Mr David Lammy
MP for Tottenham · Labour · United Kingdom
“I am delighted to welcome the shadow Housing Secretary to the Dispatch Box. He, of course, could have been doing that job every week if he were better with numbers.”
“The right hon. Gentleman has not proposed what the Conservatives would do if they were in office. They released 10,000 under four different schemes, with no impact assessment when they released them, no victim contact when they released them, and no warning. They did it on the sly.”
“This is a very serious issue and the right hon. Gentleman is experienced in this House. He knows that while he was Home Secretary, the Conservative Government had an early release scheme that let out 10,000 offenders—10,000. They had six schemes within a year.”
“I have been asked to reply on behalf of the Prime Minister, who is attending the NATO summit. Working with our allies, we are strengthening Europe’s role in the alliance, which remains the cornerstone of our national security.”
“The right hon. Gentleman insists on proving that he cannot count. We lost 16,000 police officers when the Conservatives were in power. The British people have not forgotten what they did to our country. After two years of this Labour Government, I will compare our record with theirs every day of the week.”
“I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I have the honour to say that His Majesty the King has accepted our advice to grant Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in the United Kingdom, a conditional pardon. [Hon.”
The complete record
Every one of 3,387 lines we hold for Mr David Lammy, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 59 of 68.
“Showering to get ready for college, she heard a loud knock at the door. Quickly, she began to get dressed, but she was too slow. When five immigration officers burst open the front door, she was still half naked. Loudly, they ordered Alberta to come out of the bathroom. The indignity of her situation grew as, in her own words, she felt a “spontaneous gush of blood” between her legs; the terror caused her period to come early. Mortified, she explained to the officers that her five-year immigration permit was still valid. They did not listen. Instead, they arrested her and locked her in the back of their van, where she remembers feeling “like a caged animal.” Alberta was taken to Yarl’s Wood detention centre, imprisoned despite committing no crime. Yarl’s Wood, of course, is essentially a prison.”
“I am very grateful to have the opportunity to bring this issue to the House. Like an immigrants, my constituent Alberta came to this country with the dream of a better life. Hers was to serve the NHS as a midwife. Aged 19, she was studying health and social care at college. Life was going well—so well, in fact, that she used her free time to help others as a mentor for young children at her local primary school. Arriving in Tottenham from Ghana in 2012, she was a shining example of what migrants contribute to the United Kingdom. Alberta was, and still is, a proud and intelligent young woman with dreams, the capacity for hard work and the compulsion to help others on her way up. But one June morning last year, everything changed for Alberta. It was a day that she would later describe to me as one of the worst in her life.”
“We have in our democracy clear rules so that we do not exercise, or see the exercise, of undue influence. For that reason, certainly in the last decade, we have had two elections declared void—in South Thanet and Oldham East and Saddleworth. Can the Minister confirm whether the Government can declare this referendum void on the basis of the evidence that we have been provided with by the Electoral Commission? If not, given that this was an advisory referendum by this Parliament, can she bring forward a vote in this Parliament to declare this referendum void?”
“(Urgent Question): May I ask the Minister of State if she will make a statement on the decision to pause the hostile environment and to slip that information out during the World cup last night?”
“Is it respectful to have said nothing about whether the Minister is going to allow for a proper appeals system? Will the Minister confirm that these changes are not just for the Windrush generation and that they are in fact for everyone who has been affected by the hostile environment? She talks about a “pause”, but why not scrap the hostile environment that is bringing this country into disrepute? Will she also confirm that we will no longer be asking teachers, nurses, doctors and landlords to act as the country’s border enforcement in the months and years ahead?”
“It is important to put on record the fact that immigration has brought considerable benefits to this country. We saw last night in England’s World Cup team 11 of the players from black or mixed-race heritage backgrounds. That is a tribute to the modern diversity of this country. When the Secretary of State took up his position a few weeks ago, he said that he wanted a decent system, a fair system and a system that treated people with respect. Is it respectful to slip out this information during yesterday’s World Cup spectacle? Is it respectful for the Minister’s Department still not to be able to tell us how many people have been detained? Is it respectful not to have any information about a transparent hardship scheme for those who are still in trouble?”
““Together against Trump” has organised an important protest against this most divisive global figure for tomorrow afternoon. It is usual for those who gather at Portland Place to be able to hear speeches. Why on this occasion has the Metropolitan Police said, unusually, that it will not allow a stand, which would enable those gathered to hear people speak before they begin their march?”
“I, too, welcome the new Minister to his position. May I recommend to him the Lammy review? In it he will see that there is tremendous concern that the youth prison population now is 43% from a black or ethnic minority background. Will he look closely at its recommendations and can I meet him soon?”
“When the Prime Minister took office she said that she wanted to bring the country back together, and I believe that she had the will of most people in this House and the country. Some 69% of British people now think that Brexit is going badly, her Cabinet is horribly split, the Government are split, the nation is more divided than ever, and our people will be poorer as a consequence of this deal that leaves out services. Will she now commit to giving the people a second vote on this deal?”
“So in thinking also of that more painful legacy, let us think about the renewed support that this country needs to give.”
“If you take a black man and you say to him that you can move him across the country to another plantation and strip him from his family, so that he does not own himself or his relationship with his wife or with his children, you create a phenomenon that is very real in those communities: the phenomenon of the babymother, where it is not my wife or my husband, but my babymother or my babyfather. That legacy lives on in our communities. It is a community that has been way too accustomed to violence. This is the dislocation of not seeing those role models in front of you and never hearing your history, and this is about how that affects generations years and years later. We are a community of tremendous resilience, but we cannot all be resilient.”
“As we think about those landing cards that were destroyed, let us redouble our efforts on behalf of organisations such as the Black Cultural Archives. Finally, let me say that we are having this debate against probably the most depressing backdrop possible, having seen the murder of 78 young lives here in the city of London. May I say most gently that there is something that connects these murders at this time with the sorts of crime that we see also in African-American societies and, sadly, in parts of the Caribbean, particularly in Trinidad and in Jamaica. That story is a story of dislocation. It is the story of a lack of fatherhood and role models, and it is a story that begins with those plantations.”
“How do we make that work? What dialogue do we as a country need to have with those people? Can we also think about our heritage in this country? In the last few years we have seen the birth of the Black Cultural Archives, based in south London; the International Slavery Museum in Liverpool; and organisations such as the Stephen Lawrence Centre and the Bernie Grant Arts Centre. Many of these organisations are struggling today. Frankly, they are struggling for a handout from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. What they should have got was a proper endowment, from which they could derive interest, that bought them security so that they could continue to make a contribution to this country.”
“There was no reparation for those slaves, and the Caribbean nations have been united in wanting to put the issue of reparations back on the table at the United Nations as they think of their futures. Why do they do that? It is because, as they celebrate so many years since independence—Guyana celebrated 52 years of independence just a few weeks ago—and they look forward to the future, they think about the economies they inherited and they think about all they have achieved but, frankly, there is a sense in which they were abandoned. It is important that this country hears and listen to those calls for support, particularly against a backdrop of the Government making it clear that they wish to enter into trade negotiations with those countries once again. Let us consider: what do reparations look like for those Caribbean nations?”
“This is not what the Commonwealth expects of the mother country. It has been a very painful episode indeed. As we commemorate this epic contribution and we think of the joys and the heroes, I thank God for people like Trevor McDonald and Moira Stuart entering my household on Dongola Road and lifting the spirits of my family and my cousins over so many weeks, months and years. As we think about all those great sons and daughters of this great region, let us also think of what further contribution we can give to these people, people who—I hope my right hon. Friend the Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) will allow me to say this—in some ways contain a little fragility because of that slave history.”
“I say to the Secretary of State, who has said of those Windrush citizens with criminal records who have been sent back to the Caribbean that he has no intention of bringing them back, that that is unacceptable. It is unacceptable because they are British citizens first. This country has had no such debate on the deportation of criminals. This country stopped deporting criminals to parts of the Australian Commonwealth in 1868. How can it be that, with no debate and no discussion, it has been deemed acceptable once again to deport British citizens, even if they have a criminal record, back to the Commonwealth? Can I say how badly this has gone down in the broader Commonwealth and how sad and embarrassing it was that we had this discussion and this debate during the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting?”
“Why has the Windrush taskforce, which has been specially appointed to support victims of the scandal, delayed its response time? Why are hundreds of victims who have contacted the taskforce regarding their citizenship still waiting for an appointment at the Home Office? Above all, today I think of the victims of this crisis, victims who are still facing desperate uncertainty, and the Government’s subsequent response. I think of Oliver Hutchinson; of Balvin Marshall, a British citizen made homeless and jobless by the hostile environment; of Rosario Wilson, whose grandfather arrived in Britain in the 1950s and who has spent thousands of pounds trying to prove his citizenship; and of my 27 constituents with ongoing cases and the thousands of other Commonwealth-born Britons who live in fear and uncertainty.”
“Why are they still being punished for the failures of the British state? Why have 32 of the 63 Windrush citizens unlawfully deported as a result of the Government’s hostile environment policy been refused their right to return to Britain? Why has the Home Secretary decreed that they should be exiled abroad instead of facing British justice in British courts as British citizens? Why has my constituent Oliver Hutchinson, who arrived from Jamaica in 1970, still not seen justice? He is a citizen by right, but for all of his life he has lived in fear of immigration enforcement and has been unable to get a job, access benefits or even have a stable home. He was arrested recently at a routine appointment with the Home Office on a bench warrant that was 20 years old.”
“The nurses who toiled in our hospitals, the train drivers, and the other public sector workers upon whom Britain relied were told that their contributions were null and void, and that they should leave this country immediately. Seventy years on, the Government thanked the Windrush generation for their service to this country by throwing them into detention centres and deporting them. Those victims have still not seen justice, and the Government’s response to the crisis continues to be inadequate. Why is there still no hardship fund for the Windrush victims? Why are innocent British citizens who have been made homeless and jobless by the Home Office being forced to wait months for compensation? People have been pushed into rent arrears and debt by the Home Office, but they still have no financial support.”
“It is an area of tremendous hybridity. In the Caribbean—I might say the same of Latin America—there is a meeting of the world’s people that is best explained by the carnival of Trinidad or the reggae of Jamaica. That is the area that I know. Many of the Windrush generation have once again been left destitute in recent times. The injustices that the victims face today have a history that we must remember. The story began in the 1700s and today, most painfully, we have been forced back across the Atlantic by the British Government in unlawful deportations justified by the “hostile environment.” That environment told Windrush citizens that they have no right to the British public services to which so many of them had dedicated their lives and to which their ancestors had contributed.”
“I am so proud to be a parliamentarian in this great nation, and it is the privilege of my life to speak in this Chamber, but I worry that the “great” in Great Britain is too often predicated on an inability to examine the truths of parts of Britain’s past. The heart of that past is colonial, and as we think about the Windrush generation we do not just think about the fact that they landed in 1948; we think about the umbilical cord between Britain and these people, because they were brought from Africa. The surname I have is not the surname of my ancestors; neither is Diane Abbott’s and neither is Dawn Butler’s. Those surnames were given to us by our slave masters. The language that we speak is a language we learned, because our ancestors lost their language and their culture. That is at the heart of the Caribbean tradition.”
“This is the same Britain that, sadly, has recently failed the Windrush generation. It had failed them previously, and it has failed them again today. Many of the Windrush generation have once again been made destitute by the British state. They have had their rights stripped from them, and they have been thrust into despair and desperation. The injustices that the victims face today have a long history, and it is a history that Britain must never forget. I do not say that to evoke guilt. This is not really about guilt. If you do not know where you are from, you do not know where you are going. If you just teach your young people the very best bits of history and do not examine the tougher bits, as the modern nations of Germany and Japan have had to do, you will make the same mistakes over and over.”
“Britain’s industrial revolution relied on the deindustrialisation of India, and its profits were built on the exploitation of Caribbean plantations and on the backs of Egyptian cotton farmers and Barbadian sugar producers. We cannot forget that those on board the Windrush came to Britain filled with the promise of the British motherland, yet this was the same Britain that had promised away all their riches and resources. It was the same Britain that has never faced justice for the crime of slavery, and that stole 12 million people from their homes in the dead of night and carted them like cattle across the ocean and into slavery. This had never before been seen in the world. Britain was still paying off its debts to slave owners in 2015, but it has never paid reparations to those who are the descendants of slaves.”
“They worked in unbearable conditions, their children were suffering from malnutrition and they faced an influx of disease. In Jamaica, searing unemployment ravaged society. Britain had closed sugar plantations in favour of cheaper labour elsewhere, and the consequences were devastating. Labour riots were commonplace as people became increasingly frustrated by the destitution that they faced. In Guyana, society was reeling from the Ruimveldt riots in the earlier part of the 20th century. Again, much of the economy was crippled, and people were working in bauxite mines and on sugar or rice plantations for very poor wages and in very poor conditions. People were rioting as a consequence. We cannot forget that Britain’s development was grounded in the underdevelopment of the Commonwealth.”
“Under the British, the French, the Dutch, the Spanish and the Portuguese, the Caribbean region and Latin America and south America had become little more than a warehouse from which to extract profit. In 1948, the societies that had once been made up of slaves and their owners were instead made up of rich planters and landless, low-wage labourers. People in the Caribbean had been emancipated from slavery in 1834, but they had achieved their emancipation in name only. Ten years before HMT Windrush arrived on British shores, labourers in Barbados were earning the equivalent of just £3.50 a day. Half the workforce worked in manufacturing and agriculture. Many were employed on sugar plantations and forced to work for extremely low wages.”
“Britain called, and they came. It is important to recognise why they came to the mother country, as they called it. They came because they wanted to take part in building Britain’s future, but they also came because there was little future left for them in the Caribbean. Like in Britain after the second world war, the homes of those on board the Windrush and the many boats that came after it had also been destroyed by a foreign power—a foreign power had left much of the Caribbean in a sorry state. Unlike in Britain, however, the siege of those countries had lasted for 300 years. Three centuries of colonial rule had stripped the Caribbean of much of its wealth and resources, and left behind an unsustainable plantation economy.”
“But we also remember the troubles that led up to the Notting Hill riots, the Brixton riot and the Tottenham riots, in which PC Keith Blakelock lost his life. We think also of the great injustices that lie behind parts of the pain and the stain on this country: the stain of the murder of Stephen Lawrence and those young people who lost their lives in the New Cross house fire. Those on board HMT Windrush were invited here as a result of a Britain crippled by war: a Britain facing chronic shortages of staff; a Britain with a dream of healthcare for all but no way of making that happen. It was a Britain whose hospitals were barely functioning, whose trains were barely running, whose streets were reeling from the destruction and devastation of German aeroplanes that bombed this country, a Britain in desperate need.”
“And as I say that, of course our hearts are with Sterling, Smalling and Danny Rose, who will step out on Monday in the 2018 World cup sporting white, red and the three lions on their shirts. But while reflecting on this great contribution there must also be a moment to think about the uncomfortable truths—the tough and the hard times—and to think about the struggles of those communities. As I stand here as the Member for Tottenham in London, I want also, as has already been touched upon, to think about communities in St Paul’s in Bristol, Chapeltown in Leeds, Handsworth in Birmingham and Moss Side in Manchester, and historical black communities in Tiger Bay in Cardiff and of course in Liverpool. These people formed the fabric of British society and today we remember them and thank them.”
“And I am not sure that I would be able to be a politician were it not for the tremendous work of the scholarly Stuart Hall and CLR James, defining leaders in British political thought, but also the work of those who have been a little more of the street and the frontline: I think of my predecessor Bernie Grant and Linton Kwesi Johnson, whose language and tone always chimed with me. Today I think of the descendants of the Windrush generation, whose parents and grandparents were told that there was no space under the British flag for them and that there was “no black in the Union Jack.” We tend when we celebrate to look at the positive, and nothing is more positive than Jessica Ennis, Daley Thompson, Linford Christie, Kelly Holmes or Colin Jackson draped in the Union Jack.”
“And in thinking of those transport workers, I think of my own mother, who did her own stint at London Underground, and of many occasions meeting her at Camden Town tube station, where she was based. I think of course also of Lord Bill Morris, elected general secretary of the Transport and General Workers Union, the first black general secretary of a trade union in Britain, who found his home in the movement after arriving in 1954—a British trade unionist for all British workers. And I think of great writers who have shaped our nation: people such as Andrea Levy and Zadie Smith, who have given us such moving insights into British life.”
“I hope that we also think about the first-generation immigrants who still come to our country, of how they manage to get by, and of the circumstances in which we support them. Today, of course, I also want to think about the thousands of nurses who came to Britain before 1971, to form the backbone of our national health service—women like my aunts, whom I watched working late nights and early shifts with incredible pride and dignity; women who toiled for all Britain’s sick and injured. I think of the thousands of transport workers who were recruited directly from Bridgetown and Kingston, and who for 70 years worked as bus and train drivers, and cleaners and wardens, in Britain’s stations and on Britain’s streets.”
“Today I want to remember the contributions of the 492 West Indian immigrants who arrived at Tilbury docks on 21 June 1948, and the 524,000 Commonwealth-born people who followed them until 1971. My own father arrived in 1956, from Guyana, and my mother arrived in the late 1960s. It is important to remember, when we think of those families arriving here, that when they arrived they were very young. My father was only 24, and he was actually at the older end of the scale among those who were on the boats. He produced my older brother just two years later, in 1958. I reflect, now, on what it means to become a parent in one’s mid-20s, in a new and strange country, juggling work, schools and health visitors: all those new things. In paying tribute to these people, we should reflect on how challenging that must have been at times.”
“For, I hope, very obvious reasons, I am grateful for the opportunity to participate in the debate. In so doing, I think of my parents, who are no longer with us, of my brothers and sisters, and of so many aunts and uncles. I think of the life that we all lived in Dongola Road, Tottenham, in the 1970s and 1980s. I mention Dongola Road because at the top of the road lived another family, briefly. It was the family of our former colleague Paul Boateng. As I summon up those memories, I am so grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes)—my dear friend—for initiating the debate, and for giving Parliament a moment to reflect on a most exceptional generation.”
“I hesitate to interrupt the hon. Gentleman. I am hugely appreciative of the fact that he has put on the record the link between Scotland and the Caribbean region. I took a DNA test not so long ago and it turns out that I, too, am a Scot. I am very well aware of my connections to the Blair family, and so potentially a former Prime Minister, and also to the Laing family, and so potentially a Madam Deputy Speaker.”
“I really want us to get back to a serious tone. I am grateful to the Minister for specifically mentioning the cocaine market. Will he say something about our Border Force? Will he also say something about resources for the National Crime Agency? He will understand that the average black teenager in Tottenham barely knows where Colombia is and certainly does not have the means to organise trans-shipment routes. Will he also say something about eastern European gangs?”
“I hesitate to interrupt the hon. Gentleman, but I want to put on record that the 2011 riots happened during that period. Against the backdrop of the riots, many of those young people were put in prison and that reduced the numbers, because the whole subject was about gang violence—he forgets all the media coverage at that time.”
“No parents or single mother can do it on their own. My wife and I certainly do not do it on our own, but we have the resources to pay for help and to bus our kids all over London to activities. Why should people on the poorest housing estates in London not have the same thing? The response is not good enough when all that the Government and the Met Commissioner want to talk about is stop-and- search or YouTube. Those two things are important, but they are not the only issues.”
“Of course Ministers have been quick to celebrate the £11 million early intervention youth fund, but what will that fund deliver when in my borough alone—the London borough of Haringey—the local authority has had to cut £160 million since 2010, when funding has fallen by almost 50%, and when there has been a 45% cut in staff? Unison has calculated that youth services have been cut by almost half. Will that £11 million meet the gap? Really? The Mayor is putting in a fund of £40 million, but that will not meet the gap and, going back to what I said originally, it gets us nowhere near the extra-curricular activities that some young people in our country who go to certain schools get, when the poorest young people who need as much, if not more, are getting less. It takes a village to raise a child.”
“They include to undertake “nationwide awareness-raising communication activity” and provide £175,000 to deliver support to children at risk in schools and pupil referral units. The Home Office is apparently to provide £1 million to help communities tackle knife crime and provide £500,000 for a new round of heroin and crack action areas. Am I really supposed to believe that if 50 or 60 white middle-class young people were killed in Surrey or Kent in space of five months, we would just have an “awareness-raising communication activity”? If innocent children were being gunned down on the streets of Richmond or Guildford, would we have a £175,000 fund to deliver support to at-risk children? A person cannot buy a house in London for £175,000, and that is what we are spending on at-risk children. Really? It is not good enough.”
“I have been passed a document by the Metropolitan police showing that half of the homicides that we saw in the capital last year were linked directly to gang activities and turf wars, but we are hearing very little about breaking that cycle—that cycle of protect and serve to sell drugs—and the myriad organisations that sit well above the youth crime on the ground. Let me put this bluntly. Very, very sadly, because of poverty and a lot of the issues in many of our constituencies, recruiting young people is much easier than it should be. We have to cut off the demand for the drugs that they are selling and the violence that it is driving in communities such as mine. This document is not a strategy; it is a wish list full of jargon. It is not sufficient—not even close. Let us look at the key actions and commitments.”
“It is worried that they are actually beginning to supply some people with grenades—grenades! You heard it here first in Parliament. When will we get serious about this? When will a grenade go off to protect a county line? The Government strategy recognises the following fact: “Serious violence, drugs and profits are closely linked. Violence can be used as a way of maintaining and increasing profits within the drugs markets.” The Government’s own strategy tells us that the share of homicides that are explicitly linked to drugs stands at 57%, yet, again, there is nothing new here on organised crime.”
“When we read the strategy, we find out that, apparently, there is “ongoing” work to tackle serious and organised crime, thanks to the 2017 drugs strategy that has promised to “restrict supply” by criminal gangs, “disrupt domestic drugs markets”, “respond effectively to the threat posed by organised crime groups” and make our borders “more resilient”. Well, it is not working. The strategy is linked to ongoing work on serious and organised crime, but there is not just a link; the two issues are the same. Serious organised crime drives violence, so we cannot have a serious violence strategy without a strategy to deal with serious organised crime. It could get worse. The National Crime Agency has been clear that eastern European organised groups are bringing guns into this country.”
“They are not being told that drugs are a priority. We have not had any statements from this Home Office on drugs policy. Many people think that the war on drugs has failed, but we have had nothing to replace it, and because we have had nothing to replace it, there is a growing market. Foot soldiers in my constituency and others are being recruited to feed the demand that exists across our country. In the serious violence strategy, there are no new announcements on organised crime. In the summary on the Government’s website, there is no mention of organised crime. In the four themes of the serious violence strategy, there is no mention of organised crime.”
“The Home Office’s own data shows that at least 1 million people in this country have taken cocaine in the past year, so there is a seriously lucrative market. If there is a lucrative market worth billions every year, that is worth fighting, so why are we not hearing more about cutting off these gangs at source and stopping the flow of drugs and firearms into our country? Why has the Border Force been cut by 25%? How is the Border Force to deal with the drugs coming into our country if there are not the personnel to do it? I have been to the National Crime Agency and had briefings from senior officers. They are being asked to do more with less. They are being asked to deal with cyber-crime; they are being asked to deal with terrorism; and they are being asked to deal with child sexual exploitation and many other issues.”
“Why is it getting worse and what will the strategy do to deal with the problem? The central issue, about which we hear so little and which the strategy does not really deal with in depth—we did not hear enough on it from the Minister when he was at the Dispatch Box, either—is the work of the Home Office and the National Crime Agency on serious organised crime and serious gangsters. According to the EU’s drugs agency, this country is the drugs capital of Europe. The UN has said that the global drugs market is thriving and London is the capital of the cocaine market in Europe. Some 30 tonnes of cocaine come into our country every year. Our illegal drugs market is worth at least £5.3 billion. The National Crime Agency says that drugs trafficking costs our country £11 billion per year.”
“It has always surprised me that some of those very same Members—not all, but some of them—do not realise that a black child in my constituency deserves exactly the same after school. If the Government cut local authorities in the way that we have seen, so that there cannot be the sport or youth services, how do we support a parent to raise her child? It is just like a doctor facing a patient and assessing whether the illness in front of him has got worse. Is it about the same, or is it getting better? When we look at youth violence, which has now been with us for well over two decades—certainly for the two decades that I have been a Member of Parliament—we have to ask ourselves whether it is the same, about stable or getting worse. The answer is that it is getting worse.”
“It is important to say right from the beginning that if any of my three children picked up a knife and took it to another child, I would be absolutely horrified and, frankly, the response that I would have as a father would be tougher than that of the police or the law. Of course these issues come back to parenting and to neighbourhoods, but it is also the case—we get used to it in this Chamber—that some Members have been to the best public schools, and that experience is not only about education, because one way in which those schools achieve all that they achieve is the fact that there is the most fantastic extra- curricular work at the end of the school day. If someone is lucky enough to go to one of our public schools, for that 30 grand a year, the rugby, cricket, football, drama and swimming are tremendous.”
“On Friday, I will attend the funeral of Tanesha Melbourne-Blake, who was shot dead at the age of 17 in my constituency on Easter bank holiday Monday. It was her death that triggered a national conversation about why 67 young people have lost their lives in our capital city. It is important to say that many of those young people who have lost their lives are black-British in their description. It is also important to say that this debate must, as it already has done, quite properly land on the issue of whether in fact black lives matter in this country. It is sad and depressing to have to say that, but all resources should be brought to bear to deal with this problem, and there is a feeling that had 67 young people lost their lives in a leafy shire, much more attention would have been paid.”
“I look forward to working with the Government on their serious violence strategy, because if we do not solve this problem, the figure will be over 100 by the autumn. You heard it here first. Over 100 young people—more than New York—will have died in this country. Do black lives matter or not? That is the question for the Minister.”
“It is not because they are gang members. They are hiding knives in bushes on the way to school and then finding them on Saturdays and Sundays because they are scared. We will have failed and the Minister will have failed if we do not make them feel safe. The third kind of young person are those who are dyslexic or have ADHD. They are not going to get access to medication, and there will be no access to CAMHS in the constituencies that we are talking about—it is not going to happen for months—so those young people are seduced into following the crowd. They get seduced by the videos, end up in a group, get arrested on joint enterprise and then go to prison. What are we going to do about that growing number? Those two groups need a proper strategy—a much better strategy than this.”