Knife Crime: Stop and Search

Lord Davies of Gower Excerpts

Tuesday 1st April 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am very happy to take up my noble friend’s suggestion, when time allows. As he knows, that mixture of education, youth hubs, wider support for parents and an understanding of the reasons why people are involved in knife culture is really important. Equally, this Government are focused on online sales and how we can take action to give the police better support, including the use of the new technology I mentioned earlier. A whole raft of measures is contributing to the Government’s commitment to halve knife crime over a distinct period. That is a really important point, and I will certainly look at lessons elsewhere to help inform the Government.

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

Stop and search is a vital tool for stopping those intent on causing death, injury and fear in our communities, and I can personally vouch for that. Policing response, and the successful detection of crime, is of course based on responding to local intelligence and victim statements. However, as we know, evidence suggests that the use of stop and search can negatively affect the relationship between police and ethnic minority communities, which is of course damaging. Can the Minister outline how the Government are working with the police—I am particularly thinking of training issues—and communities to strengthen trust and make sure that stop and search does not come at the cost of community confidence?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful to His Majesty’s Opposition’s spokesperson. It is important that stop and search, as with policing generally, has the confidence of the communities being policed. The Government have made a commitment to increase the number of neighbourhood police officers and to make them front line, and to have that front-facing community engagement through neighbourhood policing over the next few years. There will be an additional 11,000 to 12,000—possibly even 13,000—neighbourhood police officers by the end of this Parliament, which is a key commitment to ensure that we have community engagement at a local level.