Knife Crime in London

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.