Knife Crime

Baroness Bray of Coln Excerpts

Wednesday 15th April 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

The ambition of the Government through the Department for Education is to look at improving attendance at schools across the board. I have sat on a couple of Cabinet committees where that work has been shown to prove successful. That is a cross-government initiative to get children and young people into school. My noble friend makes a valuable point. I mentioned earlier, and I think it is worth mentioning again, that the pupil premium funding led by the Department for Education is now available to fund particular challenges in state schools that have disadvantaged children and where school attendance is down and there are interventions to support pupils’ social, emotional and behavioural needs. The pupil premium grant is £3.2 billion this year, and there is significant evidence that, as my noble friend has mentioned, it is an effective way to reduce the risk of serious violence, including knife crime. That is a Department for Education-led approach but, as I have said, the knife crime plan is a prime ministerial objective. The Home Office is leading this, but all departments involved—the MoJ, the Department for Education, the Department of Health and Social Care—are playing a role to meet some objectives to help that ambitious target of halving knife crime.

[Baroness Bray of Coln (Con)]

Will the Minister comment on the fact that it seems that some of these youngsters are putting in orders with companies that are not asking enough questions of the people who are buying these weapons—they are likely to be e-commerce companies. Is anybody looking at the record of some of these companies and the fact that they do not ask sufficient questions about some of the people who are purchasing these dangerous weapons?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

That is an extremely valuable point. In the Crime and Policing Bill, which is before the House now but requires Royal Assent, which I hope will be completed in the next couple of weeks, we are putting measures in place requiring online sellers of knives to include age verification controls, checks at sale and also checks at delivery. There are penalties in the Bill for organisations that fail to meet those objectives. The Bill recognises that there are legitimate uses for knives but, at the same time, age verification, checks at sale and delivery are key; they are not in place now but, subject to Royal Assent, will be in place by autumn 2026, when we hope to have rolled out any legislation that is finally passed by this House and the House of Commons before Prorogation.

King’s Speech

Baroness Bray of Coln Excerpts

Wednesday 24th July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bray of Coln (Con)]

My Lords, I welcome the noble Lords, Lord Hanson and Lord Timpson, to their ministerial posts and congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Timpson, and my noble friend Lord Goodman on their maiden speeches. I would also like to say how grateful I am to have the opportunity to respond to His Majesty’s gracious Speech by highlighting one of the important issues it raised—indeed, it was raised in this debate by the noble Lord, Lord Timpson. Shoplifting is a growing problem. It is now often referred to as retail crime because, I am told, calling it shoplifting no longer captures the serious nature of the crime wave hitting the retail sector.

There is no doubt that communities up and down the country are becoming increasingly alarmed by the growing impact of retail violence in their local shops. These days, dangerous individuals and gangs operate across the country, very often arriving at their chosen shop armed with knives or other weapons. Anyone who tries to stop them may well be attacked. They disappear within minutes, often having planned their visit by checking out the premises in advance. Their loot is then sold on, typically from a car boot or a shed, or online.

Police-recorded crime figures indicate that there were more than 430,000 retail crime offences last year—an increase of 37% over the previous 12-month period. Meanwhile, retail sector surveys put the figure up to 40 times higher, with the British Retail Consortium crime report for this year estimating that it rose to 16.7 million. That is well over 45,000 incidents a day. This tells us just how seriously this criminal activity has already got out of control. The disparity between the two sets of figures also suggests significant under- reporting of incidents to the police. I hope that another benefit of the very welcome new stand-alone offence for attacks on retail workers—it was originally to be introduced by the former Government before the election got under way, but I am delighted to see that the new Government will continue with it—will be to help to encourage retail workers to record and report every incident to the police for a more accurate record.

There is, in fact, already a retail crime action plan in place that has brought together retailers and senior police officers. The police have pledged to attend scenes where retail workers have been attacked or an offender has been detained. Pegasus, set up last year with government support, is a partnership between retailers and specialist police officers to share intelligence, photographic evidence from in-store cameras and training for retailers, including how to provide the best possible evidence, including CCTV footage of incidents. This can help to identify the perpetrators.

But so much more needs to be done to deal with this growing problem. The police are central to it. They must put this issue higher up their agenda. I think many of us would like to see more police back on patrol on our local streets, knowing their patch, providing important reassurance, and being ready to respond and call in support on our streets when necessary, including being able to call up assistance if a local shop finds itself under attack.

This new Government have taken an important step as they start out by recognising that retail crime is becoming a major problem in our towns and cities. Now that they have declared their intention to introduce a new law that makes an attack on a retail worker a specific criminal offence, what will the penalty be? If it is to be an effective deterrent, it will certainly need to be robust and preferably custodial for serious and repeat offenders.