Labour’s Chuka Umunna continued his #StopYouthViolence campaign this week, leading the debate between Backbench MPs. 

Umunna, the Labour MP for the South London district Streatham, has called on the government to ‘establish an independent, all-party commission, to identify the root causes, effect of, and solutions to, serious youth violence, including knife crime, its links to gang culture and the sale of illegal drugs.’

Umunna led the debate on youth violence in the House of Commons on Thursday, drawing attention to the responsibility of local communities, the influence of popular culture and the importance of understanding the underlying reasons for youth violence.

‘We live in a society that not only promotes violence and too often glamorises it, but promotes an ideal whereby our young people define themselves by reference to what they have as opposed to who they are. There is a consumerism element. Helping one’s family to get on is definitely an issue.’

‘We will not stand by while violence and fatalities continue to hit the next generation, because it is our future,’ Umunna stated  wrapping up his speech. ‘Every single young life matters’.

Umunna took to Twitter to link the importance of the campaign to an incident of youth violence that occurred on Monday afternoon in the Camberwell area.

A teenager was stabbed near Oval station after a fight broke outside a chicken shop.  The man, thought to be in his early 20s was found with knife injuries on Monday afternoon after being attacked near the junction of Brixton Road and Camberwell New Road.

Due to the time of the day, crowds of school children and teenagers were gathered around the scene of the incident, witnesses said.

Matthew Batten, a 29 year old civil servant, told the Standard, ‘There were two ambulances and about nine police cars and the traffic was chaos.’

A Scotland Yard spokeswoman said: ‘Police were called at 5.36pm to reports of an assault close to Oval Station.’

‘Officers, paramedics and London’s Air Ambulance attended.’

The man’s injuries were initially said to be life threatening, but after being rushed to a South London hospital is now said to be stable.

No arrests have been made.