Serious Violence Strategy — House of Lords, 2018-06-11
Topic: Law and Crime
Zahida Manzoor (Conservative, Centre-right): I am so sorry. I have to stop referring to "Lord Southwark". There is no such person: it is the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy of Southwark. I sincerely apologise to the House and to the noble Lord. Ever since I came to your Lordships’ House, I have thought of the noble Lord as "Lord Southwark" —I bet that people were wondering who on earth this person was, so I again offer my sincere apologies As the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, said, social media itself has nothing to do with serious violence, but he is right that there is strong evidence that rival gangs are using social media to promote gang culture, taunt each other and incite violence, and this must stop. The Home Secretary and other Ministers are meeting with various media platforms to ensure that we can get them to take off any material very quickly and to go faster to tackle illegal content online I turn now to specific questions that were raised. They are not in any order, but I thought they were very important. As the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, and others have said, it is important that we have a multistrand approach; this is essential to tackling serious violence. It involves a range of partners across different sectors. We cannot do this on our own, and therefore, while the amount of money—£40 million—seems small, there is already a significant amount of funding in place. This will pump-prime better co-ordination My noble friend Lady Newlove raised the importance of positive alternatives for young people. We recognise this, and that is why we are addressing the image issue and are looking at positive role models, as well as addressing county lines and looking at exploitation of young people. We will be providing £11 million over the next two years to support early intervention and prevention through the early intervention youth fund. We are pleased to have Kathryn Morley, chief executive of OnSide, on the serious violence task group On the tackling of county lines, we are providing £3.6 million, as I said, to support the new national county lines co-ordination centre. My noble friend Lady Eaton raised this issue. The centre will also help the National Crime Agency and the police to improve their understanding of county lines. It will also support operation policing. We need to do this because, if we do not, the evaluation that we talked about before and the improvements that we want to bring about will not happen. The noble Baroness, Lady Massey, also talked about county lines and the exploitation of young people, and asked what works. I have already addressed that; the strategy places a strong emphasis on building on evidence of what works, and the College of Policing is looking at this The noble Baroness, Lady Massey, also spoke about evidence that class A drugs are driving serious violence. The strategy sets out clearly some of the issues and does the analysis of what is driving serious violence, and, as we have mentioned, drugs are an important factor. The noble Baroness, Lady Massey, also mentioned the importance of social workers, and it is key that we ensure that they are engaged early. Through this, the co-ordinating centre will ensure that this is taken forward. The noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, asked what action we are taking to disrupt supply of firearms at the border. As the noble Lord will know, we have been applying the lessons learned from Operation Dragon Root, which was a multiagency operation undertaken in autumn 2016 that involved the NCA, counterterrorism policing, regional organised crime units, border forces and others. That includes a new joint firearms unit, funded by the Police Transformation Fund, and we will give money to have more effective responses to illicit firearm supply. I will not say too much more about the Police Transformation Fund, because I addressed that in my opening speech. However, it is a police-led and police-driven fund, and people are bidding into it; the Home Office will look at how they deliver those services and evaluate them My noble friend Lady Eaton spoke about children’s services and the funding gap. Over £200 billion has been made available to councils to deliver local services, including children’s services, up to 2020, and of course we will concentrate on spending about £1 billion on the most vulnerable The noble Lord, Lord Bird, talked passionately about the root causes of crime and the issues of education and poverty, and I agree entirely with him. My father, who died when I was in my 20s, advocated the importance of education—I do not come from a privileged background. We recognise that the root causes of violence are complex, which is why the strategy places a new emphasis on early intervention and prevention. In January 2018 it was announced that £90 million of dormant accounts money will go to supporting disadvantaged and disengaged young people with their transition to work My noble friend Lord Balfe talked about the sale of knives online. A new offensive weapons Bill, which will be introduced within weeks, will include a new offence preventing knives being sent to people’s homes when bought online A number of questions were asked by the noble Lords, Lord Hogan-Howe and Lord Paddick, and my noble friend Lord Suri. I have already said that I will write to reply to all the questions that have been asked. As I have run out of time, I hope that noble Lords will forgive me for not answering their questions, in particular the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, who asked a number of key questions about YPAs; I will of course write to him In conclusion, I thank all noble Lords for taking part in this debate. I very much look forward to working with them closely on this important strategy, because we all want to make a real difference to young people’s lives.