Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what discussions she has had with West Yorkshire Police on knife crime in Huddersfield constituency in the last 12 months.

Ministers regularly engage with policing leaders across the country on these issues, including colleagues in the West Yorkshire Police. On 16 June, 2022, the former Home Secretary met West Yorkshire Police in Leeds to discuss operational matters across the region, including knife crime.

The Government is determined to drive down serious violence by combining tough enforcement action with support for those most at risk. This includes direct funding and activity in West Yorkshire. Since 2019, the West Yorkshire VRU has received c.£16m for violence reduction activity, including £5.9m in this financial year. The VRU was also successful in bidding for an additional £450k to work alongside the police to deliver targeted youth work to high-risk young people at the point of arrest.

We have also invested over £10m in West Yorkshire through our serious violence police enforcement programmes (including a £1.6m investment through our ‘Grip’ programme this financial year). Grip uses a highly data-driven process to deliver and track additional visible patrols in the streets and neighbourhoods most affected by these devastating crimes.

In 2019, the Home Office established the Youth Endowment Fund (YEF) with a 10-year endowment of £200m to build an evidence base around what works in preventing youth violence and make this accessible to practitioners. To date, the YEF has granted around £1.2m in funding across 11 intervention projects in West Yorkshire.