Asked by Baroness Kennedy of Cradley To ask Her Majesty’s
Government what action are they taking to stop children being
recruited into gangs. The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness
Williams of Trafford) (Con) My Lords, the Government’s
Serious Violence Strategy was launched on 9 April. The strategy
sets out our response to serious violence,...Request free trial
Asked by
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To ask Her Majesty’s Government what action are they taking
to stop children being recruited into gangs.
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The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Williams of
Trafford) (Con)
My Lords, the Government’s Serious Violence Strategy was
launched on 9 April. The strategy sets out our response to
serious violence, including gangs, and focuses in
particular on the importance of early intervention to
provide young people with the skills and resilience to lead
productive lives, away from crime and violence.
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(Lab)
My Lords, the Serious Violence Taskforce has had its first
meeting, and I am pleased to see that it focused on county
lines activity. However, many people are concerned that the
strategy section on county lines is quite limited, with few
new commitments and very little on safeguarding. As we
know, thousands of children, some as young as 12, are
trafficked and enslaved by county lines gangs. They need
safeguarding; moreover, their evidence is critical in
securing convictions. Why does the Serious Violence
Taskforce have no representation from the anti-trafficking
sector, and why is the Children’s Commissioner on the task
force but not the Anti-Slavery Commissioner? Can this
oversight in membership be corrected, and can the Minister
give the House assurances that the new national county
lines centre will focus as much on safeguarding as it plans
to do on law enforcement?
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The noble Baroness asks several questions, but perhaps I can
encompass them all into one answer and say that she gets to
the nub of the problem: county lines are, as she rightly
points out, all about exploiting vulnerability. We are
undertaking a national awareness-raising communications
exercise on the threat of county lines targeted at young and
vulnerable people, and on how to avoid becoming involved in,
and exploited by, gangs. We are also working closely with
organisations such as Redthread and St Giles Trust, which
work with children at the teachable moment—for example, if
they arrive at A&E with violence-related injuries—to
provide an alternative route out of a lifestyle of violence.
Additionally, we are working across government departments,
such as the Department for Education and the Department of
Health and Social Care, to ensure that key partners in those
professions are trained to spot and refer young people
involved in county lines. The noble Baroness will appreciate
that this is a multi-agency cross-government issue.
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The (CB)
My Lords, are the Government looking at the status of youth
work, and at a strategic plan to raise that status and ensure
that in future there will be consistent funding for youth
work, so that it is seen as a good career? Historically,
youth work has suffered from booms and busts in funding,
which, I would suggest, is very unhelpful.
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The noble Earl is right to point out that youth work is a
crucial part of tackling this area. The Government continue
to back the growth of the National Citizen Service, which is
delivered through a network of 300 local partners, more than
80% of which are in the public or voluntary community and
social enterprise sectors. The Government recently published
guidance for local authorities on how they can maximise the
benefits of the NCS within local strategies. In addition, the
Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, the
Department for Education, the Department for Work and
Pensions and the Big Lottery Fund will make available £90
million of dormant accounts money to support disadvantaged
and disengaged young people with their transition to work.
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(Con)
Central government is clearly not in control of the gang
issue in this country. Ten years ago, the Centre for Social
Justice produced an outstanding piece of work analysing in
great detail the gang issue in this country, Dying to Belong,
which I strongly recommend to any noble Lord interested in
this field. It pointed up successful strategies such as
call-ins, which are used in places such as Strathclyde. Why
are we not rolling out these strategies across the country?
The Centre for Social Justice is updating that work. It is
probably the most comprehensive work ever done on gangs in
this country. Will the Minister meet me and representatives
of the CSJ to discuss this matter?
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I pay tribute to my noble friend’s work over the years
involving young people. I am certainly happy to meet him to
learn from his expertise in this area. I think it is true to
say that the true scale of exploitation, including the number
of victims, remains an intelligence gap. The National Crime
Agency pointed this out. I would be happy to meet my noble
friend to discuss it.
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(LD)
My Lords, many young people are unaware of the realities of
gang membership: discipline enforced by stabbings, the rape
of women and girls and street dealers whose lives are put at
risk while those who supply them with illegal drugs take most
of the profit. Is the Minister aware of the work of Growing
Against Violence—GAV, a charity of which I am patron—which
works in schools to destroy the myths around gang membership
in order to dissuade young people from getting involved with
gangs, knives and drug dealing? Is this not exactly the sort
of work that the Government should be supporting?
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The noble Lord is absolutely right that any work such as the
GAV’s is to be commended. We are not only developing some of
the existing good practice but expanding our knowledge of the
extent to which county lines are affecting our most
vulnerable children. The noble Lord is right to point out
that drugs market violence may be facilitated and spread by
things such as social media—another area on which we need to
clamp down.
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(Non-Afl)
My Lords, is the Minister aware of the work done in Glasgow,
where violence was dealt with as a disease? It was one of
most violent cities in the world. The first thing to do was
to stabilise the patient. Glasgow increased stop and search,
and when knives and weapons were found the person carrying
them was not simply released on bail but taken straight to
the police station, detained and put before the court fairly
quickly. The reduction in carrying weapons was quite
dramatic. Can we learn something from the work done in
Glasgow?
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My Lords, I am sure we can work on some of the initiatives in
Glasgow. The noble Lord described it as a disease. These
issues are multifactorial and include sociological and
psychological factors depending on people’s experiences,
particularly their early life experience. Tackling this
preventively from a very young age is part of the answer.
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(CB)
My Lords, first, I congratulate the Government on the work
they are doing on county lines. Is the Minister aware that
there is very patchy communication between the agencies and
that all too many of the very young children—the 12 and 13
year-olds—are ending up in the local youth court instead of
being treated as victims?
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The noble and learned Baroness points to a very serious
issue. County lines, as the phrase suggests, crosses
different local authorities and different police forces, and
therefore some sort of continuity of effort is needed here.
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