Knife and Sword Ban

Paulette Hamilton Excerpts

Tuesday 6th February 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Paulette Hamilton (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)]

In the past decade, the Tories have cut 21,000 police officers across the UK and knife crime has gone up by 77%. This Government’s response has been completely inadequate. The serious violence strategy is more than five years out of date, the serious violence taskforce has been disbanded, and everyone knows from their own communities that too little is being done to divert young people away from violence and crime.

People in Erdington, Kingstanding and Castle Vale have been left to face the consequences of Tory knife crime failure, and the B23 postcode in my constituency has the highest rate of knife crime in the west midlands, with 39 people stabbed last year, yet we have just a single weapon surrender bin.

If we are serious about ending the blight of knife crime in our communities, we need the Government to be serious about funding. In the west midlands, we have lost 2,221 officers and have had £175 million slashed from our budgets since the last Labour Government. That is felt most harshly in areas that are already struggling. Of the 225 left-behind neighbourhoods in the UK, two are in my constituency, which is the fifth most deprived in the country.

With the increase in county lines and gangs, young people do not feel safe walking to and from school—it is as simple as that. Even when my constituents contact the police, the massive funding failures and long waiting times in the criminal justice system mean they very rarely see any justice.

A constituent told me that she had raised the issue of a gang in her block following a recent stabbing. She told me that, when her neighbour was threatened with a knife by a group of young people and she reported it to a police community support officer, she was advised that the best thing she could do would be to “make friends” with the gang.

One of the most worrying aspects of knife crime is the large amount of youth violence across the UK. When a stabbing is reported in areas like Erdington, it is too often a child being stabbed by another child. This means that prevention is key, and Departments must work together to prevent knife crime before it happens.

Last March, I asked the Secretary of State for Education how many schools in my constituency use metal detectors to screen pupils, and how many weapons had been recovered as a result. The Department could not tell me because it does not record this data. It is unbelievable that the Department for Education does not know how many schools across the country use metal detectors, or even how successful they are. If we are missing this important preventive information, what else are we missing? It just is not good enough.

It is not right that people in Erdington, and across the UK, have to fear violent crime when walking to the shops or when their children walk to school. The primary objective of any Government must be to keep people safe, which is why it is so concerning that, in total, the Prime Minister has announced a ban on zombie knives 14 times. Since the Government first attempted a ban in 2016, there has been a 24% increase in murders involving a knife or sharp instrument. Something clearly is not working.

Labour is committed to halving knife crime across the UK in the next decade, thereby preventing the further serious crime, youth offending and tragic loss of life that come with it. We would implement guaranteed sanctions and serious interventions for young people found carrying knives, we would refer every offender to a youth offending team, and we would introduce a mandatory, bespoke action plan to prevent reoffending.

Labour would completely crack down on the availability of knives on Britain’s streets, including where further laws are required on online knife sales. It is clearly time for an election, because communities in my constituency, and young people across the UK, deserve better.