Violent Crime Reduction Bill

That may be true, though I have yet to see the evidence that makes it believable. It is certainly an argument in favour of my right hon. Friend’s proposals. I want to address another issue of crime and culture in relation to knife crime. We know that the way to deal with many kinds of crime is to get to the root causes of the problem, to identify the perpetrators or gangs of perpetrators, to target them, to deal with them effectively and to have a multi-agency approach to tackling the problems. However, we have not yet applied that approach to the problem of knife crime. The Bill addresses the particular issue of taking knives into schools, yet, as we all know, the reality is that schools and local education authorities are often not engaged in wider crime reduction activities or wider measures against antisocial behaviour. The measures that schools take internally to deal with gangs and bullying often do not link up with those being taken in the wider community to deal with the same young people who are causing a problem—the same bullying, the same violence and the same gangs. Unless we can introduce into the area of knife carrying and knife use the targeted approach that we have used in relation to antisocial behaviour and are using in gun crime, we will not be effective in dealing with knife crime. I do not yet see an approach to dealing with the carrying of knives by young people that begins to be as coherent as our approach is becoming towards, at one end of the scale, antisocial behaviour, and, at the other end, guns. I can see little evidence that the Government’s idea that we should consult and discuss with young people before we introduce policies that affect them has been brought into play in developing effective strategies for dealing with the carrying of knives by young people. Ironically, the Government have accepted for some time that we will not deal with gun crime unless we engage with young people in these communities, not only on guns but on a whole range of wider issues. The same needs to be true in relation to young people carrying knives. I fear that the measures in the Bill will be a little limited unless we take a broader approach.