CHILDREN as young as seven are being caught up in violent gangs, a watchdog has warned.
Anne Longfield, the Children’s Commissioner for England, told MPs that threats and pupils being forced to work for criminals are now common in playgrounds.
And she said it was “unquestionably wrong” that 30 pupils a week – an entire classroom – are being excluded from primary school classrooms.
Her comments came after figures revealed that more and more teenagers are being kicked out of secondary school for drinking and taking drugs.
Ms Longfield told a Home Affairs Select Committee into serious violence: “One thing I’ve seen and want to log here, is actually what used to be an age range of kids getting involved first of all was 10 to 12 is now dropping down to seven to 10.
Former Whitehall adviser Dame Louise Casey blasted the Government’s strategy for tackling violent crime as “woefully inadequate”.
She told MPs: “What they are doing at the moment is not a match for the people out there doing bad.”
Dame Louise, anti-social behaviour tsar under Tony Blair then head of David Cameron’s troubled families programme, said there should be more measurable targets for cutting crime and a detailed focus on the backgrounds of people found carrying knives.
She criticised the Government’s approach of simply hosting meetings on important topics.
“When it doubt, hold a bloody summit,” she said. “It’s a get out of jail card when you don’t really know what you’re doing.”
But she added that bringing those affected by crime to Downing Street for summits risks letting them down.
“If you do nothing once you’ve had a summit you are disrespecting the victims and the victims’ families.”
