Serious Violence Strategy — House of Commons, 2018-05-22
Topic: Law and Crime
James Spencer Cleverly (Conservative, Centre-right): Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I now feel under a significant degree of pressure. I will crack on I welcome the strategy. Right from the start, and peppered throughout, the strategy makes the point that the issue cannot be resolved by just arresting people. That is absolutely key. Police intervention must form an important part of the solution, but it is not the only solution. I will come on to my thoughts about police intervention, and, in particular, I will address the points about police resourcing that were raised by the shadow Home Secretary In the years immediately preceding my election to the London Assembly, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson) being voted in as the Mayor of London, the murder rate in London reached unacceptable levels. Without a shadow of doubt, the previous Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, had not taken the issue as seriously as he should have done. Indeed, he accused the reporting of murders in London of being a media construct, with the particularly vile and inappropriate line "If it bleeds, it leads", implying that the murders were being reported only because they were sensationalist stories In 2008, when my right hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip, my hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse) and I were elected to London government, getting a grip on the unacceptable level of violent crime in London was a priority. It was done in two parts. First, Operation Blunt 2 was immediately initiated. The shadow Home Secretary, I think quite fairly, ran through some of the question marks over Operation Blunt 2. It is always very difficult to measure the exact implication of a policing strategy. She asked what message or signal it sends when politicians do or do not take action. Under Ken Livingstone, the message sent was that City Hall did not take this as seriously as it should have done. We were very clear that the message we wanted to send was that this was absolutely a priority for the incoming Conservative administration in City Hall Operation Blunt 2 was a very high profile, visual, police-led operation which made it completely clear that knives were unacceptable and that people carrying knives would be arrested and charged. I do not row back from the importance of such visual policing operations, but we were also very well aware that a policing response on its own could not and should not be the only response to knife crime. That is why, in addition and in parallel to Operation Blunt 2, my hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire and I worked together to produce the Time for Action youth violence strategy, which addressed a series of potential intervention points in the lives of young people, up to and including rehabilitation of offenders There was a programme in Feltham young offenders institution to get young men who had been incarcerated after involvement in knife crime on to rehabilitation programmes, with a gateway to employment with a number of employers directly from the gates of that YOI. While they were on a ROTL—a release on temporary licence—they would be able to start working for their future employers before they had completed their sentence, so they had the incentive to stay on the straight and narrow when they came out of prison. We also considered looked-after children who, unfortunately, still disproportionately find themselves involved in criminality. The sad truth to this day is that looked-after children are still more likely to go to prison than to university. That is an unacceptable truth, but we worked to address that We looked at community programmes and diversionary programmes in communities. As the Mayor’s youth ambassador, I visited numerous programmes that were doing fantastic work around London. We also looked at such things as uniformed youth organisations, including the Scouts, the cadets, the Boys’ Brigade and Girl Guides. Why? Because in many parts of London, they became the quasi-parents of children who often led very dysfunctional lives. I had the pleasure of meeting the air cadets squadron not far from this place. They have an amazing mix of young people, from some of the most wealthy and privileged families in the country to children of recent refugees and some impoverished people. They rub shoulders, mix together and work in that military structure, which we know so often develops the kind of life skills that help to keep people out of trouble. Why did we do these things? We did them because we knew that we had to work upstream and had to do them to prevent young people from getting into trouble The shadow Home Secretary, who is not in her usual place, although she is in the Chamber, made the point about police resourcing. It is worth remembering that we halved the number of young people who were murdered on the streets of London between 2008 and 2016 against the backdrop not just of tightening budgets, but of having to deliver the policing operation for the Olympic and Paralympic games, which imposed a huge operational burden on the police. Yes, police officers, police numbers and police funding matter, but—