Oral Answers to Questions — Home Department – in the House of Commons at 2:30 pm on 14 December 2009.
Graham Allen
Labour, Nottingham North
2:30,
14 December 2009
If he will visit Nottingham to discuss the effect on crime statistics of the city's early Intervention programme.
Alan Johnson
The Secretary of State for the Home Department
The Government recognise the importance of early Intervention, and I was therefore interested to hear about the good work being done in Nottingham when the Cabinet met there recently. I would be pleased to make a further visit and have also arranged to meet my hon. Friend on
Graham Allen
Labour, Nottingham North
Does the Home Secretary agree that we are doing very well-I refer particularly to the crime and drugs partnership in Nottingham-on conventional crime, volume crime, and acquisitive crime which are amenable to better policing, CCTV, better locks and so on, but we still have to work very hard on violent crime, which is often produced by social inadequacy, poor parenting and traumatic experiences in childhood? Does he agree that that is exactly the sort of offending that is amenable to early Intervention so that we can grow a generation of young people who are socially and emotionally capable and far less likely to commit violent crime?
Alan Johnson
The Secretary of State for the Home Department
I do agree with my hon. Friend; indeed, I pay tribute to the work that he has done with Members in all parts of the House on early Intervention. In Nottingham, I saw for myself the family intervention programme working extremely well, and doing so because it takes an holistic approach to the underlying problems that are causing offending in the first place. It is not an easy option: there is a non-negotiable element that the parents of the children involved have to undergo. That is a very important element, and I have never seen it operating any better than in my hon. Friend's Constituency.
An intervention is when the MP making a speech is interrupted by another MP and asked to 'give way' to allow the other MP to intervene on the speech to ask a question or comment on what has just been said.
An intervention is when the MP making a speech is interrupted by another MP and asked to 'give way' to allow the other MP to intervene on the speech to ask a question or comment on what has just been said.
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In a general election, each Constituency chooses an MP to represent them. MPs have a responsibility to represnt the views of the Constituency in the House of Commons. There are 650 Constituencies, and thus 650 MPs. A citizen of a Constituency is known as a Constituent
