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Organised Crime: Young People’s Safety

I agree. I am a Labour politician, and the cuts in policing and to local authorities have consequences, which we all refer to. The Minister has to accept responsibility for that, but however many police we have, however many things are going on and however many resources are put into local authorities, there has to be a Government drive to push them into tackling this issue as a major priority.

What caused me to attend the debate secured by my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham was a National Crime Agency report published a few months ago. It talks about an intelligence gap—we do not know what we need to know. I asked a parliamentary question, and the Minister’s colleague, the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, said that the Government did not know. They thought there were many thousands of people involved, and there was an intelligence gap. That was just a few weeks ago. That report said nine or 10 months ago that there was an intelligence gap, and the parliamentary answer two or three weeks ago said that there was an intelligence gap. That is not good enough, and the system will not change unless the Minister gets civil servants and other people in, and demands that something be done. Otherwise, in the Minister’s constituency, my constituency and, indeed, all our constituencies, in Northern Ireland, Wales, Scotland and England and in all the regions, these incidents will continue and we will have to come to this Chamber again in a few months saying how appalling it is that young people have died on our streets as a result of their involvement in organised crime and their involvement in county lines. We do not even have the data, yet we see on our streets what is happening.