Offensive Weapons Bill

Earl of Listowel Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Monday 7th January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

That is a very fair point and I will come back to the noble Lord about just how that process will work.

If the House will indulge me for another minute, the noble Lords, Lord Tunnicliffe, Lord Storey and Lord Paddick, my noble friend Lady Couttie and others all talked about early intervention and prevention, and the balance between prevention and law enforcement. I have to disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, who said we are not funding some of the early interventions. We are providing £17.7 million over the next two years through the Early Intervention Youth Fund, about which I have spoken in this House. We also support early intervention and prevention through the new rounds of the Anti-Knife Crime Community Fund for 2018-19 and 2019-20. The fund for 2018-19 was recently increased to £1.5 million, which has funded 68 projects. Our continued focus on a multiagency approach is absolutely the right one to tackling serious violence. I shall leave it there. I will write to noble Lords about the higher education point, the definition of a bladed product, the points made by my noble friend the Duke of Montrose and of course the Commonwealth Games, which I will take back.

[The Earl of Listowel]

Will the noble Baroness write to me about the future of youth work as a career—one which is stable over time and which does not face huge funding cuts every time there is a financial downturn? I welcome what she said about the large investment in the Early Intervention Youth Fund, but a secure career for youth workers would be such a boon in this area for the future.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

That is probably beyond my purview, but I will certainly refer it to either DCMS or MHCLG, as it is now called. On that note, I commend the Bill to the House.