through early intervention. To address that issue, we have committed to creating the Young Futures programme, which will establish a network of Young Futures hubs and Young Futures prevention partnerships to intervene earlier to ensure that this cohort is identified and offered support, as well as creating more opportunities for young people in their communities through the provision of open access to, for example, mental health, careers and mentoring support. Young Futures hubs will bring together the support services that tackle the underlying needs of vulnerable children and young people, making them more accessible to those who need them. The hubs will promote children’s and young people’s development, improve their mental health and wellbeing, and prevent them from being drawn into crime. Young Futures prevention partnerships will bring together key partners in local areas across England and Wales to identify vulnerable children and young people at risk of being drawn into crime, map local youth service provision, and offer support in a more systematic way to divert them. I also note the comments that the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam made about securing funding for the long term, and I will reflect on those. I also want to mention violence reduction units. One of the issues that we face, especially in the prevention sphere, is the number of agencies that are involved. By bringing together partners and mobilising them behind the same goals at local level, violence reduction units perform a really important role. In response to the drivers of violence and knife crime, they have been delivering a range of early intervention and prevention programmes to support young people away from a life of crime, including activity across all 32 boroughs through the London crime prevention fund, enabling the local adoption of a public health approach and borough-level violence reduction interventions. Violence reduction unit programmes span from police custody to the community—some of which Members might have seen featured in Idris Elba’s recent knife crime documentary for the BBC. They include the excellent work under way at the Royal London hospital, which I had the great privilege of visiting yesterday. I met the dedicated team of youth workers who provide support to young people at a critical teachable moment—when they are admitted for violent injuries—and provide positive routes out. The confirmed police funding settlement for next year includes over £49 million for the continuation of this work to prevent serious violence, delivered through violence reduction units. In London, that amounts to £9.4 million, which was announced yesterday. The Labour Government have also made a commitment on youth offending team referrals for young knife carriers. We are working closely with the Ministry of Justice to deliver that manifesto commitment to ensure that every young person found in possession of a knife is referred to a youth offending team, with mandatory plans in place. That can include electronic monitoring and custody where appropriate to prevent reoffending. The hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam referred to stop and search, which is an important tool. I am well aware of issues around different communities being searched in different ways, but, used in an intelligence-led way, it can be very fair and effective. It is worth reflecting on the fact that in the 12 months to March 2024, stop and search led to 4,048 offensive weapons and firearms being found by the police in London. It has its place in the arsenal that the police can access. We have already started to deal with some other issues around knives. For example, we have implemented a ban on zombie knives and zombie-style machetes, which came into force on 24 September. We have consulted on a ban on ninja swords, and we hope to bring that forward shortly. We have had Commander Stephen Clayman at the National Police Chiefs’ Council leading a review of online sales, and the Home Secretary has announced in the last few weeks that the Government intend to strengthen age verification controls and checks for all online sellers of knives at the point of purchase and on delivery. We have also consulted on introducing personal liability measures on senior executives of online platforms or marketplaces who fail to take action to remove illegal content relating to knives and offensive weapons. I thank the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam for securing this important debate. I think we are all seeking the same outcomes: a reduction in knife crime and safer streets. Those objectives are central to the Government’s plan for change, and we will do everything in our power to achieve them. Motion lapsed (Standing Order No. 10(6)).

11:30:00