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Knife Crime

If the hon. Lady looked me straight in the eye in a venomous way, I would probably take a step backwards as well. Is it the reality that crime is high in these areas, or is it a perception? I do not know, but the numbers of people found carrying knives indicates that there is a serious problem. People have told me about the trainers hung from lamp posts to mark out gang territory, although I did not see that myself. In one community centre, they told me that people were being delivered to the area by car because they were afraid not only to walk but even to use public transport into another postcode district. I am happy to give the hon. Lady exact details about that. There is no doubt that there is a perception among law-abiding people living in those areas that there is a real problem, and the question is: what can we and should we be doing about it? The hon. Lady talked about her upbringing in what I think she described as a traditional working-class household. I was brought up in a conventional middle-class household, but I recognise most of the values that she talked about because they are the same: bringing up children to say please and thank you, teaching them to eat with a knife and fork, and getting them to understand the importance of education and doing what they are told at school. Those values are universal. My upbringing was conventional and middle class, but that is not the case with many of my family. My mother was a miner's daughter. I remember going into miners welfare institutes, where one would see great books; they would have whole libraries there. What happened to those traditional working-class values of betterment and education, whereby people could go into a miners welfare institute and not just have a couple of pints but read quite intellectual books? That sort of thing seems to have died out somewhere along the way. The problem in many of these areas is not particularly one of deprivation or poverty. One of the problems is the development of an under-class of people who do not seem to share the same values that are universal to so many of us in this Chamber.