Home Affairs Committee
Oral evidence: Serious Violence, HC 1016
Wednesday 8 May 2019
Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 8 May 2019.
Members present: Yvette Cooper (Chair); Stephen Doughty; Kate Green; Douglas Ross; John Woodcock.
Questions 456–575
Witnesses
I: Victoria Atkins MP, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Crime, Safeguarding and Vulnerability, and Dan Greaves, Director for the Crime, Policing and Fire Group, Home Office.
Written evidence from witnesses:
Witnesses: Victoria Atkins MP and Dan Greaves.
Q456 Chair: I welcome everyone to this evidence session for the Home Affairs Select Committee inquiry into serious violence. I welcome the Minister and Mr Greaves, who are giving evidence this morning. Before we begin, could you outline your role at the Home Office on serious violence, Mr Greaves?
Dan Greaves: I am director of crime at the Home Office. My responsibilities span crime strategy as a whole and, in particular, serious violence, including serious violence strategy, policy on knife and gun crime, and gangs. I also have responsibility for a broader set of crime types, including acquisitive crime and antisocial behaviour.
Q457 Chair: Thank you very much. You are both very welcome this morning. In the last few days, an 18-year-old was stabbed to death in Southwark and a 15-year-old was stabbed to death in Hackney, so more families are devastated. I know that that is an issue that you have been working on, Minister, but we want to probe what is happening and what actions the Home Office is taking to address the awful crime of children dying on our streets. What targets have you set for this time next year?
Victoria Atkins: May I first thank the Committee for scrutinising this really important part of Home Office policy and the impact that it has on communities? I am sorry to have to inform the Committee that we have just received reports of fatalities in Birmingham, which rather underlines the point that it is not just about London, but the whole country.
We debate targets at great length at the Home Office. We do not have a target on decreasing homicides, for the reason that wherever we set that target, I do not feel I could look at a mother or a father who has lost a beloved, cherished child if that child was within that target. I would not want anyone to think that that is somehow something that we accept, or are sanguine about. Of course, we do not want any child or any person to be murdered in our country, so we look at other measures to determine the success or the movement that our policies are making. One murder is too many.
Q458 Chair: What are those measures or objectives?
Victoria Atkins: If we take a step back, the serious violence strategy, which we launched in April last year, was the culmination of very intensive work and research—not just by Home Office officials; we asked experts, policing colleagues, and so on—as to what was happening on our streets, what people think the drivers are, and what the evidence suggests the drivers are.
There are a number of different measures that different police forces use, because one thing that is very clear—not just from serious violence taskforce meetings or the engagement events that we hold across the country, but also from the meetings with chief constables that the Home Secretary has regularly—is that there are different solutions to homicides across the country. What may work in London may not work in another part of the country.
Q459 Chair: What objectives have you set nationally as part of the strategy to be met by this time next year?
Victoria Atkins: The objective is to reduce homicide, of course. That is the objective of every police officer.
Q460 Chair: So it is simply a reduction. Do you have any other objectives—any other things that you want to measure along the way, or any particular things that you want to have in place?
Victoria Atkins: To be clear, I want no homicides at all, of course, but for example, the Metropolitan police looks at knife crimes in which injuries are sustained by under-25s. That is a very powerful measure, and only last week, the commissioner was telling us—although we are very, very cautious in commenting on these trends—that there seems to be a reduction in that on the streets of London. We also look at, for example, the rates of knife crime generally, and that is beginning—again, very cautiously—to fall in London. We look at gun crime; nationally, that continues to fall.
Q461 Chair: Just to be clear, do you have any measurable objectives for this time next year? It could be programmes you want to have in place; it could be other things that you want to achieve, or numbers of people you want to have reached with particular things. I am still really unclear. You just seem to be talking about different amounts of data that individual forces will analyse. What objectives has the Home Office, or the Government as a whole, set around tackling knife crime by this time next year?
Victoria Atkins: I do apologise; I was interpreting the mention of targets as meaning that this was about the data, if you like. In terms of the wider objectives, we have set in the strategy, a year ago, 61 very detailed commitments; I am very happy to provide you with a copy. We have completed 45 of those commitments, and the remaining 16 are works in progress. I should say, by the way, that the strategy is a Government-wide document; it is not just focused on the Home Office.
On the objectives through those 61 commitments, we have for example set up the social media hub, which is being piloted in London, to help the Metropolitan police work with the big tech companies to get down some of these images that we know are causing problems with gangs as quickly as possible. We have already set up the National County Lines Co-ordination Centre. That helps all the police forces around the country with the issue of county lines, which is a major factor in violence, particularly outside our larger urban conurbations. In the few months in which that centre has been operating, it has already seen more than 1,000 arrests, and more than 1,300 people safeguarded.
We have set up the independent review of drugs by Dame Carol Black; we understand that drugs are a major driver. That is reporting in the summer. We have also set up the youth endowment fund, which has locked in £200 million to invest in early intervention for young people.
Q462 Chair: I’m still slightly struggling to see what the actual measurable outcomes are, though. For example, how many children do you assess as being at risk of knife crime?
Victoria Atkins: We are mindful of what the Children’s Commissioner has reported on this: she estimates that up to 27,000 children are related to gang activity. Dan will be able to help me with some of the discussions that we have been having with her on how she has reached that figure.
Q463 Chair: Do you have that figure broken down into different areas?
Victoria Atkins: If I may, I will pass to Dan.
Dan Greaves: To the best of my knowledge, that is provided in the report only nationally, but I will have to check that for you.
Q464 Chair: Does the Home Office have any assessment of how many young people are at risk of being involved in knife crime?
Dan Greaves: I don’t have that number to hand. What we do have in the strategy is a very detailed assessment of the risk, and protective factors underlying the risk.
Q465 Chair: I want to understand the scale of the problem. I also want to understand if you understand the scale of the problem. How many young people do you think are at risk of being involved in knife crime?
Dan Greaves: We can say that some people are at particular risk as a result of a range of their—
Q466 Chair: Okay. How many young people are at particular risk?
Dan Greaves: I don’t have that number. That number will be a function of a wide range of factors, including adverse childhood experiences, early misuse of drugs and school attainment. The overlap between those groups will be difficult to compile, so I can—
Q467 Chair: Of course, but I still want to understand whether the Home Office has an estimate of it. Maybe you don’t have an estimate of the number of young people who are at risk of being involved in knife crime across the country. If you don’t, tell us that you don’t.
Victoria Atkins: We tend to look at the causes, or the factors, that lead to a child either being the victim or the perpetrator of knife crime, and they vary enormously across the country. We know, for example, that domestic abuse is a huge indicator of a child, first of all, being—
Q468 Chair: I understand that. I am still just trying to understand whether the Home Office has any grip on the scale of the problem, and the scale of the risks that we are dealing with. How many young people have access to an outreach youth worker?
Victoria Atkins: I don’t—
Dan Greaves: Again, I don’t have that number at my—
Q469 Chair: How many young people are involved in any kind of youth diversionary activity after school?
Victoria Atkins: I don’t have the numbers of that, because, again, those would be figures that local authorities may know. Also, charities will hold those figures.
Q470 Chair: Does that mean that the Home Office has made no attempt to assess the number of young people who are in some way engaged in youth services or a youth diversionary activity of some kind?
Victoria Atkins: I wouldn’t say that we have made no attempt. If you look at the range of charities that we support—for example, two of the charities that were set up by parents who gave evidence to the Committee—we would not necessarily expect them to feed into us the number of children they are working with. We have a range—
Q471 Chair: Why not? Why don’t you need to know how many young people are at risk and how many young people you are reaching? Your own strategy rightly talks about early intervention, youth engagement, and youth diversionary activities, and you are rightly funding some of those activities, but you seem as a Department to have no sense of the scale of the problem that you are trying to tackle or the scale of your interventions. Do you even know how many young people your own funded interventions are going to reach?
Dan Greaves: Can I just come back to the point about risk factors and those at risk? The serious violence strategy itself provides a very detailed analysis of the risk and protective factors, an assessment of the numbers of people who fall within those groups, and the overlap between those groups. I am very happy to commit to coming back to you, following discussions with analytical colleagues, with an assessment of those at risk.
I also want to clarify the split of responsibility between national and local. We clearly have responsibility for setting the overall national strategic framework for serious violence. We have provided a very detailed analysis of the trends and drivers of serious violence, the risk and protective factors, and what we believe works in tackling serious violence. That was very well received by local partners. We have made a number of targeted investments, including in the Early Intervention Youth Fund, the Youth Endowment Fund and the #knifefree national campaign to change attitudes and behaviours.
Clearly, many of the functions come together locally, with police forces, probation services and safeguarding boards, and there are frameworks for local partners to collaborate and bring together locally a shared understanding of just the sort of problems that you have talked about, and to agree joint solutions. That is why we are consulting on a legislative duty to collaborate and partner on serious crime. We need to think about the balance between the local and the national—
Q472 Chair: I want to come back to local things, of course, but you have talked, rightly, of a public health approach. I have been a public health Minister, and when you start with a public health approach, the first thing you do is ask yourself: “What is the level of population that is at risk? What is the scale of the risk that you are dealing with?” Then you look at what interventions you have and how many people you are going to reach with those interventions.
I am just baffled that when you have something as serious as this—a 70% increase in knife crime in the last four years, a 93% increase in the number of children attending A&E who have been stabbed in the last six years, a 37% increase in homicide—you don’t have a basic assessment of the number of young people who are at risk, and then have an assessment of what your policies are doing to reach those young people.
Victoria Atkins: As I say, at national level, we set the strategy. There are differences between policing an area where there may be the involvement of gangs—there may be volatility in a way that perhaps there is not if one is looking at the public health issue of obesity, for example. I think about one particular family I met recently, whose son was literally in the wrong place at the wrong time in a postcode war between gangs. That child was killed as a result of knife crime, but given that he was a very well-behaved child attaining great things at school and college, he would not come on to the police radar as being at risk of knife crime. There is a distinction.
Q473 Chair: It would be perfectly reasonable for you to sit there and say to me, “Look, we have a series of different measures. We have this assessment of the young people who we think might get drawn into carrying a knife. That’s one group. We have another assessment of the number of young people who live in areas where knife crime has been escalating.” There might be another group and another measure. You don’t seem to have any of those measures—those basic assessments of the scale of the challenge that you are dealing with.
Victoria Atkins: Forgive me if we haven't explained this, but, for example, three quarters of the £100 million that was announced in the spring statement to do with violence has been allotted to the 18 forces that have seen the highest increases in admissions to A&E with knife injuries. We are using the data to assess where the money should be spent. The remaining third will be spent on setting up violence reduction units, which will bring together all the agencies locally that should be sharing data and information to ensure that we are not just targeting the gang leaders, but targeting the children who are most at risk.
You are absolutely right that there are different measures, and my officials spend a great deal of time looking at those measures to see what is happening on the ground and what is being done locally, because some areas are better than others.
Q474 Chair: The biggest challenge to you is not that individual things that you are doing might not be worth while—it is that you just have no grip on the scale of the problem. This is not just an issue for you, Minister; it is obviously an issue for the Home Secretary and it is an issue for the Prime Minister. I’m getting nothing from you today that gives me any sense that you have actually got a grip even on the scale of the problem that you are trying to deal with, and that there is therefore any way for us to measure whether your strategy actually matches the scale of the challenge.
Victoria Atkins: We know that there are, for example, around 2,000 county lines gangs. That is the most recent estimate from the National Crime Agency. Again, slightly differently from public health issues—where, by and large, people do not seek to conceal their public health issues—because of the very nature of criminality, gang leaders do not tend to reveal themselves or their methods of recruiting children. We know about it because we rely on police officers and the National Crime Agency picking up intelligence and listening to youth workers and others to find out information. The criminal underworld is not minded to help the police and to help us understand what they are doing and how they recruit children, which is an extra obstacle in how we try and find the children who may be affected.
Q475 Chair: We understand that it is hard, but the consequences are incredibly serious. It just does not sound at the moment as though you have even got estimates. At local level, do police or partnerships have an assessment of the scale of the risks or the scale of the problems in their areas? Is it just nationally that you have not got a grip?
Dan Greaves: Can I just talk you through the concentrations? It is a very significant challenge and the numbers speak for themselves, but they are quite concentrated. The risks, as you have described, are concentrated in certain groups and cohorts of young people who are at heightened risk. Equally, the risk is quite concentrated geographically, so we are investing £100 million in policing, of which £65 million will be in surge policing. Eighteen forces cumulatively account for over 80% of the knife crime. If you look at the heat maps within those areas, they are quite concentrated. The persistent victimisation is concentrated in parts of those places. That data is used both nationally and locally to make sure that we guide our investment where it has the most impact and so that we can have some assurance that local forces are targeting their assets on hotspots and working in partnership with a range of public agencies to concentrate efforts both on geographical at-risk areas and on individuals at heightened risk.
Q476 Chair: Who is responsible? If you think about knife crime in Birmingham or in Leeds, who is responsible for making sure that knife crime comes down in those areas?
Victoria Atkins: All agencies. We are consulting on imposing a legal duty on agencies to reduce serious violence. All agencies have a responsibility.
Q477 Chair: Who is responsible for making sure that all of the agencies work together and do their bit?
Victoria Atkins: The chief constable is responsible for policing and law enforcement activity on the ground. In terms of ensuring who is doing that at local level, at the moment it can be quite difficult to find out who that is. Community safety—
Q478 Chair: Isn’t that a problem?
Victoria Atkins: That is precisely why we are consulting on the public duty and why we are investing in violence reduction units.
Q479 Chair: Who is in charge of the violence reduction units?
Victoria Atkins: In London it is the Mayor. In the other areas that have yet to set up violence reduction units, it will be a body that comprises the police, local authorities and health authorities.
Q480 Chair: And who is actually in charge of them?
Victoria Atkins: That will be for local areas to decide. In the west midlands, the chief constable is at a very advanced stage of setting up the violence reduction unit. I would argue that the fact he is setting it up says that he is leading it. We want to support the units, not just financially but by giving them and their professionals the comfort of knowing that they can share and should share data.
Q481 Chair: When will all the units be in place? When will they all be up and running?
Dan Greaves: To break down the figures, the £100 million overall is two thirds on surge policing. We have already announced the allocations for that. There is £35 million for violence reduction units. We are doing the detailed engagement and design work over the course of May, and we expect to announce allocations in early June. We clearly need to work very closely with areas to look at the pace of delivery but, as the Minister said, work is already under way in a number of areas. The Minister spoke about the violence reduction unit in London; there is a violence reduction unit being worked out in Birmingham, which is jointly hosted by the chief constable and the director of public health; and in Essex there is a violence and vulnerability unit. A lot of work is in place, and we will be accelerating and industrialising our work in those areas.
Q482 Chair: Will they all be fully up and running by September?
Victoria Atkins: I think that is unlikely. A lot of them will be, but I do not want to speculate, given that timeframe.
Q483 Chair: So we miss an entire summer season, and there are lots of areas in which you still will not even have a violence reduction unit in place. In the meantime, while these units are being set up, who is responsible in Leeds? Who are you holding responsible? Who do you ring, Minister, if you are worried that there seems to be a spike in Birmingham, in Leeds or wherever? Who do you ring and say, “Come on guys, what’s going on? What are you doing? Who is working with whom to tackle this?”
Dan Greaves: We do not leave our engagement for moments of crisis. We have a forward-leaning programme of engagement across the country with local partnerships. I think the Minister is hosting an event with partners in the north-east.
Victoria Atkins: Tomorrow, yes.
Dan Greaves: I hosted an event in East Anglia two weeks ago. Our engagement is constant and ongoing to make sure that we share our understanding of the threat and the response and that we are prompting innovation. We also have regular dialogue, at Home Secretary level, with the chief constables of the most affected forces. Those discussions are about whether they have the resources and powers and, equally, about challenging them on how they are allocating their resources and using their tactics to bear down on the problem. The evidence suggests that focused hotspot policing is what works.
Q484 Chair: The trouble is that we have heard a whole lot of evidence from different people—very senior people—with experience working on a whole series of programmes over the years, including Dame Louise Casey, Sara Thornton, Denis O'Connor, Cressida Dick and the Children’s Commissioner. All of them effectively said that there is not enough co-ordination nationally, that there is not enough strategy and that there is not enough local co-ordination either.
Nothing you have said provides any reassurance that they are wrong in their assessment. If the Children’s Commissioner says, “Well, why aren’t the safeguarding boards leading on things?” at least have somebody to lead on it in every area, even if it is not the safeguarding board. The problem is that if all you have got is your violence reduction units, which might not be in place even in six months’ time, it is not very reassuring that you or other organisations across the country have actually got a grip on this serious rising crime that is killing children.
Dan Greaves: We are not working from a zero base in terms of local multi-agency partnerships. One of the people who gave evidence to the Committee talked about there being a duty, since the late ’90s, to work together to tackle crime. That exists and is embodied in community safety partnerships, which bring together a wide range of organisations that are responsible for doing the problem profile and making sure that the response is adequate.
Just before Christmas, I went to see partners in the Safer Essex partnership, to hear about their understanding of the problem and to talk about how they are coming together and brigading around the problem of county lines, blending both the enforcement and the safeguarding responses. I came away reassured, in terms both of their understanding and the importance they attach to that, and of their development of a capability in the violence and vulnerability unit. We are not at a zero base. What we are actually trying to do is work under the framework of those partnerships and invest in some targeted capability to accelerate work and bring in a wider set of partners.
Chair: The problem is that those frameworks have not stopped a 93% increase in the number of young people going to hospital because they have been stabbed.
Q485 Stephen Doughty: Minister, are there more or fewer youth service places and youth centres today than there were five years ago?
Victoria Atkins: There are because there have been pressures on local authority funding.
Q486 Stephen Doughty: There are fewer?
Victoria Atkins: Yes.
Q487 Stephen Doughty: Do you have an idea of how many?
Victoria Atkins: I don’t, but I can write to you with that.
Q488 Stephen Doughty: Do you know how many youth service places have been cut in the last 10 years?
Victoria Atkins: I don’t.
Q489 Stephen Doughty: I can tell you: 600 centres closed between 2012 and 2016, and 139,000 places were lost. In London, since the 2011 riots, 100 youth clubs closed. That is a halving of youth service provision in London. Do you think that is acceptable?
Victoria Atkins: We need to ask ourselves whether the youth clubs that you describe were serving the local communities in the most effective way possible. Some will have been, but there will also have been clubs that closed down because they just were not attracting young people to use them. I went to see a fantastic youth club up in Derby, the Enthusiasm Trust, which is an example of a youth club that works really well.
Q490 Stephen Doughty: But the rest of them were fine to get rid of.
Victoria Atkins: No, I’m not saying that at all—please don’t put words into my mouth. There are different ways in which we reach children nowadays. When we look at the work of, say, the St Giles Trust, their youth workers are former gang members, and their power is the fact of their lived experience, so there are different ways of delivery.
Q491 Stephen Doughty: But I’m not just talking about centres and buildings here, Minister; I’m talking about 139,000 places lost between 2012 and 2016. Do you not accept that that has had any impact whatsoever on the levels of youth violence and engagement, not only in crime and disorder more generally, but also in this problem particularly?
Victoria Atkins: I would not like to make that leap without the evidence. If you can show me the evidence, obviously I will consider that.
Stephen Doughty: I can show you the evidence, because knife crime has gone up massively while youth places have gone down.
Victoria Atkins: Again, we need to be careful about ensuring there is an evidence link on causality.
Q492 Stephen Doughty: So you don’t agree with Lord Coe, Minister? In April, he said that he blamed the Government for failing to recognise the “bloody obvious” that properly funded activities are “the most potent social worker in any community”. He said that the Government had “strangled the life out of the youth services in this country, yet we are surprised”. You do not agree with Lord Coe?
Victoria Atkins: Was Lord Coe specifically referencing serious violence?
Stephen Doughty: He was specifically referencing links between cuts in youth services and rises in knife crime in April.
Victoria Atkins: I will happily look at that evidence. I am not for a moment—
Q493 Stephen Doughty: So you don’t agree with him?
Victoria Atkins: I am saying that if you send me the evidence, I will look at the evidence. We have to be really careful here to ensure that the conclusions we draw are based on evidence, which is why we have been very careful with the Timpson review to say, “Look, the fact of exclusion is a marker, but there isn’t yet the evidence to show a causality.”
Q494 Stephen Doughty: Minister, I find that quite extraordinary. I have had young people in my own community—in Cardiff, so outside of London—who have been drawn into not only county lines but knife violence and other criminal activity. I can directly link that to the pressures there have been on youth services, and to cuts in other services and provision. I have had young people stabbed in my own community, and you are sitting here telling me that there is no link and you would want to see the evidence.
Victoria Atkins: No, I am not saying—
Q495 Stephen Doughty: So there is a link between cuts and—
Victoria Atkins: No, Mr Doughty, I am saying I will happily look at the evidence. I want this to stop as much as everyone else. What I have to be careful of is that we do this on evidence. It is precisely why, with the £200 million youth endowment fund, we have specified in the contract that the evaluation of any projects they fund must be—you know, it is critical to the success of the fund, so that we can spread wider learning further afield. There is youth work going on that is perhaps not within the formal structures of local authorities.
Q496 Stephen Doughty: What work?
Victoria Atkins: Premier League Kicks, for example, is a really powerful programme.
Q497 Stephen Doughty: And how many young people is that reaching, Minister?
Victoria Atkins: I don’t know off the top of my head.
Stephen Doughty: You do not know.
Victoria Atkins: I met them two weeks ago. I am afraid I do not have that figure at the front of my mind.
Q498 Stephen Doughty: You mentioned the £200 million. Youth services have been cut by £768 million since 2010; youth justice has been cut by £140 million, so even if it were a shift from one type of service to another, that is a complete difference in activity. Who is the Minister for youth services, Minister?
Victoria Atkins: It is Nadhim Zahawi.
Stephen Doughty: It is Nadhim Zahawi. Okay, because according to the Government—
Victoria Atkins: He is children and young people, so he and I discussed in the last—
Q499 Stephen Doughty: Who is responsible?
Victoria Atkins: Mims Davies has the DCMS lead.
Q500 Stephen Doughty: And when was the last time you met both of them to discuss this issue?
Victoria Atkins: Mims, I met when I met the Premier League, I think three weeks ago—forgive me, I don’t have my diary to hand—to talk specifically about this. We had the serious violence taskforce within the last few weeks as well.
Q501 Stephen Doughty: When was the last time you met Nadhim?
Victoria Atkins: I saw him yesterday on the Front Bench as we were listening to the statement on the Timpson review. I meet Nadhim regularly to talk about education more widely.
Q502 Stephen Doughty: Do you have a regular set-up of meetings, given the seriousness of the situation?
Victoria Atkins: Yes.
Q503 Stephen Doughty: How often are you meeting Ministers in other Departments?
Victoria Atkins: We have the interministerial group on serious violence, which meets, if not every month, every five weeks or so. In addition to that, I meet my counterparts in the relevant Departments, including Education.
Q504 Stephen Doughty: So, you are meeting not even monthly.
Victoria Atkins: I do not have my diary to hand, as I say. We are for monthly. There may have been an occasion where we have slipped a week because of ministerial diaries. It is chaired by the Home Secretary.
Q505 Stephen Doughty: That’s very interesting. Anne Longfield, the Children’s Commissioner, recently said that she thought that the Prime Minister needs a phone call every week with the people who have been charged to deliver this strategy. Has the Prime Minister been having that level of engagement with this strategy?
Victoria Atkins: You would not expect me to know her phone call and diary schedules.
Q506 Stephen Doughty: I would expect you to know, on an issue like this, the level of engagement there has been from the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary.
Victoria Atkins: The Prime Minister is holding her first ministerial group meeting this afternoon, off the back of the summit that was held two or three weeks ago, with Secretaries of State, to discuss the implementation of the summit.
Q507 Stephen Doughty: And the Home Secretary? How often is he leading meetings on this?
Victoria Atkins: Again, I do not have access to his diary—but it is very, very frequently and regularly.
Q508 Stephen Doughty: Weekly?
Dan Greaves: To give some context, the Prime Ministerial taskforce meets for the first time this afternoon. The Home Secretary will attend and present at that meeting, talking about the threat that we face and equally about violence reduction units. The Home Secretary chairs the serious violence taskforce, which meets roughly once a month and brings together Ministers from across Government and strategic partners.
Stephen Doughty: So, once a month.
Dan Greaves: He also chairs the interministerial group on this and he also chairs regular meetings, roughly once every six weeks, with the chief constables most affected. I see the Home Secretary certainly every week, if not twice a week, on this set of issues. This is an area that is a real focus for the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister. She hosted a summit including six other—
Q509 Stephen Doughty: Mr Greaves. A lot of this, quite frankly, just sounds like guff. You don’t have targets; you don’t know any statistics; and you are not meeting more than once a month in terms of the direct political oversight.
Victoria Atkins: No, that is one group, the taskforce. As I say, we also have the ministerial group meeting and we have separate meetings with the chief constables. These are very busy people with very heavy workloads.
Q510 Stephen Doughty: I fully understand but we are talking about children dying here.
Victoria Atkins: We want every meeting we have to be effective. We are laying out a schedule of activity, from the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary down, in terms of the engagement we are having with people who are working on the ground.
Q511 Stephen Doughty: Okay, but it doesn’t feel good enough compared with what some of the leading figures in the sector are requesting. May I ask one more question about online? We have taken a lot of evidence on social media companies and what is available online in relation to hate crime and lots of other things.
I just did a quick search coming into this Committee this morning for what was available in terms of knife violence and certain terms online. On one provider—YouTube—I found video after video after video. Why is that still the case? Why can I find within two minutes on YouTube how to make a prison weapon, without any restrictions? What do you have to say to the social media companies?
Victoria Atkins: We have set up a social media hub, which we are piloting in London.
Q512 Stephen Doughty: What does that do?
Victoria Atkins: That is the Metropolitan police basically working very closely with the tech companies to get material, first, identified and then offline as quickly as possible.
Q513 Stephen Doughty: How many officers are working on that?
Victoria Atkins: We have in the region of 40 officers working on that in London. We have laid out our expectations of the tech companies. They are better than they were. We are still not there—I don’t pretend that—but that is the reason why the online harms White Paper is significant as well. Because violent crime is one of the harms that is the focus of that paper.
Q514 Stephen Doughty: Not on the rights and wrongs of this policy, but why is age verification now being introduced for pornographic content, from which I absolutely agree we need to protect young people, but you can access many videos glorifying violence and knife crime, some without any age verification whatsoever?
Victoria Atkins: We are also working with advertisers to ensure that their ads are not inadvertently supporting the websites, not just regarding serious violence but also online CSE and terrorism content. With YouTube and the drill video, of course that has not necessarily been classified. We are at the forefront of the internet here, with the many difficulties that we have in controlling what goes online. This is why the social media hub is so important, alongside the online harms White Paper, imposing a duty of care on tech companies. That will be significant.
Q515 Stephen Doughty: And you are absolutely sure that 40 officers are working on that?
Dan Greaves: Just to clarify, there are 17 dedicated police officers and staff working in the Metropolitan—
Q516 Stephen Doughty: Sorry, can you say that again?
Dan Greaves: Seventeen.
Q517 Stephen Doughty: Seventeen?
Victoria Atkins: Forgive me.
Dan Greaves: Yes. Just to lay this in context—
Q518 Stephen Doughty: Working on this, full time, in London?
Dan Greaves: In London—
Victoria Atkins: It’s a pilot.
Dan Greaves: In London, because it’s a proof of concept in London. Just to be really clear about the layers of our response on this, as the Minister said, we published the online harms White Paper. That puts a duty of care on the social media companies themselves. It will establish a regulator to assess compliance with a published set of standards. There will be a mandatory reporting duty and strong enforcement powers, including an ability to levy fines. That is something that people who gave evidence to your Committee asked for. That is something that the Government are committed to doing.
Equally, colleagues at the Home Office are working very closely in partnership with the likes of Google and Facebook. The serious violence taskforce has challenged them very robustly to increase their investment in training trusted flaggers, who bring the attention of the firms to material and get it brought down quickly, and challenging them to improve their response time. That partnership is starting to bear fruit, and we are investing in the social media hub within the Metropolitan police. That is one part of our overall response to social media.
Q519 Douglas Ross: Just to follow up on that last point, Mr Greaves, you were immediately concerned when the Minister said 40, so you clearly knew that it wasn’t 40.
Victoria Atkins: My apologies for that.
Q520 Douglas Ross: No, no—I am just wondering whether 40 is a figure that we should be interested in. For example, was that what was requested, or what it was assessed was needed? You immediately knew that it was not 40. You weren’t sure that it was 17 but, given the hustle with the officials behind, you immediately knew that 40 was an incorrect figure. I just wonder where that came from.
Dan Greaves: As you will understand, I have had to buff up quite a number of figures, including crime trends and investment figures, so you will forgive me if I was not able to alight on that number. I was thinking that it was 15 or 17.
Q521 Douglas Ross: But 40 was never a figure that, for example, was requested, or that an analysis suggested was required?
Dan Greaves: To the best of my knowledge and understanding, no.
Q522 Douglas Ross: So 17 is an optimum figure for that department.
Dan Greaves: This capability came out of direct discussions between colleagues at the Home Office and colleagues in the Metropolitan Police Service and the National Police Chiefs Council.
Q523 Douglas Ross: And 17 is the right figure. We should not expect that there was a request for more, or a need for more.
Dan Greaves: To the best of my knowledge and understanding, there was no request of that sort. This proposal was developed in partnership with the Metropolitan Police Service and the National Police Chiefs Council. It will roll—
Q524 Douglas Ross: So they asked for 17 specifically.
Dan Greaves: That is my understanding, and that is what we have given them. That capability will become fully operational at the end of this month. We should look very carefully and early at the impact that that is having, and look at opportunities potentially to scale that up because, alongside changes in drugs markets, which we think are a major driver of serious violence, along with the increases in vulnerability around exclusions, looked-after children and the persistently absent, we think that social media has played a part in the recent rises in serious violence, primarily because it enables disputes and disrespect to escalate very quickly. This is an area where we need a stronger response, and we are leaning forward in ways that I have just described.
Victoria Atkins: It is not just the tech companies; it is the producers behind these drill videos. There are producers who host sites or encourage videos. A lot of their business can be legitimate, as it were, not inciting violence, but they will also, we know from people we have been speaking to—families in particular who have been affected by this—have videos that are pretty near to the line, or over the line, when it comes to inciting violence. The tech companies are absolutely crucial in this, don’t get me wrong, but we should also send out the message to producers that they need to take their responsibilities very seriously as well.
Q525 Douglas Ross: We had a PCC here a couple of weeks ago who said that social media was a problem, but didn’t realise what the problem was. He said that further research had to be done. Do you disagree with that PCC, Mark Burns-Williamson? He believed that social media was an issue that we had to tackle with regards to serious violence, but he was totally lost as to what the problem was with social media. Do you think the Government is more aware of that than the police and crime commissioner?
Victoria Atkins: We know that YouTube videos are being uploaded. Particularly for young—
Q526 Douglas Ross: I just wonder, Minister, why a PCC would come to this Committee and say that he is not aware. His words, which I checked earlier, were, “We need to speak to the young people to find out more about what the problem is.”
Dan Greaves: This is a really complex problem. I read Mark’s evidence, in which he was talking about a piece of research that he has commissioned to add to the understanding of the issue. This is an issue—
Q527 Douglas Ross: Sorry, Mr Greaves. So you do not think that anything needs to be added; you think you know the issues.
Dan Greaves: They are a very complex set of issues. As I have said previously, there is good evidence that in a number of cases, particularly in metropolitan areas, gang violence has escalated and spiralled out of control very quickly, and social media has been a lubricant in that dynamic. We have good evidence that that is the case, which is why we are leaning into this issue, but it is not simple. As many of the people who gave evidence to your Committee suggested, it is quite a challenging issue.
Sometimes, in drill music, there can be violent lyrics. On the face of it, you can debate whether that is inciting violence. For some young people, it is a cultural narrative: it is explaining the challenges in their areas. In a different context, where there are specific postcodes, names and individuals, or where a video is uploaded to a certain place, it can be directly inciting violence. That is why we need to work very closely with young people and with people at St Giles Trust and Redthread, who really understand this set of issues. It is why trusted flaggers are so important, because one video could be innocuous in one context and a direct incitement to violence in another. We need to have those voices flagging that material.
Victoria Atkins: It does not have to be videos. Some gangs have gone into areas that are not their territory and Snapchatted around to show their rival gang, whose territory they are in, that they are here. On first blush, it may not have any particular significance to someone who does not understand the intricacies of that gang rivalry. To kids in those gangs, it is very significant and can lead to greater animosity. It is not just YouTube; we know that other social media sites are used, such as Instagram. Worryingly, some witnesses now report that when they come forward, social media sites are used to try to intimidate them. We are trying to work through how we can help offer reassurance to witnesses who go through that.
Q528 Douglas Ross: Minister, can I ask about the cross-departmental response to this issue? Do you think it is a good thing that it is pan-Government, or is there the potential—because no one has one lead authority, apart from the Prime Minister—that it gets lost within the other Departments? If you have too many people dealing with an issue, sometimes it actually diminishes the impact that the Government as a whole can have on it.
Victoria Atkins: On this issue of knife crime and the causes of knife crime and serious violence, there are routes in every single Government Department that is involved in this strategy and the broader public health approach. When the Secretary of State was giving his statement on the Timpson review yesterday, it was significant that he talked about the relationship between exclusions and serious violence in terms of health. The sharing of data from A&E departments is absolutely critical to our understanding where the hotspots are and where we need to tackle it.
Q529 Douglas Ross: In your earlier answer to the Chair, it was very difficult to pin anything down because, understandably, certain figures and statistics come from Health and Education and you cannot answer on them; you can answer the ones from Home Affairs. I am worried that there is too broad a range at Government level. Then we go down another level to the local violence reduction units, it could be a chief constable chairing it in one area and someone totally different in the other area. What authority do they have? Is it the same or different? It seems a little unco-ordinated for something so major.
Victoria Atkins: At national level, the fact of the Prime Minister’s overseeing the meetings that are taking place today with Secretaries of State will trickle down through them to their relevant Departments. At local level, we are conscious that—
Q530 Douglas Ross: It comes down to a crime issue; crimes are being committed. The Health Committee may do an inquiry into this, and the Education Committee may do an inquiry into this, but it is more likely to be the Home Affairs Committee that takes the lead on this. Should it not really be the Home Office that takes the lead and does far more than everyone else, and therefore gets the figures from the other Departments, rather than saying it is up to the other Departments to offer them? This is just my concern—I could be wrong; tell me if I am—but I just think it is going to be too easy to say, “Well, that is actually an Education element of the strategy. That is a Health element of the strategy.” It will be too easy to say that it is another Department’s area of responsibility.
Victoria Atkins: We absolutely want to avoid the potential for that to happen. The public health duty will be very significant at local level because we know that sometimes collaboration between local agencies is difficult—it is not as easy as it should be. But at national level, yes, of course the Home Office will continue to take the lead on law enforcement and what we can do to intervene earlier, but Education does also have a huge role to play in helping ensure that teachers, if they have a concern about a child, are feeding that in. With the help of the DFE, we have changed the safeguarding guidance to teachers and local authorities to include safeguarding for children who may be involved in gangs. Before, it tended to be quite centred on the home, but that is now in the safeguarding practice.
On the causes of knife crime, as one of the parents who gave evidence said, no child is born with a knife in their hand. There will be things that have happened to them along the road that lead them to be in the situation where they are carrying knives. I am conscious that we tend to focus on gangs because that tends to be where we see the recruiting and so on by gang leaders. We also know a lot of children are beginning to carry knives because they think that that is how they can protect themselves. That is why through work such as #knifefree, the national campaign, and also people going into schools or people with lived experience talking to young people about the dangers of carrying a knife, that is where we can make a real difference as well.
Q531 Douglas Ross: Do you think the Prime Minister’s summit was the right thing for the Prime Minister to do at that time?
Victoria Atkins: Yes. I found it to be a very positive summit. I hosted a roundtable with business leaders, faith leaders and community groups and also Simon Woolley of the Racial Disparity Audit and young people, asking them, if we are trying to divert young people away from criminality, what are the opportunities that we are offering them instead?
Q532 Douglas Ross: So you disagree with Dame Louise Casey, who told this Committee when she was discussing the summit, “I feel quite cynical about, ‘Have a summit; appoint a tsar; issue guidance’,” and that that is just a typical response from Governments.
Victoria Atkins: I’m afraid I don’t agree with her, no. I thought the summit was a really powerful indication of the Government’s commitment to tackling knife crime. I think the experiences of the people there were—
Q533 Douglas Ross: So why did it take that summit to show the Government’s commitment to tackling knife crime? Surely the Government had that commitment long before that summit—
Victoria Atkins: Yes, very much so.
Q534 Douglas Ross: That is why I was asking specifically about the timing and everything around the summit. I can understand why Dame Louise came up with this suggestion that it just seemed to be an answer to any Government’s problem—she did explain that this is something that happened in previous Governments that she worked for of a different colour: if you have a big problem, you host a summit and hope that distracts some of the attention from the issue.
Victoria Atkins: As I say, this afternoon the Prime Minister is hosting the first of the Secretaries of State Cabinet-level ministerial meetings to co-ordinate the work of the summit.
Q535 Douglas Ross: Again, the Prime Minister did not need a summit to get her Cabinet round the table on this issue.
Victoria Atkins: It was as much about inviting young people, victims and experts into the seat of our democracy.
Q536 Douglas Ross: But you have a former director general of the Troubled Families programme and a former Victims’ Commissioner, who you’d think we should be trying to encourage with this type of action, being very cynical about the idea of just having a summit.
Victoria Atkins: It isn't just a summit, though—that is the point. It is a programme of work. I don’t agree with her, I am afraid. It is a programme of work that has come out of the summit. For example, I am setting up a forum of big business leaders to challenge them on what they can do as part of their wider corporate social responsibility to offer opportunities to young people in the areas of the country that we are particularly worried are being dragged into knife crime.
Q537 Douglas Ross: Finally, Minister, does the serious violence strategy contain the answer to all the issues in here?
Victoria Atkins: To me, it is a document that evolves. As we are working on the serious violence taskforce, issues are coming to light that we are then working on. To me, it is the foundation, but we are open to any ideas and suggestions. We are all determined to work together to solve this. As we look at the programme of work going forward—for example, the consultation on the public health duty, the £200 million youth endowment fund, and the independent review on drugs—the strategy was very much our foundation, but of course we are building on that.
Dan Greaves: We published in the strategy a detailed description of the trends and drivers. It is quite a strong account, and it is the foundation stone on which we have built our strategy. That will evolve over time, as trends change and as our assessments and detailed analysis evolve. We have set out a strong framework of activity, and we have made real, strong progress early with the Offensive Weapons Bill, #knifefree and £22 million of early intervention youth fund money.
Equally, we have developed and stepped up action over time. At the Conservative party conference the Home Security announced an independent review of drugs, because of the role that drugs are playing in the market, and concerns that he had around links to serious violence. There was the consultation on the new legal duty and the investment in the £200 million youth endowment fund, to really build the evidence base of what works, and to invest in proven interventions.
Equally, we have invested a further £100 million to support surge policing and the creation of the VRU. We are building up a response, and the PM’s summit and the first meeting of the PM’s implementation taskforce is a really important moment, actually—getting the whole of Government together, and making sure that we have a shared, deep understanding of the problem that we are trying to solve, and of risk and protective factors, and that we develop the next phase of the programme planning around that. It will evolve as the problem evolves.
Victoria Atkins: A good example of that are knife crime prevention orders. The police asked us to introduce these, I think at the end of summer last year. We have put them as a pilot into the Offensive Weapons Bill, which is about to receive Royal Assent, because the police said to us, “These children, who we suspect—we have intelligence on this—are carrying knives, and haven’t yet been caught, and we want to try to intervene before they either do great harm with those knives or end up in a youth court because they’ve been found in possession of one.”
The prevention orders are an example of us listening, evolving and reacting to the requests of those who are on the ground and working with these children, trying to solve these crimes and trying to prevent them from happening in the first place, in a way that we can on a national level.
Q538 Kate Green: You have spoken of the additional £100 million that was provided on an emergency basis, but that is against the backdrop of £3 billion of cuts in real terms to the police since 2010. Do you think that the police are adequately funded to deal with the knife crime challenge?
Victoria Atkins: I don’t want to go into a history lesson. We inherited a very, very bad economic picture in 2010. We had to make some very difficult decisions. We got to a stage in 2015 when the then Home Secretary was able to protect police spending. We are now in a situation where we are able to spend more on policing, and—
Q539 Kate Green: Is it enough?
Victoria Atkins: This is why we have more than £1 billion in addition to what was added last year. We are very conscious, and the Home Secretary has been very clear, that the challenges facing the police are different from how they were five or 10 years ago, and that police spending is his priority going into the next spending round.
If you look at some of the crimes that we are very conscious of today, previously they were there, but just weren’t reported or investigated in the same way that they are nowadays. I am thinking of modern slavery and child exploitation, including historic allegations. These are incredibly complex investigations that, of course, require huge amounts of police expertise and resources. This is why it is, overall—
Q540 Kate Green: Of course they do, but does that mean there is not enough funding left for the on-the-street policing that witnesses to the Committee have suggested? The neighbourhood policing that witnesses to the Committee have suggested is important to tackle serious violence and knife crime.
Victoria Atkins: We listened to police and crime commissioners and to chief constables. As a result of meetings with the chiefs and the serious violence taskforce, the extra £100 million was announced in the spring statement.
Q541 Kate Green: Is that to put more police on the streets?
Victoria Atkins: It is to help with what the police call surge policing. Already, following the funding formula that was passed by the House a couple of months ago, with the £970 million, most PCCs—perhaps all but one—have committed to using the increase in funding that they will receive to recruit more police officers and police staff. That is in the region of 3,500 that they are talking about. That is in addition to the £100 million that we already talked about, which is being given to help with overtime surge policing.
Q542 Kate Green: So police numbers are important in bringing down serious violence and knife crime. Would that be the correct conclusion to draw from what you just said?
Victoria Atkins: Of course police numbers are important when we are looking at how we tackle crime in this country. No Government of any colour has been able to come up with the magic formula where this number of police officers and this amount of funding will lead to this reduction in violence. If any country discovered that, I am sure any Government of any colour would seize that.
The last time there was a spike in serious violence in the early to mid-2000s, police numbers were far higher and rising. That is why we have been at pains in the serious violence strategy to say, “Look, there are many reasons and factors behind the increase in serious violence.” I think that most academics would say that significant increases in crime do not tend to be as a result of what is happening in policing. Am I describing that correctly?
Dan Greaves: I think that’s right. Generally, significant shifts in crime trends are primarily driven by external factors.
Q543 Kate Green: Violent crime, obviously, is what we are particularly interested in.
Dan Greaves: Absolutely, both acquisitive and violent crimes. If you look at acquisitive crime in the ’80s and ’90s, the heroin epidemic was a major factor in the upward trend. In the downward trend, two major drivers were vehicle immobilisers and improved home safety. The case of serious violence is much more complicated than significant reductions in outputs, as Mr Doughty said. The Minister said that in the early to mid-2000s we saw near-record levels of police numbers, and they were rising, yet there was a spike in crime. It is more complicated than that. It is what you do with those boots on the ground. Efficiency, productivity and tooling are really important. Equally, it is what you do with those officers. The evidence suggests that hotspot policing and problem-solving policing are what works. We have been working very closely with HMICFRS to make sure that police and other partners are following the evidence.
It is not just about law enforcement and what it does with resources, but a much wider set of social drivers, such as changes in drugs markets. We have seen increased availability and purity of drugs, and drug gangs taking the opportunity to establish the county lines methodology, with violence and exploitation at its heart. We think that is a major driver. We have talked about social media; we think that is a driver. We think that the increases in the vulnerable population may also have been a factor. You need to look at a much wider complex set of factors, rather than drawing a direct line between inputs and outcomes in this area.
Q544 Kate Green: I understand that, but within that mix, many witnesses have suggested that neighbourhood policing is important, not least because that is the way in which the police build trust and confidence with young people in their communities. Do you think that is right? If you do, do you think that neighbourhood policing is adequately resourced, given it has seen an average 35% cut in the last few years?
Victoria Atkins: Of course neighbourhood policing is important, and in that I include PCSOs. If local police and crime commissioners think that the best way to spend the money that they receive is on extra officers, we absolutely welcome that. I would draw to people’s attention the fact that police forces have reserves, and there is a wide range of reserves for different forces. My encouragement to chiefs and to police and crime commissioners is: yes, of course you have to keep a buffer for emergencies, but if the taxpayer is giving you money to spend on policing, please spend it. Some of our forces have very large reserves, and it is difficult to understand that.
Q545 Kate Green: Do those forces match where we see these increases in violent crime?
Victoria Atkins: If you will forgive me, I will just find the number.
Dan Greaves: While the Minister finds the number, can I come back on your point about community engagement? The evidence suggests that, as well as targeted, visible deterrents, meaningful community engagement is important, both to build trust in communities and to garner community intelligence. That is the evidence that underpins the long-term downward trend in New York, for example. It was a mixture of data-led policing, visible patrols and strong community engagement.
Q546 Kate Green: And do you consider that the police are adequately resourced for that strong community engagement? Certainly what I hear in my own constituency is that there are not enough police around to enable those relationships, that trust building, and those connections between our local young people and local police to come about in the way that the community feels is needed.
Dan Greaves: Of the £100 million that I talked about, £65 million, which will be in surge policing, will be used in a wide range of ways, as driven and determined by the chief constable locally. It might be used on equipment, patrols and weapons sweeps, but some of it can be around strong community engagement and working with neighbourhood teams, and, equally, working in partnerships with schools.
Q547 Kate Green: Will the Home Office assess what mix works best? Will you look at outcomes on those different mixes and models?
Dan Greaves: We will be looking closely at activity and outcomes, and looking to draw insights from them to generate an evaluation of the work. Clearly, that would take a degree of time, but we will maintain a close dialogue with the chiefs concerned.
Victoria Atkins: Just to help you—I emphasise that this is from March 2018, so it might be that the figures have come down—the reserves of Greater Manchester were £75.6 million.
Q548 Kate Green: Yes, but I can tell you as a Greater Manchester MP that the pressures on Greater Manchester police, not least in tackling terrorism and keeping our community safe, are substantial. Indeed, I think I am right in saying that the pensions bill alone for Greater Manchester police is over £100 million.
Victoria Atkins: It has increased by £25 million since 2011. But my plea, as I say, is, “Please spend that money,” which I am sure they are doing.
Q549 Kate Green: What about officers in schools? Does the Home Office have a view on how valuable schools-based officers are?
Victoria Atkins: That is a local decision—an operational matter for police chiefs and PCCs.
Q550 Kate Green: Does it trouble you that the West Midlands chief constable told us that he didn’t think you had the resources to put any officers in schools or pupil referral units?
Victoria Atkins: Dan might be able to help there. Again, that would be an operational matter for the chief.
Q551 Kate Green: I do not think he was saying you did not want to. He was simply saying he had not got the resources to place police officers in pupil referral units.
Dan Greaves: I just reassure you that, as the second largest force and the second largest by knife crime volume, the West Midlands will be a significant recipient of the serious violence fund. Of the £65 million, £7.6 million will go to the West Midlands police. There will be a dialogue between us when they submit their plan, as the Minister heard, as requested. That will be a challenge that we in the Home Office will make to ensure that the balance of investment is correct, from enforcement through to community engagement.
Q552 Kate Green: Does the Home Office know how many schools-based police officers there are now, compared with, say, 10 years ago?
Victoria Atkins: That would be information held at a local level. Again, we are very conscious that there are different responses in different parts of the country. For example, Operation Sceptre is the week of national activity that the police forces hold every six months. It is not the only week that the police work on knife crime, but it is used as a big set-piece exercise. I am sure you will have been aware of when it happened earlier this year. The range of ways in which the police choose to mark Operation Sceptre week is various. There will be school visits—last week, more than 1,000 school visits were reported to us from September 2018—and there will also be knife searches, knife amnesties and weapons sweeps and so on. There is a range of ways that the police can do that. We—I as the Minister, and the Home Office—have to tread that very fine line and not tell chief constables how to run operations.
Q553 Kate Green: Sure, but I am sure that you will want to look across all forces at what has been effective and, through what approaches, money has made the greatest difference. Will the Home Office undertake to make that assessment, gather that evidence and consider it, and use that to inform the way that you prepare the Department’s case for a long-term funding settlement for the police?
Dan Greaves: You have rightly identified that it is not just about the presence in a particular school, but doing what works. The evidence suggests that some techniques around the idea of “scared straight”—some of which are still being used—can be ineffective. That is something that your Committee was told during an earlier evidence session. One of the 61 commitments in the serious violence strategy is to prepare guidance jointly with the education sector and police to draw out the evidence of what works and what is the optimal use of those school-based partnerships.
Victoria Atkins: There can be a range of ways in which the police meet young people. I visited Blackpool very recently, which suffers from county lines at the moment. I met several young police cadets, and the officer in charge of them said to me, “We are really pleased that we have been able to include them, because we couldn’t be sure that one or two of them would not have gone down the wrong path.” There are different ways that the police can reach children; it does not have to be through school, important though that can be.
Q554 Kate Green: My assessment is that if the Home Office is to be, as you said, forward-leaning in your approach to working with police forces on violent crime, that puts a responsibility on the Home Office to draw together that knowledge and information, and to use that to spread best practice and ensure that best practice is adequately and appropriately funded. Would that be fair?
Victoria Atkins: Yes, it is. We disseminate that knowledge not just through the serious violence taskforce and meetings with chief constables, but through officials’ workings with police forces across the country daily.
Q555 Kate Green: I have one last question. This is not directly a Home Office responsibility, but I am interested in your perception. In recent years we have seen a toughening of sentencing for knife crime. What assessment are the Government making of the effectiveness of tougher sentences for carrying and using knives?
Victoria Atkins: We have the mandatory minimum sentence for the second strike of carrying knives. The reason that that was introduced was very much to send out the message about the seriousness of carrying a knife. I should say that it is not just on the second occasion; we do not always remember that there is a maximum sentence of four years for adults in possession of a knife for the first time. It is at the discretion of the judge.
Q556 Kate Green: Do you have any evidence on how that is shaping behaviour?
Victoria Atkins: Yes, we know that the average length of custodial sentences for knife and offensive weapons offences has increased from 5.3 months in 2008 to 8.1 months in 2018. We know that 37% of knife and offensive weapons offences resulted in an immediate custodial sentence in 2018, compared with 20% in 2008.
Q557 Kate Green: I was not asking about sentencing behaviour. I was interested in whether that served as a deterrent and a discouragement to knife crime.
Dan Greaves: We set out evidence in the modern crime prevention strategy, which I think was published in 2017 and looked at the drivers of crime, including drugs, alcohol, opportunity, character and so on, and the effectiveness of the criminal justice system. We set out in some detail our assessment of the evidence. The strongest evidence relates to the certainty of being brought to justice and given a sanction. There is a weaker correlation in the evidence between the severity of a sentence and the deterrent effect, although of course, imprisonment provides an opportunity to intervene in a rehabilitative and incapacitative way with an offender.
Q558 Chair: To follow up, when will the guidance you referred to on policing and schools co-operation be produced?
Dan Greaves: I would have to come back to you on that detail, Chair. I know it is in gestation, and I know it will be published shortly, but I don’t know the precise date. I would be happy to come back to you with an estimated time of delivery.
Q559 Chair: Can I just clarify: is it the Home Office’s position that you do not have a view on whether or not police officers should be based in schools, and whether that is a good thing? I understand the final decision is always one for operational police officers, but do you think it is a good thing or not? You think that neighbourhood policing is a good thing, but it is for them to make a final decision on how many. Do you think that having police officers based in schools is a good thing?
Victoria Atkins: I think it also depends on the school. As we know from hotspot policing, there will be some schools where this is a live, daily issue; there will be other schools across the country where it isn’t. In the right schools, I would hope that there would be a police relationship established, but again, it has to be at local level.
Chair: Okay. John Woodcock?
Q560 John Woodcock: Thank you, Chair; apologies for having missed the very opening of the session. We have focused on the very significant rise in knife crime. By the Government’s own figures, you have also had a close to trebling of the number of county lines in operation within two years. I thought, Mr Greaves, you gave a good account of the many and complex drivers, and therefore the complexity of the levers that any Government can operate in order to turn this situation around. However, Minister, do you accept that the totality of the levers and the way that they are resourced are just not sufficient to turn this around at the moment?
Victoria Atkins: I am very cautious about this. The figures that were released for the year ending December 2018 showed the increases, but the work that has been going on in London on immediate law enforcement suggests signs of a slowing in the rate of, for example, injuries in under-25s. I do not think this is out of our reach at all, but I think we are right to keep examining whether we are putting the correct resources into the right levers, if you like.
Q561 John Woodcock: Out of your reach—do you mean stopping the increase? The reason I push you is I understand that often, these sessions become quite inquisitorial, and that leads you and Ministers to take a defensive approach on this. I think most people looking at this from the outside, when they see the scale of the problem, may accept that a public health approach is indeed right, but they see the scale of the reductions in expenditure across so much of the public realm for which a public health approach would be required, and they just cannot see it as being realistic to reduce significantly the levels of violent crime that have resulted in that.
Dan Greaves: Can I respond to a couple of your points? We talked about the number of county lines having increased. I think law enforcement colleagues at the National Crime Agency and the National Police Chiefs Council would say that it is not necessarily the case that the number has increased; it is just their understanding. They have developed an understanding of the problem.
John Woodcock: Okay. I want to avoid—
Dan Greaves: I’m not saying it’s not a serious problem; it’s a very serious problem.
Q562 John Woodcock: If I can just pause you for a moment, I take that point, but it is very easy in these sessions to get into the detail of this when we know that—by whatever measure, really—there is a significantly increased problem with violent crime and the things associated with it. Part of the frustration you see on this Committee is this: I think you are a dedicated Minister and the Government want to do something about this, but you aren’t prepared to be quite as open as you perhaps could be that what is on the table at the moment is simply not sufficient to turn this around in the way that you would like. Isn’t that fair?
Victoria Atkins: The Home Secretary has made it clear that policing will be his priority in the spending review. I think we need to get out of the traditional Treasury/Whitehall way of looking at these massive societal issues as being so siloed. There are a number of areas of my portfolio where I am reaching out. Ministers across Departments are working together. I appreciate that if the police arrest someone for a particular type of exploitative offence—not just serious violence—they will end up in the criminal justice system. They may end up in the prison population as well. To me, it is about resources, but it is also about looking across, as opposed to silos.
Q563 John Woodcock: Very much so—absolutely. However, that would imply that with a great degree of working together—you have been pushed on how often you are meeting, and how Ministers are working together—the system could crack this without increase in resource, or simply with restoration of the resource that has been taken away, which is simply not on the table. You of all Ministers are probably in a place to call that as it is. Without calling that as it is, we can never hope to get on top of the problem, because we are always going to be discussing, “How is this £100 million being spent?”, or, “Isn’t this a great thing?”, when actually the resource is not close to being enough to properly get this under control.
Victoria Atkins: This is why the spending review is so important.
Q564 John Woodcock: So make the case publicly now, Minister.
Victoria Atkins: We are at the end of a spending review period, and there is a huge amount of work going on, not only in the context of serious violence—the Committee understands full well the range of issues—
Q565 John Woodcock: Dial down the diplomatic language for a moment, Minister, and make the case.
Victoria Atkins: There is work going on with the spending review. I would like us to be quite bold in how we approach such issues as adverse childhood experiences. The Committee may know that the Leader of the Commons is leading a group of Ministers that is looking at the first two years of development. I elbowed my way on to that Committee, because although the Home Office does not have responsibility for early years care, too often domestic abuse, neglect or adverse childhood experiences that happen in the first two years are things that we then end up dealing with later on.
Q566 John Woodcock: Yes, and that is yet another factor. It is helpful to raise it. Presumably it will be a problem in tackling this area if the rumours do turn out to be true and the three-year spending review becomes a one-year spending review. It is either helpful or it is not, and you can say.
Victoria Atkins: I think that for a lot of the organisations we are working with, particularly in the charitable sector, it helps them if we can give them longer periods of funding, because they are then concentrating on their work, rather than funding.
Q567 John Woodcock: Do you accept that there is a pressure, and potentially a deficiency, in the system, with the amount of autonomy that the various parts of the public realm have? You have, to be uncharitable, taken refuge sometimes in saying, “That is a matter for the police”, or “That is a matter for local authorities.” Unless central Government, from the Prime Minister to the Home Office and downwards, can have greater power to direct and channel funding that goes into health, education, local authorities and local forces to provide activities for young people, then even if you get the increase in resources, they will not be able to properly tackle the problem. That is a concern, isn’t it?
Victoria Atkins: There has been a huge change in approach. I am not being party political here, but the previous Administration tended to be quite centralised. The coalition Government was very keen on taking power to local areas through, for example, the election of police and crime commissioners. That means that when we make funding decisions at the national level, it is for local police and crime commissioners to decide how to spend that money locally, so we say, “Well, if the public don’t like it”—
Q568 John Woodcock: But that is the problem. If you, as a Minister, are being held to account for the huge rise in violent crime, but you no longer have the levers you need to pull, it has gone too far in the wrong direction.
Victoria Atkins: A good police and crime commissioner can make an extraordinary difference in their local area. Whether they sit here and give evidence, I don’t know.
Q569 John Woodcock: Finally, Minister, on the use of rape as a weapon of serious violence, it sends a deeply alarming message to many people around the country to see someone who has put themselves in the political sphere being able, in essence, to incite rape or make jokes about rape to another person in the public eye. That is deeply distressing, isn’t it? What can you do about it?
Victoria Atkins: It is disgraceful, and my sympathies and thoughts are with our colleague—our friend—who is having to deal with this. We know that many female MPs and many women in the wider public eye receive threats of rape and death online and in emails. I just don’t know what has happened to public discourse in this country that people think it is okay to speak like that. Obviously, I cannot comment on individual operational decisions, but I hope that any colleague who receives that sort of abuse online has all our support. The Prime Minister announced last year work on tackling offences of abuse of elected officials and so on. That is really important and must continue.
Q570 John Woodcock: Thank you. It is not just that Jess Phillips is being threatened in the street; there are reports this morning that female journalists who report on this are now being threatened directly. I am not expecting an announcement now, but does this give you the feeling that you might need to look again at the current framework for incitement, given that something can explode in this way and cause serious threats to people’s wellbeing?
Victoria Atkins: As I said, the Prime Minister announced the intention of looking at this, and indeed that is going on. I will write to you with more details on this, but as I said, for any person in the public eye, regardless of whether they are a Member of Parliament, a celebrity or a journalist, it is just not the decent way to behave. This goes back to public discourse more widely on social media, and teaching our children that it is not okay to say these things online. What is illegal offline is illegal online.
Q571 John Woodcock: If a politician can say this in the public eye to another politician and escape any kind of credible punishment for it, what does it say to people who are not in the public eye about what they can do?
Victoria Atkins: I mustn’t be drawn into discussing the individual case—as I said, I am conscious that there is an operation going on—but it is for everyone to decide whether the way they cast their vote is in line with their overall view of the world, their ethics and their understanding of common decency.
Q572 Chair: Your concern about this will be shared by everybody. It would be helpful if you or another Home Office Minister were able to write to us about this. I am sure you agree that political parties, too, have a responsibility to take much stronger action in these sorts of circumstances.
Victoria Atkins: Very much so.
Q573 Chair: Notwithstanding any individual criminal investigation that is under way, it would be helpful to know whether you are looking again at the electoral framework and the consequences when issues around incitement to violence and so on are raised.
Victoria Atkins: The Home Secretary has taken a personal interest in this. I do not know what more I can say at this stage, but he has taken a personal interest—in the overall issue, I am careful to emphasise.
Q574 Chair: May I ask you some final follow-up factual questions? Going back to the issue of the funding for organisations’ different youth investments and so on, you have your youth endowment fund, the CLG, a youth deterrent fund, the trusted relationships fund and so on, but Anne Longfield expressed concerns about those being very fragmented interventions. It would be helpful to have an assessment from you of how much from all those different funds will be spent on these interventions this year. Obviously, your endowment fund is spread over 10 years. My calculation is that, in total, it looks like all these add up to about £35 million for this coming year, compared with about £700 million cut from youth services. It would be useful to have an accurate figure from you for the annual funding you are putting in for these programmes.
Victoria Atkins: Of course I will provide that. There are other sources of funding as well. I would make a point about the £200 million youth endowment fund: that has been created in such a way that it will be invested as well, so that the £200 million increases. It is leveraged up over 10 years. That is a detail that I will be happy to send.
Q575 Chair: It would be useful to know. Is it £20 million this coming year, or is it nothing this year, but money next year? We could do with information on precise use of the funding. You also referred to a meeting this afternoon. Which one was that?
Victoria Atkins: It is the Prime Minister’s—let me get the full title. It arises out of the summit. It is the serious violence strategy implementation taskforce.
Chair: It would be really helpful if you went along to that meeting to ask for some of the basic information that we have been asking for: how many young people are thought to be at risk of being drawn into carrying a knife; how many areas are identified as being high risk; how many young people live in high-risk areas and therefore might be at risk; how many are being reached by any form of youth prevention work; how many will be reached as a result of the programmes that you have talked about; how many police officers you have in schools across the country; and who is in charge in each area, or at least who is in charge in each of the areas where knife crime is rising significantly, and you believe there is a problem and more action is needed. If you also set out your expectations of when you want the person in each of those areas to report back to the Prime Minister’s taskforce, we can have some confidence that action is being taken, that you have got a grip on the scale of the problem, that the Home Office is taking some follow-up action, and that people are actually going to be held to account.
You will have understood our concern. This is not just about our job in the scrutiny role that we play, but about the children and young people’s lives that are being lost, and the ever-increasing number of knife crimes across this country. We have heard too much evidence in this inquiry that suggests that the Government do not have a grip; in your evidence, you have not given me reassurance that they are wrong, you are right, and you do actually have a grip on this. This is too serious for any of us to let it drift.
Thank you very much for your evidence today.