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Knife Crime

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) on the way in which he introduced this motion from the Front Bench in a very thoughtful speech. I also thought that the Home Secretary's first foray from the Dispatch Box in his new role was very thoughtful. He is clearly concerned and interested, and he listens to arguments. I look forward to his period as Home Secretary, although I hope it is not as long as perhaps he hopes it will be. I also congratulate the Select Committee on Home Affairs, whose report I read with interest. I should say how much I agreed when the right hon. Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz) said, at the end of his contribution, words to the effect that the House should try to unite on some of these difficult issues and put its best constructive views. I have spoken about crime and knife crime for what seems like many hours in this Chamber over the past few years. I have spoken in Committee for what seems like many days or many weeks on the same subject; I well remember the Violent Crime Reduction Bill being discussed, day after day, in Committee in 2005, and knife crime featured heavily in our debates. I managed to obtain figures showing that at that time some 60,000 children in our country admitted to carrying a knife, for either defensive or offensive purposes—a truly horrifying statistic. I have also spoken in this Chamber about the very real fear that I have seen on the faces of witnesses in court who are forced to relive a moment of terror when a knife was waved at them; it is a truly horrifying experience. All through these years I have wondered what we can do to reduce this awful crime, which puts so much fear into so many people and which blights so many of our inner-city areas. I was, therefore, pleased to see that the motion talks about tackling the problem and about solutions. May I be forgiven for putting forward some of my own solutions to the House for a few minutes? They apply not only to knife crime, but to crime in general and to young people in particular—mostly it is young men who carry knives. I shall start with a statistic and ask whether we are getting value for money. Let us assume that we put a young man away in Feltham remand centre for carrying a knife. The average cost of a place in a young offenders institution is £32,800 a year—a lot of money.