Knife and Sword Ban

Debate between Lyn Brown and Chris Philp

Tuesday 6th February 2024 Commons Chamber

[Chris Philp]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his very good question, and I will come on to that matter now. We want to tighten up the sale of knives online. The principal vehicle for that is not so much the Criminal Justice Bill, although we are increasing the criminal sanction for supplying a knife to an under-18 to up to two years in prison, as the Online Safety Act 2023, which was given Royal Assent in October and will be commenced in stages as Ofcom drafts its codes of practice. The Online Safety Act puts a duty on social media firms—including, critically, online marketplaces—to proactively prevent priority criminal offences from happening.

For a time I was the Bill Minister for the Online Safety Bill, as it then was, and I think I am correct in recalling that the priority criminal offences are set out in schedule 7 to that Act. However, I am speaking from memory, so if the shadow Home Secretary wants to make a point of order and correct me, she is very welcome to do so. I think it is schedule 7, but she is unusually quiet. One of those priority offences is concerned with the supply of knives, so social media firms and online marketplaces will have a duty to proactively take steps to prevent the sale of two types of knives that are illegal and to prevent the sale of knives in general to under-18s.

To answer the question about criminal liability, Members will know, or should know, that the Online Safety Act includes provisions that create personal criminal liability for executives of large social media firms in a number of circumstances. In fact, for precisely the reasons my right hon. Friend mentioned and that the Opposition probably had in mind when they drafted today’s motion, those measures were strengthened as the Online Safety Bill passed through the House. The Online Safety Act, as it is now, is the mechanism through which those points, including personal criminal liability, are being addressed.

By the way, the measures in the Criminal Justice Bill include giving the police the power to seize lawfully held knives that are legal, such as kitchen knives, if the police reasonably suspect that they are going to be used for criminal purposes. If a drug dealer has 10 of these knives, which might technically be legal, but has them at their home address, the police can seize those lawful knives where there is a suspicion that they are going be used for criminal purposes. That is in the Criminal Justice Bill.

We are also acting via a statutory instrument laid a week or two ago, which has been referred to, to ban even more zombie-style knives and machetes. We set out in that statutory instrument the characteristics that those knives must have—over 8 inches in length, for example, or certain features concerning serration and sharp edges. The reason why that will not take effect until September is that we need to allow people who currently hold knives that will become illegal the chance to surrender them. That scheme will run over the summer, and the ban will take effect in September.

I pay particular tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Southend West (Anna Firth), who has been campaigning on this topic for some time. She convened a knife crime summit last year with a number of police and crime commissioners, including Essex’s excellent police and crime commissioner, Roger Hirst. Their campaigning—hers and Roger Hirst’s—led to this measure coming forward. I hope it is clear from those comments that the law has been tightened already and is in the process of being tightened even further.

The hon. Member for West Ham (Ms Brown) asked a good question about children being coerced or manipulated into committing offences, and she asked in particular about a private Member’s Bill tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford). This is something that we have studied carefully and taken advice on, as she would expect. It is already an offence, in relation to both children and adults, to encourage, control or cause them to undertake criminal activity. Sections 44 to 46 of the Serious Crime Act 2007 do what she is rightly asking for, and there are also provisions in the Modern Slavery Act 2015. I think they are in section 45, but I am again speaking from memory. Those provisions in the Serious Crime Act are very wide-ranging—in fact, more wide-ranging than those in the Modern Slavery Act—and they apply to children and to adults, and I would like to see the police using those powers a great deal more.

[Ms Lyn Brown]

I say very gently to the right hon. Gentleman, and I am genuinely grateful to him for listening to what I asked for and for responding, that the experts in the field believe those provisions do not do what they need to. Would he allow me to write to him and have a discussion so that we can take this matter forward?

[Chris Philp]

Yes, I am very willing to work with the hon. Lady and to look at detailed representations. I have been advised that those sections are quite broad-ranging. I have read them myself and—on the face of it, and reading them as a Member of Parliament would read any bit of legislation—they do strike me as very wide-ranging in their scope. However, I am of course happy to listen to particular representations and to discuss them. If those sections of the Serious Crime Act and the Modern Slavery Act contain lacunae, I would be willing to discuss that. I am looking forward to hearing from the hon. Lady on that topic and working with her if there are gaps to be filled.

We have talked about prevention and about the law needing to be strong enough, and we must come on to enforcement because we must protect our fellow citizens from criminal activity, knife crime in particular. Clearly, it is important to make sure that the police have the relevant resources. An Opposition Member referred to police numbers, and in March last year we achieved a headcount of 149,566 police officers—more than at any time in history. In fact, it is about 3,500 more than under the last Labour Government.

I would like those police officers to do a couple of things. I would like them to be patrolling in hotspots where crimes are a particular problem. We have been doing hotspot patrolling in 20 force areas, in what is called Project Grip and that has delivered very significant reductions in violent crime. We also trialled hotspot patrolling in 10 force areas, including Essex, Staffordshire and Lancashire, for antisocial behavioural last year, and those delivered reductions in antisocial behaviour of up to 36%.

Because that is working, from April this year—just a couple of months’ time—we are putting new funding of £66 million behind it, over and above the record police settlement. By the way, that settlement will see an extra £922 million go to police and crime commissioners, with that £66 million to fund hotspot patrolling in every single police force area in the country, targeted against antisocial behaviour and serious violence, because we know it works. I am sure Members will be lobbying their police and crime commissioners to make sure that those hotspot patrols take place in areas of concern to them. I know, for example, that one of the parts of Essex where those hotspot patrols have taken place is Southend, and it has been effective at reducing antisocial behaviour there.

Stop and search is another important part of this equation. It would seem that the Mayor of London and some Opposition Members do not like it, and I understand their concerns, but we need to use stop and search confidently and proactively—done lawfully and respectfully, of course—because it has taken 60,000 knives off the streets in the last four years. Every month, in London alone, 400 knives are taken off the streets by stop and search. We need to use it confidently and proactively and not pull back from using it, because it will save lives. When we talk to the families of victims—who, sadly, often come from ethnic minority communities—they say, “If only my son’s murderer had been stopped and searched on the way to the murder.” That is the kind of thing we hear people say.

If anyone is concerned about disproportionality—it was a topic I wanted to look at myself—the rate at which knives or drugs are successfully found on people who are stopped and searched is about the same regardless of ethnicity; whether someone is white, black, Asian or any ethnicity, the find rate is about the same, at approximately 22% or 23%. If there was disproportionality or unfair behaviour by the police, we would find a difference, but we do not. So I urge all chief constables and PCCs to use stop and search confidently and proactively.

My hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr French) mentioned scanning technology. Technology is being developed—it is not ready for deployment yet, but it is being developed and we are putting funding into it this year—to scan people walking down the street, for example, semi-covertly. It is not a knife arch but is a much smaller scanning device, and it can scan people to see whether they have a knife somewhere on their person. That is obviously much less intrusive than a stop and search, does not lead to some of the tension stop and search can lead to, and it is obviously much quicker to do. I am hopeful that if we can deploy that scanning technology, it will make it near-impossible to carry a knife in a high-traffic place such as a high street in London. We are investing in that technology.

There is also an opportunity to catch more perpetrators using facial recognition, including live facial recognition, which we discussed in the Bill Committee at some length.

Machetes: Consultation

Debate between Lyn Brown and Chris Philp

Tuesday 18th April 2023 Commons Chamber

[Chris Philp]

Some important steps were taken through the Offensive Weapons Act 2019. The Financial Secretary to the Treasury, my hon. Friend the Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins) is in the Chamber, and in a previous ministerial post she took that important legislation through the House. We propose to go further now: rather than introducing a licensing scheme, we propose to ban completely the machetes and zombie knives that are not currently illegal. Instead of requiring a licensing regime, it will simply be illegal to sell, market, import, manufacture or privately possess those particular knives.

[Ms Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

I obviously welcome the further steps to crack down on dangerous knives whenever they might come in, but I gently say to the Minister that when I have taken evidence from experts on the knife problems in my constituency they tell me it is about poverty and child poverty; they tell me it is about the flourishing illegal drugs trade that we just do not have a handle on; they tell me it is about the exploitation of children by county lines gangs; and they talk about the lack of access to youth services and mental health treatment. I urge the Minister to look at this in a holistic way and begin to bring real change and real hope to communities like mine which are so blighted in this way.