Criminal Justice Act 1988 (Offensive Weapons) (Amendment, Surrender and Compensation) Order 2024
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Lord Sharpe of Epsom
That the Grand Committee do consider the Criminal Justice Act 1988 (Offensive Weapons) (Amendment, Surrender and Compensation) Order 2024.
Relevant document: 12th Report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee (special attention drawn to the instrument)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord Sharpe of Epsom) (Con)
My Lords, the order before us adds zombie-style knives and zombie-style machetes to the list of prohibited offensive weapons, by amending the Criminal Justice Act 1988 (Offensive Weapons) Order 1988 to include them. The purpose of this draft order is to maintain public safety by restricting the supply of weapons which can be used in violent crime or to create fear in our communities. The Government keep legislation in relation to prohibited offensive weapons under review and we will act when the police raise concerns about specific weapons. For example, zombie knives were banned in England and Wales in 2016, followed by cyclone knives in 2019.
We are now concerned about the availability of certain types of machetes and large outdoors knives, which do not seem to have a practical use and instead appear designed to look menacing. The police tell us that these bladed articles, which can be purchased for as little as £10, are favoured by those who want to use them as weapons to perpetrate violent crime. While sales of these weapons are relatively low, they have a disproportionate effect because their appearance creates a fear of and glamorises violence.
We are aware that machetes and other large, bladed tools such as scythes, billhooks and large outdoor knives have traditionally been used as tools in farming, gardening, clearing land and waterways, as well as in outdoor activities such as bushcraft, hunting and camping. However, unlike more conventional knives and machetes, zombie-style knives and machetes have no legitimate purpose. In our conversations with manufacturers and retailers, they have been clear that, in their view, these articles are not designed as tools but as weapons. If these dangerous weapons remain available, there is a risk that they could be used to intimidate or cause fear. Worse, they could be used to perpetrate serious acts of violence. The Government will not tolerate such a risk.
This brings me to the details of the order before us. Under Section 141 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988, it is an offence to possess, import, manufacture, sell, hire, offer for sale or hire, expose or possess for the purposes of sale or hire, a weapon specified in an order made under that section. An offence under Section 141 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 currently carries a maximum penalty of six months’ imprisonment, but we have introduced provisions in the Criminal Justice Bill to increase the maximum penalty to two years.
A number of descriptions of weapons have been specified under Section 141 and therefore prohibited, including butterfly knives, knuckledusters, telescopic truncheons and certain types of swords with curved blades, commonly known as samurai swords. Using the order-making powers in Section 141(2) of the Criminal Justice Act 1988, the Government wish to add zombie-style knives and zombie-style machetes to the list of offensive weapons to which Section 141 applies. These weapons are defined as a bladed article with a plain cutting edge, a sharp pointed edge, and a blade over eight inches in length. This length was chosen to exclude knives designed for legitimate purposes, such as many kitchen and outdoors knives. To be within the scope of the ban, the article should also have one or more of the features specified in Article 1(1)(a), namely, a serrated cutting edge, more than one hole in the blade, spikes, or more than two sharp points in the blade.
It is right that we take the firmest possible action to prevent violence and to stop dangerous weapons getting into the wrong hands, and we are not seeking to criminalise law-abiding citizens. There will therefore be defences to cover a range of circumstances, including where the article in question is one of historical importance, is made by hand, is possessed, sold or imported for religious purposes, or was given as a gift by a Sikh to another person at a religious ceremony or ceremonial event. Antiques are already exempted from Section 141 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988. Furthermore, we are providing a defence for blunt items to protect the fantasy knives market. We have also taken the opportunity to extend this defence to curved swords.
There are a couple of further points to mention before I finish. First, Parts 3 and 4 of this instrument are concerned with the surrender and compensation scheme, through which owners with weapons in scope of the ban will be able to surrender them and claim compensation if they so wish. Secondly, in terms of territorial scope, the statutory instrument will only apply to England and Wales. We very much hope that the devolved Administrations in Northern Ireland and Scotland will take similar action to ensure that these dangerous knives are prohibited across the United Kingdom. To this effect, officials have engaged with the Governments in both Northern Ireland and Scotland.
In summary, nothing matters more than public safety. That is why we are bringing forward this order, to prevent dangerous weapons being used in violent crime or to create fear in our communities. I beg to move.
Lord Lucas (Con)
My Lords, I say thank you to the Minister and his Home Office team, which drafted this order, for including a clear and comprehensive exemption for objects of historical importance. Carving out a space for history is not the easiest thing to do when you are dealing with people being killed and seriously hurt but it is really important, and to have done it in a way that the ordinary citizen—rather than just museums—can take advantage of is particularly appreciated.
History is real. Iconoclasm is not a virtue. We have a long history of our ancestors carrying blades into armed conflicts, not just as weapons but as tools of utility and survival. Preserving these items is important. Museums have a limited capacity, so the role of preservation falls mostly on the amateur collector and the descendants of our brave veterans. I am delighted that the Government recognise that.
Historical knives do not play a significant role in crime—they are far too expensive for that—so excluding them from the order does not in any way decrease the protection that it offers. By way of illustration, it was not so long ago that a curved sword was sold for £400,000, possibly because it belonged to Lord Nelson. Generally, these articles fetch a decent price—far more than it costs to purchase a replica on the net or elsewhere.
Ministers have not always been so perspicacious. The historical importance exemption is not available for items prohibited by Section 141 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988, so there are items from World War II—obviously, they are not 100 hundred years old yet—issued to, for instance, the commandos and their SOE, as well as to their equivalents in other nations, that are not protected. I very much hope that the Minister and his team will make a note on the file that this is something they might set right when next an opportunity occurs. We ought to preserve these objects for just the reasons that have motivated the exemption in this order.
I also believe that there is scope for clarifying the law on truncheons. As it is at the moment, I am not at all clear that the police practice of presenting long-serving officers with engraved, old-style truncheons is legal; it would be nice to know that it is. There is also some scope for looking through the guidance that the police use when applying these rather convoluted regulations on prohibited items, so that they really understand how the various descriptions and exemptions work and so that things are made clear and easy for them.
I look forward to further conversations on these matters, both directly and as a result of the Home Office’s most helpful interactions with both Bill Harriman of the British Association for Shooting and Conservation and John Pidgeon of the Coleshill Auxiliary Research Team.
Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)
My Lords, we too welcome this SI. I will start with some questions for the Minister, then comment on other noble Lords’ contributions to the short debate.
First, what are the Government doing to increase prosecution rates for knife crime? Currently, fewer than half of those who come to police attention are actually prosecuted. Do the Government have any plans to introduce a new serious violence strategy, given that the existing strategy is five years old? What assessment have the Government made of the threat of so-called “ninja swords” and why are they not covered by this legislation? The Government, as we heard, have tried to ban zombie knives before but the retailers have adapted their designs to get past the laws. Are the Government confident that they have done enough to stop the same thing happening again this time?
Further, online knife sales represent a serious issue in terms of lack of supervision by the websites and the lack of regulation over online marketplaces hosting illegal knife sales, particularly when these websites are hosted overseas. Can the Minister say something about buying these types of knives from overseas websites, how they may be intercepted and the obligations put on the people running those websites?
I also want to acknowledge that I understand this is a difficult problem and do not want to score political points on this issue, but there is a wider strategy to be developed and adopted to try to cut down this scourge in our society. The noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, made an extremely good point when she drew the comparison between the cuts in youth services and the corresponding increase in knife crime. That really points to one of the sources of the problem that we have seen in recent years.
As an aside, I say to the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, that I am glad he made the points that he did. I agreed with those points and many families, including mine, have historical pieces which would certainly be illegal if they were sold nowadays in shops—so I thank him for that.
The noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, raised some detailed questions, which I thought were very interesting, about the practical steps that police forces can take to track down sales and do some proactive policing to see what has happened to the knives that have been sold legitimately over the last few years. Of course, a huge number have been sold illegitimately, but we understand that point.
In conclusion, I want to talk slightly more generally. As noble Lords may know, I sit as a youth magistrate and regularly see knife crime-related charges in both youth and adult courts. One of the things I always do in the youth court is make sure that the parent, responsible adult or elder sibling sees the knife, because very often the person who accompanies the young person in court does not really know the extent of the danger which may have been posed through carrying that knife. Whether it is the physical knife itself, which we sometimes see in court, or a picture of it, I always make sure that the responsible adult sitting next to the young person sees that object, so that they know what we are talking about.
The other thing I always do with the young person, however serious the knife-related offence is, is say to them that their own lives are in danger. What we regularly see in court is young people being attacked with their own knives when fights break out. Twice in the last five years, I have had young people not turning up to court for a knife offence because they themselves have been killed. This is why I say that to the young people in front of me; one can only hope that it drives the message home.
We need to say that it is gang-related or drug-related, of course, but a lot of these people will say that they carry these knives for their own defence. They are more frightened of the harm posed to them by other people carrying knives than they are by what the court can do to them by way of sanction. This is not to argue for higher sanctions, but it is to argue for education and better youth services, and for a wider intervention through schools and other youth programmes to try to bear down on this scourge.
The final point I want to make is that people often ask questions about racial disproportionality, with young black men attacking each other. In this House and elsewhere, you hear of people saying that the police are disproportionate in their response to this and in stopping and search young black people. I have certainly been in more than one meeting with black mothers who have said to me and to the people with me, “You’re not doing enough to protect our sons”. So we need to do more to protect their sons and we need a holistic approach to do that, but, as far as this SI goes, I support it.
Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for their contributions to this relatively short debate. I thank in particular the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, for his personal insights from his courtroom; they made a great deal of sense and, in some cases, were very disturbing. I have had similar conversations with some of those mothers; they are particularly relevant in the context of some of the debates on stop and search that we have had in this House. Perhaps we need to do more to publicise the results of some of these conversations.
I will do my utmost to address the questions asked of me. I will start by talking about the serious violence duty, which the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, asked me about, because that obviously informs the entire debate. In 2023-24, the Government allocated £13.1 million to continue the implementation and delivery of the serious violence duty; that followed a commitment made in January 2023. The noble Lord will remember that, through the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022, the serious violence duty requires a range of specified authorities—such as the police, local government, youth offending teams and health and probation services —to work collaboratively and put in place plans to prevent and reduce serious violence in their local communities, enabled by new powers to share both data and information. Of course, that Act also contains measures such as serious violence reduction orders as well as other things; it is probably a little too soon to tell precisely how effective those are but, obviously, they are in train.
Local areas have the flexibility to determine the geographical extent of their partnerships. We are encouraging local areas to use multiagency partnerships where possible. The point was made by both the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, and the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, that educational institutions, prisons and youth custodial institutions—known as “the relevant authorities”—are under separate duties. We expect them to co-operate with the core duty holders when asked as well. We also require partnerships to consult such institutions in their areas.
The fact is that this is a societal issue. We are not going to solve it this afternoon, but I have heard the points made and, of course, I will make sure that they are shared round the relevant parts of government—that is, most of government and most of society.
Both the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, and the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, asked me about ninja swords and other types of bladed articles that are used in crime. Concerns have been raised during the passage of the Criminal Justice Bill through Parliament in relation to swords, in particular so-called ninja swords. Those that have the features set out in this legislation will be banned; however, those that do not have those features will not be, because we have focused our efforts on the types of weapons that the National Police Chiefs’ Council has raised as being of particular concern.
As my noble friend Lord Lucas mentioned, many members of the public legitimately own antique swords and swords of historical interest. People also own modern swords as collectible items, and there are those who own swords for activities such as martial arts, fencing and re-enactment. Many British military swords have straight blades and are treasured by service personnel when they serve, as well as by their family members when they are passed on. These articles are generally owned and used responsibly, obviously.
The noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, is quite right about blunt blades. Something that is blunt can be sharpened. However, we have provided the defence of blunt items, which would enable collectors of fantasy knives to purchase for display items that would otherwise be prohibited. We are taking the opportunity to extend this defence to curved swords, as I have mentioned, but it is important to note that, if an item were sharpened, it would become illegal. If this comes to the attention of the police, they will be able to make a charge for unlawful possession of a bladed article if the blade is sharpened.
I also point out to the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, that the unfortunate and awful crime in Croydon that she mentioned was actually committed with a kitchen knife.
The statistics are not quite as bleak as the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, suggested. I am always a bit nervous talking about statistics in relation to what are individually horrific circumstances, so please bear that in mind when I mention them. The latest provisional admissions data for NHS hospitals in England and Wales showed a decrease in the number of admissions for assault with a sharp object in the year ending September 2023. The figure was 4% lower than in the year ending September 2022. We should also bear in mind that many of the comparisons that we make are with the years of Covid, when many people were locked up—metaphorically speaking—so they are not direct comparisons. If we compare like for like, the numbers are improving. That is not to say that they are not still awful, as I said, and obviously we have to do much more about that.
Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)
Would it be possible before the Minister sits down to ask two questions? My question about the value of a weapon was about whether manufacturers, retailers and wholesalers will be paid the wholesale trade value or the retail value of the weapon, if that is known. More importantly, they will have lists of people who had weapons sold to them, so will they be asked, encouraged or told that they must share their customer list with the police, who in my view should be expected to follow up on that?
Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)
On the first part of the question, I do not know the answer. I will have to come back to the noble Lord. I think I tried to answer that when I was talking about the guidance. Obviously, the guidance has yet to be published. The noble Lord is 100% right, of course, that they should have those lists and they should consult them, but, as he knows, operational policing remains independent. The guidance will be published in June, and I think the noble Lord makes a very good point.