Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she is taking to prevent knife crime.

This Government is determined to turn the tide on knife crime in all areas, wherever it occurs.

On 4 February 2021, the Government published a total police funding settlement of up to £15.8 billion in 2021/22, an increase of up to £636 million compared to 2020/21. Across England and Wales, we are also recruiting 20,000 additional police officers by the end of March 2023.

From 2019 to 2022, this government will have provided over £242 million, through the Serious Violence Fund (SVF), to address the drivers of serious violence at the local level and significantly bolster the police response in 18 Police Force areas most affected by serious violence across England and Wales.

We have also invested £200 million through the 10-Year Youth Endowment Fund to ensure those most at risk are given the opportunity to turn away from violence and lead positive lives.

We have also made it easier for the police to use enhanced stop and search powers and we have introduced Serious Violence Reduction Orders (SVROs) in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts (PCSC) Bill which will give the police powers to make it easier to stop and search those already convicted of knife and offensive weapon offences.

Through the PCSC bill, we have also introduced legislation which will place new duties on a range of specified agencies across different sectors, such as local government, youth offending, and health and probation, to work collaboratively, share data and information, and put in place plans to prevent and reduce serious violence.

The Offensive Weapons Act 2019 includes specific measures for knife offences, in particular making it an offence to possess certain offensive weapons in private, and stopping knives being sent to residential addresses after they are bought online, unless the seller has arrangements in place with the delivery company to ensure that the product would not be delivered into the hands of a person under 18. The measures on knives in the Act also include:

• changing the legal definition for threatening with an offensive weapon to make prosecutions more straightforward;
• banning the possession of a knife on a further education premises;
• updating the definition of a flick knife to reflect changing weapon designs;
• introducing Knife Crime Prevention Orders (KCPOs) to help the police target those most at risk of being drawn into serious violence, to set them on a more positive path.