Knife Crime: West Midlands

Diana Johnson Excerpts

Tuesday 21st January 2025 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Policing, Fire and Crime Prevention (Dame Diana Johnson)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir John. I congratulate you on your impeccable chairing of Westminster Hall this afternoon.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich (Sarah Coombes) for securing this debate, and for her powerful and eloquent opening speech. I am grateful to her and to all the other hon. Members who have contributed. The right hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton) has a long-standing interest in the subject, and she highlighted the important work of the James Brindley Foundation.

My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Edgbaston (Preet Kaur Gill) referred to the Labour party manifesto commitment in July for a mandatory referral to youth offending teams for young people caught carrying knives, which is very important. The hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Manuela Perteghella) and my hon. Friend the Member for Halesowen (Alex Ballinger) talked about tragic cases in their constituencies.

The hon. Member for Birmingham Perry Barr (Ayoub Khan) talked about his personal experience of youth provision and how important that was in his life. My hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton West (Warinder Juss) talked about the coalition to tackle knife crime, which I will say something about in a moment. My hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton North East (Mrs Brackenridge) brought her enormous experience as a former deputy headteacher to the debate.

The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) talked about the horror of knife crime and attacks, particularly on women and girls, and the need to work together throughout all the nations to bring together experience of what works. My hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Tom Collins) made a compelling speech about young people and putting them at the heart of the response to knife crime. I am grateful for all those contributions.

It has been made clear throughout the debate that knife crime is a source of harm, fear and, in the worst cases, unbearable grief. The debate has focused on the west midlands, but the truth is that this issue affects far too many communities across Britain. The stories that we have heard so powerfully today affect families up and down the nation. We have seen that yet again in recent weeks, with a number of fatal stabbings of young people in different parts of the country. We can only imagine what the loved ones of those who have lost their lives will be going through, and all our thoughts and prayers are with them.

Knife crime has destroyed far too many lives. That is why we described the issue as a “national crisis” in our manifesto, and why, as part of the safer streets mission, which is central to the Government’s plan for change, we aim to halve knife crime within a decade. We have already taken some important steps since the general election. I will touch on those and on further measures we will take as I respond to the points that have been raised.

First, I want to deal with the issue of resources being available to police in the west midlands. For the coming year, the total funding for police forces overall will be up to £17.4 billion—an increase of nearly £1 billion compared with 2024-5. West Midlands police will receive up to £838.4 million in funding in 2025-26—an increase of £48 million compared with the 2024-25 settlement, and 3% more in real terms.

We have talked a lot today about neighbourhood policing and the idea of visible policing being important to our communities. The Government are determined that neighbourhood policing will be rebuilt, and that communities in the west midlands will benefit from our neighbourhood policing guarantee. As constituency MPs, we all know the impact that good neighbourhood policing has on local community confidence and on preventing crime, and that should never be underestimated. Local officers and PCSOs who know their patch are the building blocks of every aspect of policing, be that tackling knife crime, serious or organised crime, or extremist and terror threats. That is why the restoration of neighbourhood policing is at the heart of our plans to reform policing, and why we have committed to delivering an additional 13,000 police officers, PCSOs, and special constables in neighbourhood policing roles.

I also want to refer to violence reduction units, because one of the big challenges in dealing with knife crime is getting all the different agencies together. Violence reduction units have been an essential part of bringing partners together to understand and tackle the drivers of serious violence in their areas, and to deliver a range of early intervention and prevention programmes to support young people away from a life of crime. That includes activity in Coventry and Wolverhampton to support high-risk young people and to connect them with an exit pathway from gangs, violence and county lines. I can confirm that all VRUs have the A&E navigator programmes as part of what they provide locally.

I will move on to the specifics of what the Government have introduced to tackle knife crime. First, we have taken swift action to take dangerous weapons off the streets. We ran a surrender and compensation scheme for zombie-style knives and zombie-style machetes between 26 August ’24 and 23 September ’24. Following that, the ban came into force on 24 September and it is now illegal to sell or own those weapons.

Secondly, we ran a consultation between 13 November ’24 and 11 December ’24, seeking views on the legal description of a ninja sword, to help our plans for an effective ban.

Thirdly, we have commenced a review into the online sales and delivery of knives, led by Commander Stephen Clayman, the national policing lead for knife crime. That will identify gaps in the current processes and legislation and the most effective ways to address them. The review will report to the Home Secretary at the end of January, and I very much hear the need for rapid action when that review is produced.

Fourthly, we have consulted on introducing personal liability measures for senior executives of online platforms or marketplaces who fail to take action to remove illegal content relating to knives and other weapons. The consultation was launched on 13 November and closed on 11 December, and we are analysing the responses.

I pay tribute to the coalition to tackle knife crime. We are clear that we will not succeed in our ambition to halve knife crime in isolation. That means working together with those who share our vision for safer communities. That is why, in September, the Prime Minister launched the coalition to tackle knife crime, bringing together campaign groups, families of those who have tragically lost their lives to knife crime, young people who have been impacted and community leaders—all united in their mission to save lives. We are delighted to have representation from the west midlands, with Pooja Kanda, Lynne Baird and Mark Brindley members of the coalition. I pay tribute to all the families who have campaigned so hard in this space and have had to do so for far too long. Having the lived experience of young people is critical to the coalition. We are keen to ensure that they have a platform to share their views, ideas and solutions to make Britain a safer place for the next generation.

That leads me to the next issue: far too many children and young people today face poorer life outcomes, including becoming involved in knife crime, because they are not effectively identified and supported early enough. To address that head-on, we have committed to the creation of the young futures programme, which will establish a network of young futures hubs and young futures prevention partnerships, to intervene early to ensure that that cohort is identified and offered support, as well as creating more opportunities for young people in their communities through the provision of, for example, open access to mental health, mentoring and careers support. Young futures hubs will bring together the support services that tackle the underlying needs of vulnerable children and young people, making the services more accessible to those who need them. Young futures prevention partnerships will bring together key partners in local areas across England and Wales to identify vulnerable children and young people at risk of being drawn into crime, map local youth service provision and offer support in a more systematic way to divert them.

Let me say a few words about knife-enabled robbery. This is another of my top priorities, and it is incredibly distressing and dangerous for victims. Levels of knife-enabled robbery are unacceptably high and have risen by 11% nationally in the past year. That is why I chair a new taskforce on knife-enabled robbery, bringing together chief constables and other criminal justice partners to take urgent action to tackle it. Working with the College of Policing, the taskforce has used the latest data and evidence to establish what works when tackling this crime. I have asked taskforce chiefs to consider how they will implement those insights in their plans.

Through the taskforce, I have heard directly from West Midlands police about what action they are taking locally to combat knife-enabled robbery. Under the leadership of Chief Constable Craig Guildford, the force has bolstered prevention-focused activities in its hotspots, made improvements to how priority offenders are identified and managed, and taken steps to ensure and enhance the quality of investigations. Recent results are very promising, with considerable reductions in offence levels and increasing numbers of suspects brought to justice.

I also want to refer to serious violence reduction orders in relation to stop and search. West Midlands police is one of the four forces piloting serious violence reduction orders. The two-year pilot, launched in April ’23, is due to finish in April this year. Those court orders can be placed on adults upon conviction of a knife or offensive weapons offence. They provide the police with the power to automatically stop and search individuals convicted of knife offences, with the aim of deterring habitual knife-carrying behaviour.

Stop and search is an important tool, but it must be used fairly and effectively. In the 12 months to March ’24, 1,293 offensive weapons and firearms were found by police through stop and search in the west midlands. However, as we know, the tactic often disproportionately affects ethnic minority communities, so it needs to be deployed in a targeted way and with sensitivity. Although the Government welcome reductions in the ethnic disparity and disproportionality of stop and search in recent years, there is more work to do. In the west midlands, black people are still 2.7 times more likely to be stopped and searched than white people.

Another issue that we need to talk about, and which several hon. Members raised, is county lines. To achieve our goal of halving knife crime in a decade, it is essential that we tackle the drugs gangs that drive violence and exploit children into criminality. That is why our manifesto included a commitment to introduce a new offence of child criminal exploitation. County lines is the most violent model of drug supply and a harmful form of child criminal exploitation. The west midlands is one of four urban regions in which we are funding a dedicated task force to close lines, prosecute violent offenders and safeguard vulnerable people. Last month, West Midlands police took part in the national week of intensification targeting county lines gangs, and it achieved excellent results, making over 80 arrests, safeguarding more than 90 children and 20 vulnerable adults, and taking dozens of dangerous bladed weapons off our streets.

I repeat my earlier thanks to my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich and all who have participated in this debate. Whatever side of the House we sit on, and whatever our constituency, this issue matters deeply to us and the people that we represent. We all have a responsibility to do everything in our power to tackle the scourge of knife crime.