In the last 12 months, the violence has finally been receiving the continued national attention it deserves from the media and the government. It was an obvious problem when the Theresa May took office in July 2016 and yet it took until April this year for her to hold an emergency summit on the topic in Downing Street, which I attended.

A few months before she became PM I led a debate on the issue in the chamber of the House of Commons. A group of parliamentarians and community activists has helped force the issue up the agenda, including the Youth Violence Commission and the All Party Parliamentary Group on Knife Crime.

Knife crime rose to record levels in 2018.  It was the highest since records began in 1946 and shows no signs of abating. More than 100 people have already been fatally stabbed in the UK this year, including over 30 in the capital. The victims are mainly young and male and, in certain areas, disproportionately drawn from an African-Caribbean background. Last month I received yet another briefing by the police on the shooting of a teenager on an estate in my constituency. An 18 year-old was arrested on suspicion of murder in relation to that incident at the end of last week.

The impact this has on my young constituents cannot be underestimated. It is heart breaking to hear their stories and how frightened they are. I have over 25 schools in my constituency and make a point of visiting one of them almost every week. During a particularly moving and emotional visit to one of our primary schools last month, a group of around fifteen seven to 11 year-olds told me how the violence affects them. They all put their hands up when I asked who feared for their safety. Half of them said they knew a friend who was a victim of knife crime and two knew peers who regularly carried knives. 

Unsurprisingly, one of the boys told me his mum wanted his family to move as they did not feel safe on his estate – many parents come to my constituency surgery asking for help to do just that. Another described how he had found drugs and what he thought were bullets in the field where he and his mates play football.  A little girl told me how she fears for the welfare of her teenage half-brother.

These children have had to witness things no one should have to see as an adult, never mind as a young person. Their understanding of why it is happening and what should be done about the violence is sophisticated and well thought through. They told me that they supported stop and search and believed it certainly helped reduce the numbers carrying knives but that is was important the power was used appropriately and sensitively by the police and not used to discriminate. They wanted to see tougher sanctions for possession and for those use stab others, with far more police on our streets to enforce our laws, but did not believe that would solve the issue.

There is no excuse for inflicting extreme harm on another but the context in which it occurs is all too familiar. Some of the violence is carried out by young people from dysfunctional, often chaotic families with a history of domestic violence and substance misuse in the background. But, often, a lot of young people who get wrapped up in these things come from quite stable families. We have to ensure that there are more meaningful things for our young people to do outside school hours – we need decent, proper activities that will expand our young people’s horizons and give them things they will enjoy doing in their local areas, which years of austerity have seen cut.

A big factor is the illegal drugs markets. In short, the demand for illegal drugs from middle class people is a major driver of this violence, with young people and children from my borough being used to traffic drugs to other parts of Britain. Above all, poverty and inequality is a common thread, as one of the primary school children said to me. She pointed out that this serious youth violence is generally not happening in wealthy areas but in socially deprived neighbourhoods like the one her school was located in, which has one of the highest rates of poverty in the UK.

Last year I was appointed to the government’s Serious Violence Taskforce, which oversees the implementation of its Serious Violence Strategy. It is chaired by the Home Secretary, the Mayor of London, Met Police Commissioner, the heads of charities working in the sector and others sit on it. The job of those on the taskforce is to hold the government to account and to press for action. So far, it is proving to be effective and it is not a talking shop. Co-ordination is better with a new cross departmental Ministerial Taskforce chaired by the PM to push through this agenda across the many areas involved (education, justice, health, local government and so on). 

A £200 million Youth Endowment Fund has been established to support programmes and community partnerships working with children at risk of being drawn into crime and violence. A statutory duty for all public agencies to tackle youth violence is to be introduced. Violence Reduction Units, following the very successful Glasgow model, are being set up across the country. 

Yet there is still a very long way to go and so much more needs to be done. One life lost is one too many, which is why ending this violence must be a national mission. I won’t stop talking about it and campaigning for action until this happens.

This follows the disclosure that the Environment Secretary took cocaine several times when he was a journalist. The news came from a forthcoming book on Gove by the political editor of City AM, Owen Bennett, which is being serialised in the Daily Mail.

Sometimes stories like these can emerge from an unplanned, candid admission by the subject, which was the case when I admitted seven years ago to having smoked weed as a student (as I said at the time, it’s not something I’m proud of).  

However, usually it is not something the subject will voluntarily disclose. On this occasion, if you wish to identify the source some say you just ask the question: who benefits, politically speaking?

Often it’s just down to good old fashioned journalism, in which case the reporter who uncovered the revelation will not unreasonably earn plaudits and Bennett is a well-respected and popular. But, unless that journalist personally witnessed the offence, they will need to have obtained the information from someone who at least saw what happened or has the evidence to prove what happened. A story like this has to be well sourced to stand up and to avoid a potential libel claim by the politician concerned.

There is no doubt that the story has killed off Gove’s chances of succeeding May. Cocaine is a class A drug, the use and possession of which can carry a very heavy penalty. A YouGov poll published today by the Boris-Johnson-supporting Daily Telegraph shows that 56 per cent of the population believes it is not acceptable for someone who has ever taken cocaine to become an MP.

That rises to 66 per cent amongst Conservative voters – and the numbers disapproving are likely to be even higher when surveying Tory members.

As Andrew Marr said to Gove in an excruciating BBC interview yesterday, “the crime that you committed, the maximum sentence for that is seven years in prison and/or an unlimited fine and right now there are people who did what you did who are in prison.”  Marr did not stop there – he went on to say “there are lots of kids basically who supplied cocaine to people like yourself who have either been stabbed or are dead. Cressida Dick, who’s Head of the Met said that people like yourself who have used cocaine on social occasions, middle class parties have blood on their hands.”  

I am not sure how Gove can ever recover from this.

Johnson is already streets ahead of all the other candidates in the contest, who are now competing for the second spot in the pairing which will go before the Tory rank and file.

The finger is being pointed at former Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab’s team by friends of Gove, when it comes to the source of the story. One of his Gove’s aides, who is now working for Raab, is accused of leaking the story, a claim which she denies. As of yesterday, Gove, foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt and Raab are vying for second place with 27, 26 and 21 MP nominations respectively.  

As an original Brexiter, Raab can expect to pick up support from Gove’s supporters rather than Hunt, who voted to Remain in 2016 and has advocated holding a People’s Vote on the Brexit deal. One can see the logic and of course the Westminster bubble laps up the intrigue around all of this.

But, is the political soap opera really what we should be focussing on here? I think not.

Of course the environment secretary’s illegal drug use is a matter of public interest and should be reported on. However, the bigger issues are whether our drug laws are fit for purpose and why we are failing to get a grip on illegal drugs which cause so much misery for so many.

I have written and spoken about how the demand for illegal drugs from well-off, middle-class people is a major driver of serious youth violence, which Marr alluded to, and how young people and children from the London borough I represent are being used to traffic drugs to other parts of Britain. Behind much of the violence we see locally lies illegal drug markets with all the tragedy, death and destruction that brings.  

With Ministry of Justice figures showing a 23 per cent increase in the amount of drugs being found in jail, how are so many drugs getting into our prisons and why is drug rehabilitation so poor?  Is drug education in our schools sufficient? Many would argue it is not. And, the Home Office estimates that the illegal drugs market in the UK is worth more than £5bn but the majority of drugs profits end up in the financial system with money laundering by drug barons occurring on a grand scale. Why are they being allowed to get away with it? I could go on.  

Reporting on the Gove scandal is understandably sustained – this is now the third day of front pages dedicated to it. But perhaps attention and energy would be more usefully focused on seeking to solve and answer the fundamental issues around hard drugs which are blighting society.

Serious Youth Violence and knife crime have been major issues in Streatham since I was first elected in 2010. Since 2017 I have sat as a Commissioner on the Youth Violence Commission, chaired by my colleague Vicky Foxcroft MP, and I am a member of the All Party Parliamentary Group for Knife Crime. Before then I was Chair of the London Gangs Forum.

It has become clear to me that a public health approach to Youth Violence is necessary to tackle the problem, which is a model that has already found success reducing violent incidents among young people in Glasgow.

I am pleased that the Government now agrees with the need for a public health model, and has written to attendees of the Serious Youth Violence Summit setting out the actions it is taking in response to this issue.

In April 2018, the Government released its Serious Violence Strategy. This included:

• An Early Intervention Youth Fund of £22 million, which is already supporting 29 projects in England and Wales
• A new National County Lines Co-ordination Centre
• An anti-knife crime Community Fund which provided £1.5 million in 2018/19 to support 68 local projects to tackle knife crime
• A national knife crime media campaign – #knifefree – to raise young people’s awareness of the consequences of knife crime.

Coinciding with the Summit, the Government announced the following:

• Impetus, in partnership with the Early Intervention Foundation and Social Investment Business, will run the new Youth Endowment Fund, which will support interventions with children and young people at risk of involvement in crime and violence, based on £200 million of new Government funding.
• £100 million additional funding in 2019/20 to tackle serious violence, including £80m of new funding. This will go both directly to Police, and be invested in new Violence Reduction Units.
• Police in the seven forces particularly affected by violent crime will gain greater use of section 60 stop and search powers where they reasonably believe that an incident involving serious violence may occur, with six month reviews of the policy. New guidelines on how best the police can engage with communities on the use of stop and search.

In addition to these measures, and the Serious Violence Strategy published in April 2018, the Government have now announced the following:

• A new Ministerial Taskforce to coordinate cross-government action, supported by a new, dedicated, serious violence reduction team in the Cabinet Office which will be directly contactable by Taskforce members.
• Coordination of non-government action towards a public health approach to youth violence.

I will continue to monitor the government’s commitment to tackling youth violence in my roles on Serious Violence Taskforce as MP for Streatham.

My main argument: the Golden Rule – that you do not do to others what you would not want done to yourself – is a two way street.  We provide young people with an environment in which they can thrive; they abide by the norms, rules and values of society of which they are a part. This mutual obligation between society and young people has been broken.  There can be no excuse for the violence but we won’t end it unless we renew this social contract.

Exactly 11 years ago – back in August 2007 – before I became an MP, I wrote in The Guardian that it had been a grim year for urban youth.

At the time I was a trustee of the 409 Project on Stockwell Park Road, literally round the corner from here – a charity that worked to prevent young people from getting involved in serious violence.

By August of that year 17 teenagers had been shot or stabbed to death in London.

It was grim, but here we are today, eleven years later, and already this year more than 20 teenagers have been murdered in London alone.

Following a fall in the number of fatalities and violent incidents between 2009 and 2014, the numbers yet again have been on the increase, with almost daily news stories about the murder of mainly young boys and men; parents grieving their dead sons; frightened communities demanding action; and our media producing one lurid investigation after the other about the growing threat of youth violence.

A lot has changed over the last decade but it shames our society that the bloodshed continues and we now need to take a fresh look at this problem because we have failed to stop the tragedy. So I welcome the national debate we’ve been having these last few months.

The Government has published its Serious Violence Strategy and established its Serious Violence Taskforce to oversee its implementation. It is chaired by the Home Secretary and I was appointed to sit on it, alongside the Mayor of London and others.

The cross party Youth Violence Commission, which I am also a member of and which is brilliantly led by my colleague Vicky Foxcroft, the MP for Lewisham Deptford, has published its interim report.

And the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Knife Crime, under the stewardship of Croydon Central MP, Sarah Jones, has been making an important contribution too.

What’s the problem?

So what is the problem?

To illustrate what is going on I’ll begin with an account of one incident which happened a few weeks ago not far from here.

On 25 July, two boys on a moped pulled up next to a parked car in Denmark Road very near to our local hospital, Kings College – its five minutes by car from here.

The moped passenger slid sideways off the seat and fell onto the road.

The driver shouted to those nearby “Help him! Help him! He’s been stabbed.”

Two men in the parked car jumped out  to help and the moped driver just sped off.

The boy lay in the road, bleeding.

He died a few hours later.

His name was Laatwan Griffiths and he was 18 years old.

He also went by the name of Splash Addict or SA Harlem, and was part of the Harlem Spartans drill (rap) group based in and around the Kennington Park Estate.

A week later on 1 August, Sidique Kamara – also known as Incognito and a member of Moscow 17 – who was 23 was stabbed to death yards from his home on the Brandon Estate in Camberwell.  That estate is Moscow 17’s base.

Laatwan and Sidique were reportedly good friends; Moscow 17 and Harlem Spartans are allies.

Back in May on the same estate, another member of Moscow 17, 17 year-old Rhyhiem Barton, had been shot and died outside his home.

A year earlier Sidique and another member of Moscow 17 had been cleared of the murder of teenager Abdirahman Mohamed who had belonged to rival drill group, Zone 2.

Zone 2 are at war with Harlem Spartans and Moscow 17.

Last Thursday, there was another incident involving up to 20 young boys fighting with knives, again not far from here.

Several were stabbed, including a constituent of mine.

Word is that this fighting was a result of the continuing tension between the groups.

This is a just snap shot of what is going on.

I have listened to the music of these groups.

You can watch their videos on YouTube.

I was almost moved to tears by the aggression, the talk of violence, the waste of lives, the senselessness of all of it.

The tragedy.

The failure of politics to respond

 This violence is a scar on our nation and yet British politics today is incapable of adequately responding to it.

The job of politicians, particularly those in Government, is to explain what this bloodshed on our streets says about modern Britain; to provide the leadership and vision necessary to galvanise central and local government agencies, and other stakeholders to act; and to put in place policies which will effectively end the violence.

We must make ending this violence a national mission. Westminster has failed to do so.

And lets be absolutely clear: this is not simply an issue of black boys killing other black boys in socially deprived neighbourhoods.

It must not be put into a box as if it only affects one part of society.

You see…we live cheek by jowl in this city – you cannot gate off your family from what is happening in the rest of the community.

Anyone with a teenage son worries when he is out – parents across London know this.

And what happens in one part of the community – indeed one part of the country – impacts on others.

The  demand for illegal drugs from well off middle class people is a major driver of this violence.

Young people and children from this borough are being used to traffic drugs to other parts of Britain.

We are all interconnected – no-one is an island.

That is why ending youth violence must be a national priority for all of us.

This is the story our country’s leaders should be telling.

The populism of left and right both here and in Europe has reduced politics to simple, black and white, tweetable answers to every problem.

One side thinks the answer is to throw money at the problem and pull the levers of state.

The other argues for ever tougher sanctions.

Nothing illustrates the futility of these responses more than the issue of serious youth violence which is a complex and a very modern phenomenon.

Instead of relying on old solutions that don’t work, we need a paradigm shift in our understanding of serious youth violence and in the action we take to stop it.

That starts with understanding what is happening and why.

Popular explanations for the violence

Let me now give you three of the most common popular explanations.

The first is ‘knife crime’.

But ‘knife crime’ doesn’t explain serious youth violence.

It doesn’t make sense of the lives of these young people nor the causes that lead to the stabbings.

It does not explain why young people do not feel safe on the street.

Nor why many carry knives because they do not believe the police can protect them.

The second explanation – inferred or made explicit – is ‘black culture’.

I’m not sure quite what they mean but basically the problem we are told is the behaviour of young black men.

Those who put forward this explanation point to the disproportionate number of victims and perpetrators who are black, rather than white or Asian.

Even in Liverpool where victims are predominantly white, victims of minority ethnic groups have been overrepresented.

This is interpretation is wrong.

Street violence is associated with the most economically deprived areas.

Their populations are disproportionately black and minority ethnic.

So of course one would expect young black people to be overrepresented as both victims and perpetrators.

Yes, there is a culture of ‘badness’ and ‘Road life’ that attracts black boys who feel excluded from society – but not exclusively so.

Some blame the families.

Some the attitudes of the youth.

Parts of our media play up racial stereotypes of black men and the myth of black criminality.

They point to global gangsta culture that influences boys masculinity and attitudes to women.

They are now saying Drill music is the cause of knife crime.

Its aggressive visual style and taunting of rival groups certainly influences and exacerbates the violence.

But it is not the root cause of it.

The violence was around long before Drill came about.

The third explanation is that the problem is ‘gangs’, which has come to imply drug-dealing ‘black gangs’.

Back in 2011 David Cameron’s Coalition Government came up with an official definition of ‘a gang’ as a “relatively durable group for whom crime and violence is intrinsic to its identity and practice.”

This model continues to underpin official policy on serious youth violence.

It defines a single model of a street gang which distinguishes it from boys’ peer groups and from adult organised crime groups.

Politicians know what to talk about.

The Criminal Justice System, charities and state agencies can agree the target of their policy interventions.

This approach is leading to policy failure.

Critics argue that a narrow focus on gangs can be used to impose a model of behaviour onto young people’s relationships with friends, family and community.

There is a lot of worry that it reinforces the myth of black criminality.

Groups of black boys just hanging out become ‘gangs’ to be harassed, and the wrong individuals get criminalised.

Pigeonholing our young people in this way is counter-productive.

In any event, the way young people congregate and communicate has radically changed this last decade.

So after a decade of violence we do not have an agreed view of the problem, but there is a common thread running through most of the explanations given.

Serious youth violence has largely been concentrated in poor urban neighbourhoods affecting young people trapped at the bottom of the economic ladder.

For the last decade Government has been pulling the ladder up and abandoning them.

So society has been creating the conditions for this violence and we have been turning our backs on it.

Too many of our young people feel disrespected and disenfranchised by society.

Reciprocity is at the heart of my politics – the idea that the practice of give and take ensures a fair balance between different interests in society.

You receive the support and care of the community and in return, you contribute your share and abide by the accepted rules and norms.

Do not do to others what you would not want done to yourself.

I believe that this mutual obligation between society and the young people we are talking about has broken down.

They are leading parallel lives with their own values system.

I’m not excusing the extreme violence – there is never an excuse for it – but it goes to the heart of the problem.

Tough on crime, and tough on the causes of crime is not wrong; it is just that in 2018 it is not the right starting point for this conversation.

It is not the right way to frame this discussion.

The dispossession of young people

Young men and boys involved in knife crime are not innocent victims.

They must be responsible for their actions.

But there are larger forces at work that can make it harder to do the right thing.

London is a global city.

All around us is wealth, glamour and exciting culture.

People from around the world want to come and live here.

But our city can be a very cruel and dark place.

Over the last forty years inner London has been transformed by the commercial property market and gentrification.

Tory austerity and welfare reforms have dismantled public services and infrastructure.

We have let global market forces rip through our society, scattering people here and there, concentrating wealth and income, dispossessing those on low incomes.

People have been forced out by property prices or confined to social housing estates and neighbourhoods.

On one side of the street are two million pound houses, on the other side is a precarious community with huge social challenges.

Rich and poor live side by side, but light years apart.

People overwhelmed by poverty, or mental illness, addiction or family break up are concentrated in certain neighbourhoods and estates.

Some struggle daily to feed themselves.

Fathers without work or working in poverty can barely support their families.

Some mothers working two even three jobs as well as caring for their children.

Families under immense pressure and unable to provide their children with love and care.

In my view, family life – in all its forms – and emotional relationships are the building blocks of community and society.

Yet, these are hard places to bring up families and they are hard places to grow up.

I meet mothers and fathers who are towers of strength.

Their children full of ambition and promise.

But boys and girls need family support and guidance to make their way into adulthood.

And those who don’t have it are left to find their own path.

It is much harder to find a secure, good quality, job as a young person today.

Benefits, allowances and support have been withdrawn.

With no secure job, inappropriate education and no benefits, taking a wrong turn in life can feel like the best option available.

However, this on its own is not an adequate explanation.

Respect

We need to understand the ways in which boys get caught up in a culture of violence.

It doesn’t matter what their colour is, the dynamics tend to be the same.

Their friendships create a sense of family.

But it’s a family without parental authority and so without an arbiter of justice.

Each boy has to prove his worth and that’s not a problem when it’s about being good at football or looking cool.

But it’s much more serious if its disenfranchised boys without money or hope in the future, who lack self-esteem and feel disrespected.

In areas where legal authority is weak, a reputation for violence is seen as the only effective deterrent against attack.

Each boy must prove his own worth and protect his name in a culture of honour.

Respect has to be earned and it has to be seen to be earned.

Locally powerful criminals can offer boys an alternative path to respect and manhood.

And the illegal trade in drugs can provide the status symbols of money and women.

The promise of respect and money radiates out.

Boys who are desperate, boys who are looking to prove themselves or are bored by life where they live are drawn toward it.

The culture of honour and respect and the violence that goes with it permeates the whole youth culture, and with it comes the fear of shame.

Walking away from being disrespected means the shame of losing face and the fear of shame is a big cause of the violence.

Community building

Stopping the killing means preventing young men getting involved in this culture and helping them exit it, by having real opportunities to make connections to the wider world.

It requires two things.

Helping them make new relationships in which dignity depends on an inherent sense of self-worth, not status symbols and the opinion of others.

And helping them use their talent to find legitimate means of making money.

That’s how you empower them and society meets its side of the bargain.

Far too many of our approaches to tackling youth violence have been top down measures that work from the outside in.

Politicians and civil servants don’t want to take any risks and lose control.

So we repeat the same financial waste and failed interventions, imposing so called solutions that are not going to work but tick the ministerial and bureaucratic boxes.

Let’s have a paradigm shift and start from the inside and work outward.

The solution will be community building that is community led.

It will be state supported.

A multi-agency, national programme to transform the left out areas of our cities.

It will require national leadership from the centre which should set a framework.

In the Youth Violence Commission’s interim report we endorse the public health model, based on the World Health Organisation’s principles of treating violence like a disease, which has been used very successfully in Scotland.  You cannot deliver that model without whole system, cultural and organisational change with sustained political backing.

Every relevant organisation and service will need to collaborate in a concerted effort to break down the structural and institutional exclusions that push young people into criminal behaviour and into the violence of honour culture.

And it does mean a heavy penalty for those who choose to continue on the path of violence.

Empowerment

There should be four strategic priorities to empower our young people to take the right course.

1. Building community capacity

Young people caught up in road life and  a culture of honour need relationships of trust and esteem.

They need real opportunities to make connections to the wider world.

It requires the full cooperation and approval of mothers, fathers, uncles, aunts, and older trusted men.

This work has been ongoing.

Community projects and small charities have sprung up, turning youth at risk away from violence, helping them find a path into a better life.

But they are ad hoc, there is little coordination and they spend their time scrabbling around for bits of money.

We often don’t know how effective they are.

There is a need to professionalise their operations and provide a more strategic approach to their funding – this is not something that should be left to volunteers.

This is the frontline and we need to invest in it, to demand effective outcomes from it, and listen to those involved.

2. Investment in community resilience

We must tackle the big structural problems with policies to boost the everyday economy of our poorest neighbourhoods.

We need to improve wages and skills in the low productivity sectors of the economy;

give more protection to workers in the gig economy;

rebuild pathways into work with support for young entrepreneurs, apprenticeships, and a national system of high quality vocational education.

We need investment in our public services.

Mental illness is a major problem amongst young men.

Let’s start at the beginning for the long term by providing pre-natal and post-natal mental health care;

supporting new mothers to bond with their babies and ongoing support for vulnerable small children;

improving mental health support in schools, making educational needs assessments more effective;

innovating alternative approaches to tackling disruption;

and providing more work placements so that we can reduce school exclusions.

And let’s expand the National Citizenship Service to broaden the horizons of young people.

And make sure there is more funding for youth centres and outreach workers.

3. Increasing access to opportunities

If teenagers don’t listen to adults, they hear their cultural heroes.

Drill music came out of South Chicago and has been re-made in South London.

It’s bleak and nihilistic.

The young people producing it say it provides a commentary on real lives, on the street, however uncomfortable we may find this.

Be in no doubt: these are commercial operations that make money.

The intelligence I receive from the police locally and nationally supports claims that the content they produce can trigger and incite further violence.

Reciprocity means the drill groups who are now looked up to by young people have to end their tit for tat violence or lose the opportunity to make money.  Its as simple as that.  We should require social media companies to adopt a zero tolerance approach where their content incites violence.

But I do not believe banning this music outright is practicable nor will it stop the violence.  There needs to be a dialogue with these groups on how they can set a better example – carrot and stick.

Above, I would like to see us provide other pathways and opportunities for young people to use their creative talents and to pursue positive enterprise.

Many business people complain about the difficulties involved in getting finance to start a new business – you try doing so as a young person living on one of my estates. Impossible.

4. Reform the criminal justice system

Of course, we need more neighbourhood police.

It is ridiculous to suggest having more police officers – who the Home Secretary will need to enforce his new Offensive Weapons Bill – will not help to reduce youth violence.

But, this is not simply a police matter.

The police can’t solve this alone.

Law enforcement is necessary but it is not enough.

We need to overcome distrust of the police with more visits to primary schools, an emphasis on community safety and an increase in community policing with regular beat coppers.

Stop and search can create serious tensions between young black people and the police.

But there are times when it is necessary – it can and should be done without humiliating and degrading young people in the way we have seen.

I’m pleased that Police body worn cameras, which I campaigned for in this borough, are already making a big, positive difference to these interactions.

And our Criminal Justice System is failing.

It is failing to stop young men re-offending and it is failing to give them a second chance.

The recent report on the ‘Through the Gate Resettlement Services for Prisoners’ is a damning indictment of the chronic failure of the Community Rehabilitation Companies and the prison service.

They are simply not fit for purpose.

 In short, these priorities, will help give our young people the capabilities they need to get on in life, and to take advantage of the opportunities our global city has to offer..

Conclusion

I want to end with this reflection.  Most of what I have put forward this evening in relation to serious youth violence can be found the Riots Communities and Victims Panel report into the August 2011 riots.  That was a different series of events, involving a wider demographic of people and yet so many of the causes and the solutions identified there were the same. Had there been the political will to properly act on the lessons learned from the August 2011 riots and to properly implement all of the Panel’s recommendations, instead of leaving that report on a shelf to gather dust, it is my we would not be seeing the amount of bloodshed on our streets today.  It is a damning indictment of British politics.

Ultimately, thought, this is our problem. These are our young people and we know them better than anyone else.  They are talented, dynamic, energetic and full of ambition. Just look at the 4000 young people who rode on BMXs from London Bridge to Oxford Street as part of the #BikesUpKnivesDown campaign against this violence earlier this year.  It is our job to bring out the best in them, so lets get on and do it.

This Lambeth council administration have worked hard to secure government approval for £100m of funding for the scheme, the first of its kind in the country. We understand that other local authorities are looking to follow the same model.

We know survivors have concerns around the lack of an independent body for Lambeth’s proposed redress scheme. However, we appreciate that Lambeth Council worked hard to create a scheme which is as accessible as possible and is designed to ensure that the funds which are available go directly to survivors as quickly as possible.

Anyone who had to endure time at Shirley Oaks will understandably find it very difficult to trust the Council. It is important that the Council puts in place processes for administering the redress scheme which survivors can work with, so we welcome the Council’s commitment to fund independent legal representation and establish a multi-disciplinary independent panel to consider all appeals.

In addition to the redress scheme and the Council’s apology, it is also vitally important that wherever possible perpetrators of the appalling abuse that occurred at Shirley Oaks and other Council-run children’s homes continue to be brought to justice.

That was the first question I ever asked at Prime Minister’s Questions, then with David Cameron, shortly after being elected in May 2010.

Zac was stabbed to death in front of Park Campus School in our borough of Lambeth in July 2010. Only the day before, he had spoken at a “Youth Against Violence” conference and was trying to turn his own life around, having got involved with the wrong people at a young age. He was associated with TN1 (“Trust No One”) – often referred to as a “gang” locally (more on the use of that term below) – who operate in the part of my constituency the home secretary visited on Monday to launch the government’s strategy to tackle serious violence.

During the trial of Zac’s five teenage murderers in 2011, the Old Bailey heard how he had been hounded down, was stabbed four times and then lay dying on his back in the garden of a house just yards from the school. His family, like many others I have worked with in my area, have been doing what they can ever since to ensure others do not suffer the same tragedy and heartbreak.

It is appalling that so little has changed since I asked David Cameron (Theresa May was, of course, his home secretary) that question, despite the best efforts of the local communities being blighted by this violence every week. The bloodshed and violence on our streets – often not reported to the police but so frequently in evidence at local A&Es – has been going on for months but for too long has been relegated to the back of the queue in our national conversation. The new focus on the issue is welcome and long overdue.

There’s no doubt about it: if we saw this number of fatalities and the sheer appalling nature of this violence among well-off, privileged children attending some of the most prestigious schools in the country, it would be front page news every single week of the year, a point made very forcefully by my friend David Lammy last week. Because this is unfolding in some of the most deprived wards in the country, it is simply not given the attention it deserves.

Part of the problem is the use of the term “gang” (I’ve been guilty of using it myself in the past), which needs to be expunged from the public debate about our young people.

Labelling young people in this way reinforces the notion that they are gangsters when they are not. These terms enable officialdom to put all of these young people into a pigeonhole and carry on as if this is what one expects in certain communities. Ian Joseph of the University of East London highlighted in some interesting work that using this term does little to address the real causes of youth violence.

In any case, the term “gang” and the imagery it provokes is increasingly inaccurate. Ten years ago, there tended to be large groups of young people operating together, whereas now the groups are smaller and more locally based, sometimes in and around a particular estate. Social media has helped bring this about. Essentially, the situation is a lot more fluid than we might imagine.

The scale of the challenge we face stems from the complexity of this issue. Yes, some violence is carried out by young people from dysfunctional and chaotic families with a history of, say, domestic violence or substance misuse. But the truth is that many young people who get wrapped up in this kind of violence are from quite stable families.

Poverty is almost always in the background. I’ve been told by young people who live this life of violence or have managed to get out of it that one of the motivators is the desire to provide for their family – usually their mother, as absentee fathers are frequently a problem.

The link with the drugs market is clear, where drug dealing is seen as a way of making ends meet and helping Mum pay the bills. Sometimes young people who do not have anything are robbing from other young people who don’t have much either – then there is revenge and a cycle of violence that follows.

Outside of school, teens too often find themselves with nowhere to go. Many of the things – after-school clubs, sports provision, extracurricular music lessons and so on – which middle income families take for granted and which can occupy their children out of school cost money that low-income families in my area do not have. Parents who might be holding down more than one job on zero-hours contracts with irregular shifts can’t be expected to meet those exorbitant costs.

The story is not the same in every case. This is not an exhaustive list, nor an excuse for what is going on – but these are all contributing factors. So what do we need to do?

First, we need to elevate the standing of youth work so we consider youth workers to be as important as teachers in looking after the welfare of our young people. Youth work should not be seen as an added extra we expect volunteers to do. We need properly trained and skilled people who can make sure that we channel our young people’s energy in the right way.

The last Labour government introduced the “Every Child Matters” programme to provide wrap-around care for children from long before they went to school to long after. We need an “Every Teenager Matters” approach, with more targeted schemes drawing on best practice around the UK like in Scotland where they halved the number of homicides in a decade after taking a similar strategy.

More role models who have actually been members of these groups or victims, have suffered the consequences, and turned their back on a life of violence and crime need to talk to our children in school about their experiences. They are far more likely to be listened to than teachers talking in abstractions.

Part of the reason so many young people don’t have enough money is that the unemployment rate among older teenagers is high. The UK’s headline unemployment rate is 4.3 per cent but for 16 to 24-year-olds it is almost three times higher at 12.3 per cent. We can tackle some of this by increasing the provision of technical and vocational skills available to young people, rather than simply asking them to jump through exam hoops that might lead nowhere.

Of course, we also need more neighbourhood police. It is ridiculous to suggest having more neighbourhood police officers – who the home secretary will need to enforce her new Offensive Weapons Bill – will not help to reduce youth violence. It appears from the leaked paper reported on Monday that a fall in police numbers is likely to have contributed to a rise in serious violent crime. My community is certainly crying out for more, not less, officers on the streets.

At the heart of any strategy must be a public health approach, as advocated by the World Health Organisation and deployed to very good affect to reduce violence in Scotland as mentioned above. It looks at violence as a condition enabled by society, and demands collaboration and joint working between different organisations to address the problem. It identifies four layers: the individual, their relationships, their immediate community and wider society. This goes to show that whatever the Home Office strategy, we can’t expect government – local or national – to solve this problem for us. We all need to take ownership of it.

One positive change since young Zac Olumegbon was killed is the shift in attitudes from seeing this as an issue of enforcement and sanction to focusing on the health and wellbeing of our young people. Many of these young people are going through the sort of trauma no person should have to go through in their lifetime, never mind as children. Ministers will be making a huge mistake if they think simply announcing tougher sanctions and yet another law on weapons – important as these are – will stop the appalling violence in London today.

The Tory party are more consumed with haggling over who their next leader will be than with the lives and concerns of most families and communities. Cuts by the Tories in Central Government are starting to have a real impact on local services and communities – cuts to school funding, cuts to local government and now further cuts to local policing budgets. In London alone, between 2010 and 2020 the Tory government will cut £1bn from the Metropolitan Police’s budget.

One thousand police officers have already disappeared from London’s streets, and London Mayor Sadiq Khan has warned a further 12,800 could be lost in the next few years – a reduction in its strength of up to 40 per cent. It’s clear that the Tories are trying to protect the public on the cheap. Cuts made to the Metropolitan Police’s budget are not something that any Labour Member of Parliament, Labour councillor or our Labour Mayor of London want to make.

These are tough choices that are having to be made because of the political decisions made by Theresa May’s Tory Government – cuts which started when May was the Home Secretary, in charge of policing. Our city recently suffered two horrific terrorist attacks. Our emergency services showed themselves to be the bravest of the brave, running towards danger, while telling others to run to safety.

Local community policing can act as the eyes and ears for the security services, playing an important role in counter-extremism, catching our young people before they fall into a spiral of extremism and violence. Rather than cutting local policing budgets, and undermining their vital work, Theresa May and the Tories should be doing everything possible to support our police.

If the next set of cuts to the Metropolitan Police’s budget go ahead we not only are facing a cut in police officers on our streets, but also the closure of police stations. In many London boroughs this would mean the closure of all bar one of the public facing desks and stations. In Lambeth we are facing the closure of stations in Cavendish Road, Clement Avenue, Cobalt Square, Coldharbour Lane, Kennington, Loughborough Junction, Norwood Road, and Streatham.

That will leave Brixton police station as the only remaining police station. We are calling on Theresa May, Amber Rudd and the whole Government to reconsider their cuts to our police service. We believe visible community-based policing is vital to tackling crime and providing reassurance. Please support the campaign by signing the SOS #SaveOurStations petition at bit.ly/saveourstations.

First, Councillor Lib Peck, Leader of Lambeth Council, has been in contact with the leader of Kensington and Chelsea Council to offer any practical support that she and the council can. Hundreds of people are without homes and have nothing except the clothes they fled in. As Londoners we always come together at times of great tragedy to support those effected and bring our communities together – we must do so again now.

Second, I know you will be very concerned about the state of housing blocks in our community, and several of you have already contacted me seeking clarification and reassurance. I have been informed that Lambeth officials have confirmed that all Lambeth Housing structures have an up to date fire risk assessment. Any issues that have been highlighted as a result of these assessments are being followed up and housing blocks are being prioritised. Lambeth Council Director of Housing Services, Neil Wightman, has been working with Lambeth Council’s Health and Safety Team to review all the information from the Grenfell Tower fire, and plan any necessary action which may be needed in Lambeth. These further actions will include:

• Reviewing blocks which have similar designs to Grenfell Tower
• Writing to all residents in housing blocks
• Meeting with London Fire Brigade to discuss evacuation procedures and ensure notices in blocks are renewed or updated where required. 

As your Member of Parliament I have also written to Lambeth Council and Metropolitan Housing seeking further clarification on several vital issues relating to housing blocks in Streatham and the parts Clapham, Balham, Tulse Hill and Brixton in the constituency, including:

• Whether there are any housing blocks clad with the same, or other, flammable materials.
• If this information is not yet available, when they will be carrying out the necessary checks.
• Details of the usual fire tests carried out on properties.
• Details of these tests and when they were last completed.
• Whether there are fire sprinkler systems fitted in housing blocks.
• If fire sprinkler systems are not fitted, whether assessments being carried out to check whether they are needed and are steps are being taken to fit them.

Finally, I am sure I speak on behalf of everyone in our community when I say thank you, from the bottom of my heart, to London Fire Brigade, London Ambulance Service, and the Metropolitan Police Service for their fast response and heroic work to tackle the fire and provide support to the victims since.

There is understandably huge public concern following this tragic incident. I am working to do all I can to make sure that a similar tragedy cannot happen here in our community.