Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether the provisions on knives in the Criminal Justice Bill will also extend to weapons used for historical re-enactments.

In the Criminal Justice Bill 2023 we are introducing three measures to tackle knife crime:

• Increasing the maximum penalty for selling knives to those under 18 or selling prohibited weapons to 2 years imprisonment.
• Giving the police a new power to seize any bladed article if they are lawfully on premises and suspect that the relevant article would be likely to be used in connection with unlawful violence.
• Creating a new offence of possessing an article with blade or point or an offensive weapon with intent to use unlawful violence.

These measures will apply to all pointed or bladed articles, including those used for historical re-enactment.

On 25 January we laid the Criminal Justice Act 1988 (Offensive Weapons) (Amendment, Surrender and Compensation) Order 2024 in Parliament. The Order has now been approved by both Houses of Parliament and this will prohibit the manufacture, supply, sale and possession of zombie-style knives and machetes from 24 September 2024.

Zombie-style knives are defined in the Statutory Instrument and to fall under the legislation would need to be a bladed article with a plain cutting edge and a sharp pointed end, with a blade of over 8 inches in length, which also has one or more of, a serrated cutting edge, more than one hole in the blade, spikes or more than two sharp points in the blade.

Items which match this criteria will fall under the legislation including those used for historical re-enactment; however, there is a defence in the legislation for in scope items which are blunt.