In addressing the important subject of policing in Westminster, I’m going to focus on two of the bullet points given to us in our briefing papers, regarding the aims and roles of the police: Firstly, keeping children and young people safe and secondly, standing together against hatred and intolerance.

Those topics are both personal and I believe, and would hope, are relevant to us all.

I’ll begin with the latter. Hate crime and that of intolerance especially, have increased in the borough. Over 1300 people committed offences relating to racism and religious intolerance. That number is excluding the rise in both Islamophobia and Anti-Semitism. No one should ever be persecuted because of their faith and any other characteristic that they cannot change such as age, sex, gender and race. Those of us who are from minority backgrounds or ‘tick boxes’ of any sort, know what it means to be persecuted and understand how horrible it truly is. We want our young people to grow up in a world where they aren’t afraid to be who they are, a world in which they can express how they feel. I am heavily invested in this issue as I too am still told to shave my beard so that I’m not called a terrorist! I too have been told that ive ‘done well for myself coming from Africa’. I believe that when it comes to the policing of hatred, there is much more that can be done. Out of those 1300, only around 300 were properly sanctioned or faced some consequence to their actions. The proposals to merge the Borough Command units, are not favourable and I don’t believe they’ll benefit our City especially on issue around acts of hatred and crime. I can only hope that as a council we continue to promote being an inclusive borough both internally and externally. In November an event for Black History Month was held and not a single councillor barring myself, was there. It’s the small things that matter to many and if we want to be seen as standing together, lets get the small things right. It is true that the police are suffering as a result of the cuts made however that’s where our role as the council comes in. We need to ensure that we’re doing what we can alongside the police to tackle hate crime properly.

Next I want to move onto the issue of keeping young people safe. Less than a month ago two young people in my ward were stabbed multiple times. Fortunately, both survived, however none were willing to co operate with the police. Now I ask myself why this is the case and while sometimes this refusal arises from fears of reprisals, undoubtedly in many cases it is due to a lack of trust, a belief that the ‘system’ is against them and to be fair, the system is sometimes against us. I believe there is a serious issue when our young people don’t trust those in society who are meant to protect them and keep them safe. How have we reached this point and Why have we reached this point? When you hear a young person causally talk about a stabbing or a death as if it was normal, only then can you really understand what governmental failure sounds like. These are the same young people who grew up wanting to be police officers and firemen/women yet here they are on the other side of the law. Just the other day, another life was lost to a knife in London. The pain this causes is immeasurable and hearing the pain the parents of these children go through is a real eye opener. Being young, I genuinely worry that one day I won’t return home because to be quite honest anyone of us could be a victim, but that likelihood increases with young people.

Our own City, as noted in the briefing papers, has had an increase of just over 10% in crime and whether this is our young people or just those visiting the West End, the fact is, that it happens in our City. I will always hope that when it comes to people’s lives, we don’t have to play party politics and we can just do what’s right. As a City, we are doing some stuff right: The Integrated Gangs Unit, Safer Neighbourhood teams and the newly launched Soho Angels. I briefly want to focus on the Integrated gang’s unit as I believe that they do some seriously great work on the ground with young people on the streets. For instance, almost 70% of the young people that they work with, have got into some sort of work or training. Sometimes I think that we forget that these are normal young people who’ve just had fewer opportunities than others to succeed in life. I know many of those young people and to be quite honest, many feel as though they have been neglected.

This leads me on to the issue I have with us as a council: the cuts to youth services. No matter the reason, we cannot simply cut over a million pounds of the budget for youth services and leave 11% of what it once was and argue that we care about young people and that it’ll all be alright. Youth services should never be cut. I honestly couldn’t care less about comparing ourselves with other boroughs regarding the levels of funding they have available and the levels of crime they see, because at the end of the day, they were cuts that the council decided to make. When will we wake up and admit to our mistakes, because that’s what those cuts were, between 2011-2018? Youth services are vital in ensuring that young people stay off the streets and actually stay safe while doing things that they enjoy. They aren’t a luxury, they are a necessity. We place the responsibility of the protection of our young people without truly doing as much as we can as a council.

Personally, my recommendation would be that I would like there to be at the very least, a cabinet position that can solely be responsible for young people, rather than one with a mixture of responsibilities. This is where I believe party politics is completely irrelevant; of course, I’d love it if Labour was in power but one thing I would truly love more, is if there was someone in charge, who cared with all their life and soul about young people, whoever they may be. We all, I hope, got into politics in order to have the ability to help people and hence I hope that when we all leave politics, we can turn around and say that we did help people.