Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent progress her Department has made in tackling knife crime.

Halving knife crime is a central mission for this Government and since day one we have acted with urgency to turn the tide on this truly devastating crime. We have seen early signs of progress, with overall knife crime down for the first time in four years, but we need to supercharge these efforts.

To date, we banned zombie knives in September 2024 and introduced a ban on ninja swords from 1 August 2025 - it is now illegal to sell or own these weapons. We have also implemented, “Ronan’s Law”, a range of measures which will include stricter rules for online sellers of knives.

We are increasing the penalties for illegal sales of knives, creating a new offence of possessing a knife with the intention to commit unlawful violence and are giving the police a new power to seize knives when they believe they are likely to be used in connection with unlawful violence.

The Home Secretary and Policing Minister launched a Knife-Enabled Robbery (KER) Taskforce in October 2024 in the highest volume police force areas. The Taskforce met its ambition to halt the rise of KER in Taskforce areas (as a collective) within 6 months.

The Prime Minister launched the Coalition to Tackle Knife Crime in September 2024, which brings together campaign groups, bereaved families, people who have been impacted by knife crime and community leaders, united in their mission to save lives, to help us drive forward our plans and to hold us to account on progress.

Over £66 million is available to all 43 police force areas to fund the 'Hotspot Action' programme in 2025/26.  This programme is a combination of increased high visibility foot patrols and funding of problem-oriented policing (POP) tactics.

Tackling county lines is key to delivering our pledge to halve knife crime within the decade. That is why we are investing more than £42m this financial year in the County Lines Programme to target violent and exploitative drug dealing gangs driving knife crime and violence in communities. Since July 2024 the County Lines Programme has resulted in more than 1,200 deal lines closed, 2,000 arrests, 2,100 safeguarding referrals and provided specialist support to over 460 children and young people to enable them to exit their involvement in violence and county lines.

We have introduced a new offence of child criminal exploitation in the Crime and Policing Bill to go after the gangs who are luring young people into violence and crime. As part of this legislation we are also delivering new civil preventative orders which will disrupt and prevent child criminal exploitation from occurring or re-occurring. We are also going further in our response to wider criminal exploitation, introducing a new offence of ‘cuckooing’ and an offence to tackle coerced internal concealment. These three new offences will all work to tackle the interconnected and exploitative practices often used by criminal gangs, especially in county lines.

Through the Young Futures Programme, the Government will introduce Prevention Partnerships across the country, to intervene earlier and ensure that children and young people vulnerable to being drawn into crime and violence are identified and offered support in a more systematic way.

As we design the Young Futures Programme, we will ensure that it learns from and builds on the work of the Violence Reduction Units (VRUs). VRUs bring together partners, including from the voluntary and community sector, to understand and tackle the drivers of serious violence in their area.

A further £14.3m in grant funding has been made available across all 43 local policing body areas to deliver the Serious Violence Duty.