Crime and Policing Bill

Matt Rodda Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 10th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Warinder Juss (Wolverhampton West) (Lab)]

rose—

[Matt Rodda (Reading Central) (Lab)]

rose—

[Yvette Cooper]

I will give way first to my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton West (Warinder Juss), and then I will give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Reading Central (Matt Rodda).

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend makes a really important point. We need to prevent people—especially young people—getting access to those dangerous weapons in the first place, but also to make sure that there are proper interventions, including referrals to youth offending teams. We must not have a system that simply shrugs its shoulders when young people are caught carrying knives.

Knife-enabled offences recorded by the police rose by 9% in the two years up to last summer. Many people in this House will know the story of Ronan Kanda, who was just 16 when he was stabbed to death with a ninja sword just yards from his home. He was killed by two other teenagers who had bought, not just that sword, but more than 20 other lethal weapons online with no questions asked and no proper checks. It is because of the tireless campaigning of Ronan’s mum Pooja that we have already launched plans to ban ninja swords, following this summer’s implementation of the zombie knife ban, and commissioned Commander Stephen Clayman to do an end-to-end review of knife sales. That review was published a few weeks ago, and it is driving some of the new measures we are introducing as part of this Bill.

[Matt Rodda]

rose—

[Ben Obese-Jecty]

rose—

[Yvette Cooper]

I will give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Reading Central, and then I will give way to the hon. Member for Huntingdon, but let me just make a couple of other points first. The Bill increases the maximum penalties for offences relating to the sale and possession of offensive weapons from six months to two years’ imprisonment. Following the Clayman review, we will also bring forward amendments to the Bill in this House to introduce stricter age verification checks, with a stringent two-step age verification system for online knife sales, so that customers have to submit photo ID at the point of purchase and again on delivery. It will be a legal requirement to hand a package containing a knife to the buyer alone.

[Matt Rodda]

I thank the Home Secretary wholeheartedly for her work on this important matter. In my constituency, 13-year-old Olly Stephens was attacked and brutally murdered by two other boys. They had seen hundreds of images of knives online on 11 different social media platforms. I warmly welcome in particular the consultation that she has announced to look into the potential penalties for tech executives who fail to act responsibly in this important area.

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend raises an important point, and he has raised the terrible case of the killing of Olly Stephens with me before. I know how incredibly devastating that has been for the whole community. He is right that the online system has made it far too easy for young people to get hold of lethal weapons. There is also the content that too many of our young people are seeing online. That is why the measures as part of the Online Safety Act 2023 to strengthen the requirements on tech companies around material visible to children will be important, too. Those are expected in the summer.

My hon. Friend is also right that we will bring forward amendments during the Bill’s passage to give effect to our manifesto commitment to introduce personal liability measures for senior managers of online platforms that fail to take action on illegal content concerning knives and offensive weapons. We will introduce a requirement for sellers to notify bulk or suspicious sales of knives to the police. We have seen cases where young people were able effectively to become arms traders, buying huge numbers of illegal weapons that should not have been sold to them and then distributing them in the community.