My Lords, in moving Amendment 28 in my name, I will speak also to the other amendments in this group.
Those under the new legal obligation to collaborate with each other to prevent and reduce serious violence are set out in Schedule 1 to the Bill and include clinical commissioning groups and local health boards, but they do not, for example, include hospital trusts. We will come to what should be included in serious violence in a later group, but in that group, the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe, has an amendment to include violence that results in the victim receiving injury that requires emergency hospital treatment, or where the injury amounts to grievous bodily harm.
Leaving the definition of serious violence to one side until we reach that group, we know from the work of Professor Jonathan Shepherd of Cardiff University how important information about knife crime, for example, is to the police in tackling that type of serious violence. It therefore seems to be a serious omission that not all NHS bodies in the area are listed as bodies that must be consulted as provided for in Clause 7(4), particularly hospital trusts. This omission leads one to question again to what extent this is really a public health approach to tackling and reducing serious violence. I have suggested that hospital trusts, for example, are included as bodies that must be consulted, rather than specified authorities, to avoid hospital trusts being compelled to divulge sensitive personal patient information under the other provisions of this chapter.
Hospital trusts can also play an important role in allowing charities such as Redthread to engage with victims of knife crime at “teachable moments” when victims involved in gangs are at their most receptive to being approached to discuss a way out of their violent lifestyles, particularly when they have been seriously injured or their injuries are life-threatening. I have personally heard powerful testimony from a young father, the mother of whose child had committed suicide, realising when in A&E with a serious knife wound that his child might have to grow up without either of his parents if he did not turn his back on his violent past. This is an example of a truly multiagency, public health approach to serious violence, where those involved in violent gangs are not necessarily imprisoned—where they may be further brutalised—but are supported to turn their lives around.
The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, suggests that young people’s groups and religious and cultural groups must also be consulted. In these cases, such groups can have a crucial role to play in providing a safe alternative to the sense of belonging that many young people desperately seek and that criminal gangs appear to provide.
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As I said on Wednesday, many young people lack family support and find themselves groomed by gang members who appear to provide them with the sense of belonging that they so desperately seek. Of course, the reality of being in a gang is very different, where discipline within the gang is enforced by violence and junior members and girls are often abused and exploited. It is often not the fault of the parents, or the lone parent, who must do three minimum-wage jobs to pay the rent, put food on the table and pay their energy
bills, and as a result can rarely be there for their kids, but it creates an emotional vacuum that gangs can so easily fill. Young people’s groups can provide positive alternatives to gangs, where that need for a sense of belonging can be met. Similarly, religious groups can provide not only a similar positive sense of belonging but a positive counternarrative to extremist distortions of true religion which can lead to serious violence. As the former Chief Rabbi, Lord Sacks—may his memory be a blessing—said, the antidote to bad religion is good religion.
I acknowledge and admire the tireless work of the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe, to raise awareness of the negative impacts of alcohol on society. In his Amendment 32 he also includes drug use as another driver of serious violence. Certainly, drugs such as crack cocaine can lead to violent behaviour, as alcohol does, and of course, while drug supply continues to be in the hands of criminals, there will be violence associated with turf wars between rival drug gangs. When the only way to enforce drug deals is through the use or threat of violence, drugs can also be a cause of serious violence by that means.
We also share the concerns of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee in Amendments 33 and 41, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, and supported by my noble friend Lord Beith, that a strategy under this part of the Bill can have legislative effect, for example, to place authorities such as education authorities under a statutory duty to comply with a strategy that does not even have to be made public. However, I am not convinced that a national serious violence oversight board, as suggested by the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, is necessary, as I would hope that such bodies as Her Majesty’s inspectorates would already be under an obligation to review serious violence strategies and share good practice—but I will listen with interest to her arguments and the response of the Minister. In the meantime, I beg to move.