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Crime (London)

Three children have died as a result of knife crime in my constituency in a little over a year—Kodjo Yenga, Jevon Henry and Amro Elbadawi. I have sat with the parents of the two children who were my constituents, as has Ken Livingstone, who made a private visit, not making political capital, unaccompanied by the media and cameras. I have listened to their grief and to what they had to say about young people and the culture and the problems that have led in some instances to gangs and in some instances to conflicts that have got out of hand. This problem, which has claimed the lives of 27 young people, is monstrously misrepresented as a failure of the Mayor of London and the Government. It has its roots in something wider and deeper, which requires a co-ordinated, strategic and investment approach, on which we must all work and reflect on the gravity of the situation. We should by all means have a political debate about why such things are happening, but we cannot reduce this to slogans, as we have sadly heard again to some extent this afternoon. It is distressing to have listened to the mayoral debates, to have watched some of the media coverage of the mayoral contest and seen the Mayor of London accused of ignoring, belittling and failing to grasp what has happened to our young people. An example of that was when a London newspaper ran a story in January 2008 saying that Ken Livingstone had announced new measures to deal with youth and knife crime, and then a week ago ran a story saying that he was speaking out for the first time on knife crime. I do not have the articles with me, but that is part of a calculated misrepresentation of the response of the Mayor of London and other agencies to a deeply worrying trend that we must deal with together. In response to that, we must continue with that non-accidental choice of investing in effective policing on the streets—the 10,000 additional police officers that have been put on the streets of London by the Mayor and the Government since 2000, reversing the long-term trend that my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham (Clive Efford) described so clearly as having gone into reverse in the 1990s. Our safer neighbourhoods police are doing a superb job, not just in helping to bring down crime, as they have done, but in building up relationships and intelligence about what is happening in the streets, which is so important. They must continue to use their enforcement powers as effectively as they can and we can constantly refine the strategies for so continuing, as the Flanagan report helps us to do. They must use the new powers that we have given them, including stop and search, which is a vital tool, and stop and account, and they must ensure that never again do we return to that calamitous collapse in confidence and trust between the communities, particularly our minority ethnic communities, and the police that occurred in the 1980s, because that does not work. Whether people choose to bandy around the term political correctness, as they so frequently do on these occasions, let us just remind ourselves that that collapse of trust, confidence and community intelligence leads to more crime and lower detection rates. It fails on its own terms. We must all do better, which includes my local authorities, at integrating services and information between schools, youth services, housing managers, residents and the police. We must continue rebuilding our youth services, which were shattered, and the £79 million investment by the Mayor will help. It is no good having youth clubs, if they are not open.