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| Hard up families failed by Labour - new report |
LABOUR has totally failed to cut crime in Britain’s poorest areas, according to new research.
The unemployed and people living in rented council homes are more likely than ever to be robbed to be robbed.
And fear of crime in Britain’s grimmest estates is now higher than ever before.
In 2001, the then Prime Minister Tony Blair said: ““When a culture is allowed to grow outside society’s mainstream – alienated, with no hope, a culture of broken homes, truancy, poor education, drugs, no job, or dead end jobs . . . when we sow the seeds of such a culture, we should not be surprised at the harvest we reap”.
And in his speech to the Labour Party conference last year, Gordon Brown added: “People feel their communities are changing before their eyes and it's increasing their anxiety about crime and anti-social behaviour. And so we will be the party of law and order.”
However, a hard-hitting new report published by Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling uses the government’s own data show Labour’s 12 year-long promises to be “tough on crime and the causes of crime” have been an abject fail;ure.
It shows that hundreds small pockets of severe social deprivation and high crime are still scattered across the country, often just yards away from some of the country’s wealthiest, and safest, areas.
The report will reveal:
* unemployed people are twice as likely to be a victim of crime than the average, with 7.6% a victim of violence in 2008/9 compared to 3.2% of all adults.
* If you have never worked or are long-term unemployed, you are more at risk of violence than someone in a professional occupation.
* Households with the lowest income (less than £10,000) are the most at risk of violence.
* Risk of being a victim of violence was twice as high for those individuals living in the 20 per cent most deprived areas in England (4.5%) compared with those in the 20 per cent least deprived areas (2.2%).
The report warns Britain has become “two nations”, one of high wealth and low crime, and another of large areas of severe poverty, poor health and education and, most importantly, high levels of crime.
It reveals millions of people are trapped in a culture of poverty, benefit dependency and social immobility - often living in sink estates that are a world apart from prosperous areas down the road.
People in council estates of Housing Association estates are almost three times more likely to be burgled than those who own their own homes (4.7% versus 1.7%).
One in three single parent families or tenants in social housing are most likely to suffer from nightmare neighbours and
The report also reveals that those areas suffering the worst crime and deprivation are just yards away from wealthier areas.
In Westminster, there are pockets of almost 100 per cent child poverty sitting right next to wards where no children live in poverty at all.
Despite half a million new jobs created in the capital before the start of the recession there are still areas where over one in three people are dependent on out of work benefits.
In Spinney Hills in Leicester, 80% of residents are living in poverty, compared to 4% in next door Knighton.
Similarly, in Liverpool’s Vauxhall area, half of working age adults are claiming state benefits. But in nearby Childwall that ffigure drops to 5%.
However, across the country the most vulneravble people are now people are living in fear.
Almost 50% of single parents say their fear ofc rime is “high”, compared to a nationwide average of 35%.
And nearly twice as many people living in the 20 per cent most deprived areas say fear of crime has a ‘high’ or ‘moderate’ impact on their quality of life compared to those living in the least deprived areas.
-ends-
I wish they were the only ones – but they aren’t.
I’ve been to one of our most notorious areas to meet the mother of a boy shot at a party – and seen the torn jacket and the bloodstains from the gun that killed him.
I’ve met a young boy driven from his home after being forced to hide a gun for local gang members.
These are the people most likely to be victims of crime in Britain today.
And they are some of the people most let down by a decade of failure under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.
A decade in which some of the worst aspects of US urban life have crossed the atlantic and come to Britain.
Gang crime. Knife Crime. Guns and violence.
And the gravestones of young people who have died as a result.
This week the Conservatives will renew our battle with the Government over the way in which Labour has let down the poor.
Not just through the benefit culture that has thrived under their rule.
Not just because of the huge numbers of young people who leave school barely able to read and write, condemned to a life at the bottom of the pile.
Not just because of the cavalier approach that Ministers have taken to the importance of the family and the way in which family breakdown has become endemic.
But because they have left the poorest and most vulnerable in our society to face the wave of violent crime that has built up in our society over the past decade.
We’ll expose figures from the small print of official statistics that show how our poorest communities are in the front line when it comes to crime.
How crime is rising by as much as 15% a year in some of our most deprived areas.
How the Government’s failure to get to grips with drug-fuelled crime is as big a reason for the rise in burglaries and robberies in those areas as the recession.
And how new data shows that the unemployed are particularly vulnerable – twice as likely to be victims of violent crime or burglary as those in work.
The News of the World has done sterling work in highlighting the challenge of violent crime on our streets, and its impact on the families of those involved.
But we live in a country where the system works against communities. Where too often knife criminals, or drug dealers, or violent offenders get off lightly, sometimes even with just a caution.
And where police spend their time at desks filling out forms to send to the Government and not policing our streets.
That’s no way to protect the most vulnerable in our society – the people who are most likely to bear the brunt of Labour’s failures on law and order.
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