Crime and Policing Bill

Debate between Julian Lewis and Chris Philp

2nd reading
Monday 10th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Chris Philp]

The Minister will come back to it later.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

It seems to me that the Government’s good work in this Bill in criminalising the possession of knives with intent will be undermined if the police have to wait for someone to take out the knife and commit an attack before they can discover whether they have a knife. Surely, if there is a separate offence arising from mere possession, as my right hon. Friend says, it is particularly important to enable the police to discover that someone possesses that knife before they have had a chance to do harm with it.

[Chris Philp]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. If we are to prosecute these offences, put more potential perpetrators in prison and, critically, protect the public, we need to detect more of the knives that are routinely carried on our cities’ streets. That means more stop and search and the use of knife-scanning technology of the kind I just described to identify those knives before they are used. My right hon. Friend put it very powerfully.

The Opposition may also be minded to table amendments on the setting up of a statutory national inquiry into rape gangs. For some reason the Government have only set up local inquiries in five areas. Some local authorities are refusing to hold inquiries, which is scandalous. About 50 towns are affected, so inquiries into just five of them is not good enough. Moreover, those local inquiries do not have the statutory powers under the Inquiries Act 2005 to compel witnesses to give evidence. The chairs of the Manchester local inquiry resigned last year because, even then, public authorities were covering this up. We need a national statutory inquiry, and we intend to amend the Bill to achieve that if the Government will not agree to one. Local councils and councillors, the police and the Crown Prosecution Service were all involved to a greater or lesser extent in ignoring or even covering up these terrible offences. We need to get to the truth.