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The Riots

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Croydon Central (Gavin Barwell) for initiating the debate, and for the manner in which he made his remarks. I, too, agree with most, though not all, of what he said, and I am sure that that does not embarrass him. It is a good thing that the House can come to some agreement about the issues. I hope that hon. Members will recognise that for the constituency of Tottenham this has been the most disturbing of summers, and I want to make my remarks in the context of what the riots mean for our country as a whole. For any constituency to experience two riots within a generation is a major tragedy—not just for that constituency, but for the country. When I was 13, I was growing up yards from the Broadwater Farm estate, and for me it has been poignant and stressful to represent the constituency 25 years later. I know what it is for someone to grow up in Tottenham, and to fill in double the number of application forms, because they must fill in the N17 or N15 postcode and are worried that they will not get an interview as they are from Tottenham. A huge stigma attached to my constituency for many years. Indeed, the hon. Member for Battersea (Jane Ellison) ran against me when I was first selected for the constituency and she will recall that in 2000 that stigma remained. I think that, despite much deprivation and poverty, before August this year most people, when they thought of Tottenham, thought of the football club and whether it was staying or going, not of the riots, so it is particularly tragic for the constituency that they happened. Many people have asked me whether things have changed and are moving on. Of course, there is tremendous resilience in the people of Tottenham. I might say, as a son of Tottenham, that there is tremendous resilience in me. However, there is obviously deep frustration, anger and fury that the riots should have happened. It is right to express my constituents' concern that the riots might not have needed to happen, which brings me to the incident that started the summer of unrest—the death of Mark Duggan in the Tottenham Hale area of my constituency. If there has been any success in policing in our country, and in most developed countries, in the past 20 to 25 years—this is a matter beyond party allegiance—it has been down to the innovations behind community and neighbourhood policing. I am proud of my party's record in bringing that forward, but it is something that, across political parties, we cherish and want to encourage. The real tragedy of what happened at the beginning of August was a total breakdown, it seems to me, in community policing. We had an Operation Trident incident that the local police did not know about. A young man lost his life, and his family found out about it on television. All of us who are parents know that there is that fear— Sitting suspended for a Division in the House. On resuming—