Yvette Cooper says today’s teenagers have it ‘much, much harder’

Teenagers have it “much, much harder” than previous generations because of knives, mental health pressures and social media, Yvette Cooper has said, as she announced plans for a new unit to prevent violent crime among young people.

After the deaths of young people in stabbings in Nottingham, Wolverhampton and Croydon, Cooper told the Guardian she was initiating a new cross-government “young futures” unit to be based in the Home Office, as part of the ambition to halve violent crime in a decade.

She described the recent killing of three children in Southport as “deeply traumatic and just absolutely awful”.

Speaking from a youth centre in the Manchester suburb of Gorton, Cooper said there were links between knife crime and poor treatment of mental health conditions, with the current state of provision causing “serious challenges”.

As part of the push, the home secretary will tell councils and police forces they have until Christmas to put proposals in place to tackle crime among young people.

New Home Office guidelines to be in force by the end of the year will set out how networks of police, mental health professionals, local schools, youth offending teams and charities can work together to help steer teenagers away from crime.

“It’s always been tricky to go through the teenage years, but it feels like for generation Alpha it’s got much, much harder,” Cooper said.

“You’ve got the pressures from social media, county lines and child criminal exploitation, the rise in the antisocial behaviour that we’ve seen, and … pressures on child and adolescent mental health. So we’re responding to that.”

Cooper, who first announced an ambition for a £100m “young futures” policy at last year’s Labour conference, said there would also be “youth hubs” for teenagers similar to how the Blair administration launched Sure Start for babies and toddlers.

The programme will be aimed at giving all teenagers the best start in life. Part of its work will be “identifying or mapping” young people most at risk of being drawn into violence, exploitation, crime and antisocial behaviour.

After weeks of dealing with the policing of racist riots, the home secretary said she had wanted to get on with other priorities as well.

“It’s part of our cross-government mission to halve serious violence and also rebuild confidence in policing and the criminal justice system,” she said.

“As part of that, the young futures programme is a 10-year vision, about how we prevent young people being drawn into crime in the first place, and also about how we give their future back.”

Cooper said under successive Conservative governments support for teenagers became badly fragmented and neglected, with councils stretched and struggling to coordinate activity.

The Commission on Young Lives has described “a consistent tale of missed opportunities, unmet need, and a confused tangle of services” when it comes to high-risk teenagers.

Children are also facing long waits for patchy NHS mental health services, despite the number of children referred to emergency mental healthcare in England having soared by more than 50% in three years.

A new report from the Resolution Foundation to be published on Saturday also showed more teenagers are needing disability support than ever.

It found that the share of 15-year-olds with a disability had increased from 10% to 17% over the past decade, driven by those with learning difficulties, behavioural difficulties or neurodiversity such as autism or ADHD.

This week’s A-level results also showed that, while the national exam grades were among the highest for decades, there were regional differences, with areas further north lagging far behind the south-east.

Cooper highlighted the young lives lost to crime, and the government’s commitment in particular to halving violence against women and girls.

Expressing frustration at the pace of change, she said: “For too long it’s been treated as something that will just always be there, and there’s only ever been an approach to incremental change.”

“The first Reclaim the Night marches were nearly 50 years ago in Leeds, and we shouldn’t still be having the same conversations nearly 50 years on as my mum’s generation would have been having, and we shouldn’t have our daughters and our granddaughters having exactly the same conversations that we’re having about violence against women and girls,” the home secretary added.

She conceded the target of halving violence against women and girls was “challenging” but there was now “the opportunity to mobilise the entire country” to deliver a major stand.

However, Cooper stopped short of saying the Southport attack in which three girls were killed and other children and adults injured at a Taylor Swift dance class should be seen in the context of an epidemic of violence against females.

“It’s really important for me not to get into the detail of the case,” she said, “Other than that it was deeply traumatic and just absolutely awful. What’s happened, I think, to three little girls too, it’s just unbearable to think about what the parents and families will be going through.”

The attack triggered an outbreak of unrest based on false information that the suspect was an asylum seeker. Politicians such as Nigel Farage questioned whether the police were concealing information, a comment branded “irresponsible and dangerous” by the Tory leadership contender Tom Tugendhat.

The Reform leader also challenged Keir Starmer’s argument that the violent protests were the fault of the far right, saying it was “a reaction to fear, to discomfort, to unease that is out there shared by tens of millions of people”.

Asked whether the political rhetoric of Farage and others had contributed to the tensions, Cooper said the rioters only had themselves to blame, but also that their behaviour should not be excused by claiming they had any legitimate political grievances.

“I think the responsibility for what’s happened in the last few weeks is with those criminals and individuals involved who need to take responsibility for that … I don’t think anybody should be excusing them. I don’t think anybody should be trying to suggest that this is about protest or grievance.”

While stressing that the policing of the riots both off and online was the most pressing issue, Cooper highlighted the “responsibility on social media companies” who “have to take this seriously”.

She added: “We have the online harms bill and the implementation of that, and the prime minister has said that all of this is going to need to be looked at.” Cooper said some measures were taken to prevent misinformation during the election that had “dropped away” since and could be taken up again.