Knife Crime

Jim McMahon Excerpts

Tuesday 14th April 2026 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Jones]

We are already putting in place a range of interventions through the Crime and Policing Bill—which is going through Parliament and which we are debating this afternoon—to strengthen age verification for knives, and to ensure that online companies have a duty to remove violent content and knife sale content, and are doing more to do so. As the hon. Lady says, we have also consulted on whether we should have a licensing scheme. We are looking through that at the moment and deciding where we go. The campaign has been led by Pooja Kanda, the mother of Ronan Kanda, who died; she has been campaigning on this issue ever since. We are certainly very sympathetic, but we are the stage of looking at the consultation and seeing what a workable licensing scheme would look like.

[Jim McMahon (Oldham West, Chadderton and Royton) (Lab/Co-op)]

If we want to end the scourge of knife crime, we have to tackle supply, demand, enforcement, education and culture. Oldham has seen some of Greater Manchester’s highest numbers of section 60 stop-and-search areas, and there is often a clear pattern of gang activity, resulting in children carrying knives and other weapons. Petty postcode wars can escalate from online bullying to on-street attacks with serious injury and loss of life. I welcome the announcement of the Young Futures hubs, but given the overwhelming evidence of youth knife crime in Oldham and the cross-border activity in neighbouring Manchester, which has been selected for one of the new hubs, can Oldham be urgently considered as the programme rolls out?

[Sarah Jones]

We are working with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport on where the Young Futures hubs will be, but they will be in the areas most affected by knife crime. There is a whole range of other interventions, which I hope will support my hon. Friend’s community to bring down knife crime overall. It will not just be the Young Futures hubs; many more interventions in our strategy are also designed to support. Greater Manchester has a big investment in addressing county lines, with which he will probably be very familiar. That has been incredibly successful and has got more successful every year that it has been in play. We are funding that this year. Hundreds of knives are being taken off our streets, and thousands of young children are being safeguarded as a result.