‘It’s as easy for a young person to buy a knife online as it is a football’
LABOUR LEADER REVEALS PLANS TO TACKLE KNIFE CRIME
SIR Keir Starmer has revealed how Labour plans to tackle the devastating knife crime in Yorkshire by getting more early intervention into schools.
The Labour leader outlined his party’s key missions in crime and policing in a speech in Stoke-on-Trent last week, which include a big focus on driving down knife crime.
Speaking to the Examiner, Starmer said he knew action on knife crime would be particularly “keenly felt” in West Yorkshire after the “terrible, tragic” deaths of teenagers Khayri Mclean and Harley Brown due to knife crime.
“I know from similar cases in my own constituency just how deep this goes with families and with communities. Our mission is to halve the incidence of knife crime,” he added.
“We need to be tough on crime, and tough on the cause of crime by focusing on prevention and protection. That means we need to have people working in schools - we need to have mental health workers in schools dealing with some of the children and young people who are getting drawn into offending.”
Starmer added that Labour had also identified A&E as a setting for early prevention, where contact may be made with victims and perpetrators.
Labour is also campaigning for a specific offence of grooming young people to help stop knife crime tied up with gang culture and County Lines, and to put 13,000 more neighbourhood police on the streets.
“I’m sure this will astonish people across Yorkshire – it’s as easy for a young person to buy a knife online as it is a football, including some of those really awful knives. So we’ve got to have a law that allows us to tackle those
At the heart of it is getting in with children and young people very early on
Sir Keir Starmer
online providers,” he said.
“At the heart of it is getting in with children and young people very early on before it gets to the incidence of knife crime.”
The party leader also laid out plans to halve the amount of violence against women and girls. Labour want rape units in every police force across the country, specialist rape courts to speed cases up, and experts on domestic violence taking 999 calls.
“The prosecution rates are shocking and a badge of shame for the government,” he said.
“To take rape for example, the charge rates 1.6% - which means that 98 out of every 100 rapists never even get put before a court.
“I had to double check that because I couldn’t it was so shockingly low. Across Yorkshire that will make a huge difference to individuals and their families and anyone impacted by the pernicious nature of violence against women and girls.”
Starmer said “reform of the police” was needed after the release of the Casey report into failings in the Metropolitan Police last week.
He said “elements” of what was found about the Metropolitan Police will be “found across the country, including in Yorkshire”, and said “cultural change” was needed in the police, as well as national standards for vetting recruits.
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