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Youth Violence (London)

Like others, I start by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes) on securing this debate. He has led from the front on issues of violence in his constituency. Indeed, his life was put at risk by the actions that he took in trying to bring a case to justice, and I commend him for that. I also congratulate the Minister on his first attendance at such a debate. He has missed the four or five that have been held in the last six months on this issue. No doubt he will be in post for the four or five that I anticipate will regrettably be held in the next six months. Like my hon. Friend, I will start by setting out some ground rules that should apply to this debate and to debates of this nature. First, we must not typecast youngsters. I am pleased that nobody here has done so. Some hon. Members have deployed statistics to confirm that only a very small minority of young people are violent. The figures I have heard are that 3 per cent. of young people are members of gangs and a third of gang members do not offend. We are therefore talking about only a small number of young people. Only 3 per cent. have carried a knife, which means that 97 per cent. have not. We must accept that there are no simple solutions. There have been calls for mandatory prison sentences, huge increases in school exclusions and short prison sentences for youngsters when the evidence shows that that is unhelpful and does not lead to a reduction in reoffending. Hon. Members have outlined a number of possible solutions today. We must accept that the solutions will be complex and will involve many different aspects of work for many different Departments and organisations, such as the police. We must accept that there is a sound basis for the crime statistics that we use so that we do not argue about those instead of about what the solutions should be.