When 17-year old Illya Habibi was killed in a knife attack in December 2023 in my constituency, he was just minutes away from a local police station.
Illya had his whole life ahead of him. He, alongside far too many more young people who have died on our streets in recent years, was failed by our seeming inability to get a grip on combating knife crime.
London’s failure in this area has many causes – not least collapsing PCSO numbers, the systematic challenges facing the Met which are hampering its recruitment, and lack of consistent funding for Early Intervention programmes.
The time has come for decision makers to recognise that the solutions to this crisis are not simply to do with enforcement. We cannot punish away the root causes of knife crime.
The tired old paradigm of enforcement has had its day – it has failed to stop the uptick in stabbings and relies on the lazy assumption that being tough on crime means not having to be even tougher on the causes of crime.
This week I held my first Westminster Hall debate – and took the opportunity to make the case to the Government for a new strategy across the capital; a public health approach.
It’s an approach that brings together stakeholders across every critical intervention point, breaking down the silo walls between bodies, putting teachers, A&E doctors, social workers, sports clubs, and so many more stakeholders, in partnership with law enforcement.
It marries up early intervention (in which young people vulnerable to a life of gang crime are identified by public bodies they interact with and offered support) with a holistic approach to encouraging young people who are already carrying knives to feel able to walk away from the cycle of violence.
In Scotland, it has been in place for almost two decades and has received consistent funding from local authorities and Holyrood – not least because it has shown to yield results. In Glasgow alone it reduced violent crime by more than two-thirds.
A hallmark of this approach is the creation of Violence Reduction Units, and their serious financial support by government to make them the hubs of proactive action they need to be.
London established one of these in 2018 – but as I highlighted in my speech – it isn’t yet functioning as part of a wider public health approach to knife crime.
It remains unable to expand its efforts to engage every aspect of civil society and as such just isn’t the focal point for a whole-of-society approach, and the “it takes a village” attitude, we so desperately need.
Its funding remains far too low even after the increases the Mayor outlined last year – and it’s clear to me that without more government support it simply won’t be able to shift London away from an over-reliance on enforcement and towards much-needed proactive engagement.
The Labour government must listen – or else more young people will continue to die on our streets. I hope beyond hoping that they do not repeat the mistakes of the last Conservative government, who paid lip service to the idea of the public health approach but utterly failed to implement it.
Violence really does behave like a virus, and it will continue to spread among young people in our capital without serious and sustained proper public health interventions.
When Covid hit our country, we rallied every aspect of civil society to fight it. We partnered social workers with healthcare professionals, police forces with the third sector, and so much more. We recognised that to fight a public health emergency we had to take this joined up approach.
It falls to us now, with young people still dying on our streets (and on our buses, and in our schools) to take up the mantle of that approach to combat knife crime too.
It is the only way we will win the war for the hearts and minds of young people at risk of picking up a knife.
And as I reminded the House on Wednesday, success in this area is measured in something more important than profit or efficiency. It is measured in lives, and futures, saved.
The Government cannot punish away the root causes of knife crime, we need a smarter approach
