Announcing the new unit’s plans to prevent violent youth crime, Yvette Cooper said teenagers had it “much harder” than previous generations because of knives, mental health pressures and social media.
Following the stabbing deaths of young people in Nottingham, Wolverhampton and Croydon, Mr Cooper told the Guardian that a new cross-government “Youth Futures” unit would be set up to be based in the Home Office as part of a target to halve violent crime over ten years.
She described the recent murders of three children in Southport as “deeply traumatic and absolutely awful”.
Speaking at a youth centre in Gorton, outside Manchester, Mr Cooper said there was a link between knife crime and inadequate treatment for mental illness and that the current response caused “serious problems”.
As part of the effort, the Home Secretary will instruct local authorities and police forces to implement proposals to tackle youth crime by Christmas.
The new guidelines, due to come into force by the end of the year, will set out how police, mental health professionals, local schools, youth crime teams and a network of charities can work together to help keep teenagers away from crime.
“Being a teenager is always hard, but it feels like it’s a lot harder for Alphas,” Cooper said.
“There are pressures from social media, County Lines, criminal exploitation of children, the increase in anti-social behaviour that we’ve seen, and also pressures on child and young people’s mental health, so we’re responding to that.”
Mr Cooper, who first announced the ambitions of his £100m “Youth Futures” programme at last year’s Labour conference, said there would also be “youth hubs” for teenagers, similar to the Blair government’s Sure Start programme for babies and toddlers.
The programme aims to give all teenagers the best start in life and part of its work is to “identify or map” young people who are most at risk of becoming involved in violence, exploitation, crime and anti-social behaviour.
The Home Secretary said that after weeks of tackling racist riots, he wanted to tackle other priorities.
“Cutting serious violence in half and rebuilding trust in the police and the criminal justice system is part of our whole-of-government mission,” she said.
“As part of this, the Youth Futures programme is a 10-year vision for how we prevent young people from getting involved in crime in the first place and how we can take back their futures.”
Mr Cooper said support for teenagers had been badly fragmented and neglected under successive Conservative governments, leaving local authorities overstretched and struggling to co-ordinate activity.
The Commission on Young People’s Lives said there was a “persistent web of missed opportunities, unmet needs and disorganised services” when it comes to high-risk teens.
Children face long waiting times in the NHS’s inadequate mental health services, despite the number of children referred to emergency mental health care in England having risen by more than 50% in three years.
A-level results published this week showed that while national exam results are the best they’ve been in decades, there are regional differences, with northern regions lagging far behind the south-east.
Mr Cooper highlighted the government’s commitment to halve the number of young people killed by crime and violence, particularly against women and girls.
She expressed frustration with the pace of change, saying, “For too long it has been treated as something that will always be there, and there has only been an incremental approach to change.”
“The first ‘Take Back the Night’ demonstration took place in Leeds almost 50 years ago but nearly 50 years on we should not be having the same conversation that my mother’s generation was having, and our daughters and granddaughters should not be having exactly the same conversations that we are having about violence against women and girls,” she added.
She acknowledged that the goal of halving violence against women and girls would be “challenging,” but said there was now an opportunity to “mobilize the whole country” and make a big stand.
But Mr Cooper failed to mention that the Southport attack, which left three girls dead and other children and adults injured at a Taylor Swift dance class, should be seen in the context of an epidemic of violence against women.
“It’s really important to me that I don’t go into the details of what happened,” she said. “Apart from that, it was very traumatic, it was really awful, and I think what happened to those three little girls, I think it’s unbearable to think what their parents and their families are going to go through.”
The attack sparked unrest based on false information that the suspects were asylum seekers, and politicians such as Nigel Farage questioned whether police were covering up, while Conservative leadership candidate Tom Tugendhat denounced the comments as “irresponsible and dangerous”.
The Reform leader also disputed Keir Starmer’s claim that the violent protests were the fault of the far right, saying they were a “reaction to fear, discomfort and anxiety shared by tens of millions of people”.
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Asked whether political rhetoric from Farage and others had contributed to tensions, Cooper said the rioters had only themselves to blame, but their actions should not be excused by claims of legitimate political grievances.
“I think the responsibility for what has happened over the last few weeks lies with the perpetrators and the individuals involved. They need to be held accountable. I don’t think anybody should forgive them. I don’t think anybody should try to suggest that this is because of protest or discontent.”
While Cooper stressed that policing both offline and online violence was the most pressing issue, he also highlighted the “responsibility of social media companies” and said “they have to take this seriously.”
She added: “There is the online harms bill and its enforcement and the Prime Minister has said all of this needs to be looked at.” Cooper said some measures had been put in place to prevent misinformation during the election but they have “disappeared” since then and could be brought up again.
