Asked by: Joshua Reynolds (Liberal Democrat - Maidenhead)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps her Department is taking to ensure police forces receive (a) adequate training and (b) resources to (i) identify, (ii) prevent and (ii) prosecute antisemitic hate crimes.
Answered by Mike Tapp - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
Antisemitism has absolutely no place in our society, and the government is committed to tackling it in all its forms.
The government is committed to ensuring there are consistent, high standards in police training and leadership to help maintain public trust and confidence. That is why the Home Office continues to fund the College of Policing to deliver support to forces and improvements to leadership and training standards through the National Police Leadership Centre.
The College of Policing sets national guidance and standards for policing in England and Wales, including publishing Authorised Professional Practice on hate crime. This Authorised Professional Practice provides guidance on how police should respond to hate crimes and promotes a proportionate and consistent approach that upholds the rights of victims and protects free speech. While the College sets the overall framework, individual police forces are responsible for determining their own local delivery of training.
Police forces are operationally independent, but we expect them to use these standards, tools and guidance, and to work closely with the Crown Prosecution Service to ensure robust charging decisions and prosecutions in cases of antisemitic hate crime.
The Home Secretary launched an independent review of public order and hate crime legislation on 5 October. This review will assess whether police powers remain fit for purpose, are used consistently, and strike the right balance between protecting the public and safeguarding the right to lawful protest.
It will address whether the existing legislation is effective and proportionate, whether it adequately protects communities from intimidation and hate and whether it strikes a fair and sustainable balance between the right to freedom of expression and peaceful protest, and the need to prevent disorder and keep communities safe.
Asked by: Julian Smith (Conservative - Skipton and Ripon)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether she has made an assessment of the potential merits of placing a ban on a) machetes and b) large hunting knives.
Answered by Mike Tapp - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
Knife crime has a devasting impact on families and communities across the country, and the Government is aiming to halve knife crime in the next decade. We keep the law in this area under constant review, and this includes the continuing availability of machetes and large hunting knives.
The Government has already taken action to ban zombie style knives and zombie style machetes in September 2024, and more recently, we took action to ban ninja swords in August 2025. We are continuing to take measures to strengthen the law on knives.
In the Crime and Policing Bill 2025, currently going through Parliament, 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, a duty on sellers to report bulk or suspicious sales, strengthened age checks on online sales and delivery, and we are giving the police a new power to seize knives likely to be used in unlawful violence. On 16 December, the Government also published a public consultation paper on proposals to introduce licensing schemes for those who sell or import knives or other bladed articles and this builds on the earlier recommendations in the Independent End to End Review of Online Knife Sales published in February 2025.
Asked by: Josh Babarinde (Liberal Democrat - Eastbourne)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she is taking to help prevent bicycle theft in Eastbourne constituency.
Answered by Mike Tapp - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
Bike theft has a significant impact on individuals and for too long, many victims have felt not enough was being done to prevent their bikes being stolen or track down the thieves responsible.
The Crime and Policing Bill, now at Committee Stage in the House of Lords, will amend the Theft Act 1968 to give police new powers. Officers will be able to enter and search premises where stolen items – such as GPS-tracked bicycles – are reasonably believed to have been stolen and located, and where it is not reasonably practicable to obtain a court warrant. This will significantly enhance the ability of the police to act swiftly and effectively in recovering stolen property.
Additionally, the Neighbourhood Policing Guarantee will ensure that every community in England and Wales will have named and contactable officers dealing with local issues, and that neighbourhood teams spend the majority of their time in their communities providing visible patrols and engaging with local communities and businesses.
Asked by: Julian Smith (Conservative - Skipton and Ripon)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether she has made an assessment of the potential merits of phasing out the general sale of sharp-tipped culinary knives.
Answered by Mike Tapp - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
We recognise that the issue of knife crime and the harm caused by any knife has a very real impact on individuals, families and communities and we aim to halve knife crime in the next decade. The Government keeps the law in this area under constant review, but we do not have any plans to phase out the sale of sharp-tipped culinary knives.
Asked by: Andrew Mitchell (Conservative - Sutton Coldfield)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether she plans to allocate additional police resources to tackle antisocial behaviour in the Birmingham City Council area.
Answered by Mike Tapp - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
Tackling Anti-Social Behaviour is a top priority for this Government, and a key part of our Safer Streets Mission.
Under the Government’s Neighbourhood Policing Guarantee, we are putting neighbourhood officers back into communities. £200 million has been made available in 2025-26 to support the first steps towards delivering 13,000 more neighbourhood policing personnel across England and Wales by the end of this Parliament, including up to 3,000 additional neighbourhood officers by the end of March 2026.
Based on their £12,210,903 allocation from the Neighbourhood Policing Grant, West Midlands Police are projected to grow by 309 FTE neighbourhood officers in 2025-26 (289 FTE neighbourhood police officers and 20 FTE neighbourhood PCSOs).
Following on from the Safer Streets Summer Initiative, the Home Secretary announced a “Winter of Action” in which police forces across England and Wales will again partner with local businesses, councils and other agencies to tackle anti-social behaviour and other local issues that matter most to their communities. As part of this initiative, West Midlands Police have identified 54 locations, including a number in Birmingham, in which visible patrols and targeted enforcement will be delivered to tackle anti-social behaviour, retail crime and other local crimes. The full list of locations can be found here:
Winter of Action: location list - GOV.UK
Asked by: Shaun Davies (Labour - Telford)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she is taking to support the financial sustainability of police forces.
Answered by Mike Tapp - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
This Government is committed to ensuring that policing has the resources it needs. In December 2025, we published the provisional police funding settlement for 2026-27, which proposes funding of up to £18.3 billion for territorial police forces. This is an increase of up to £746 million compared to the 2025-26 police funding settlement, equivalent to a 2.0% real terms increase.
More widely, the Home Office engages regularly with police forces, the NPCC, and APCC to discuss police finances and understand the pressures on police budgets.
Asked by: Julian Smith (Conservative - Skipton and Ripon)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she is taking to reduce knife crime.
Answered by Mike Tapp - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
Tackling knife crime is a priority for Government. Since this Government has been in office, knife homicides have fallen by almost 20% while knife crime overall has fallen for the first time in 4 years, dropping by 5% in our first year from 54,215 to 51,527. Stabbings have fallen by 10% (as measured by hospital admissions for assault with a sharp object – NHS data).
60,000 knives have also been removed from the streets of England and Wales under this Government, through weapons surrender schemes, knives seized by Border Force and those recovered through County Lines Programme operations.
Our approach to tackling knife-crime is centred around smart, targeted interventions and enforcement, and a tough legislative landscape to remove dangerous weapons from our streets. Whilst also working across government to tackle the root causes of knife-crime, including through Violence Reduction Units and the new Young Futures Programme supporting those most at risk.
We have introduced tougher knife control measures by banning zombie-style knives and machetes in September 2024 and ninja swords in August 2025. Ronan's Law tightens online knife sales with stricter age checks and penalties and we are introducing new powers to strengthen policing’s ability to seize, retain and destroy dangerous knives.
These efforts are supported by smarter policing – including data led hotspot patrols, knife arches, facial recognition – and strong partnerships with charities and communities.
We are also introducing new, innovative tools to fight knife crime, identifying crime hotspots by breaking towns and cities into small hexagonal zones where hyper-local issues can be spotted. It will allow the police to partner with local communities, advocacy groups, local authorities and youth outreach teams to spot a problem and take action together to stop it.
Asked by: Al Pinkerton (Liberal Democrat - Surrey Heath)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she is taking to protect civil liberties in the (a) development and (b) implementation of (i) public order and (ii) policing policy.
Answered by Mike Tapp - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
All protest legislation has been and is developed in line with the UK’s obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights, particularly Articles 10 and 11. The government remains committed to protecting civil liberties, including the right to peaceful protest.
It has long been a principle in this country that individuals may gather and express their views, provided they do so within the law. Where protests contravene the law, it is essential that the police who are operationally independent have appropriate powers to respond.
The Home Secretary launched an independent review of public order and hate crime legislation on 5 October led by Lord Macdonald of River Glaven KC. The review will ensure police powers remain fit for purpose, are used consistently, and strike the right balance between protecting the public and upholding the right to lawful protest.
It will address whether the existing legislation is effective and proportionate, whether it adequately protects communities from intimidation and hate and whether it strikes a fair and sustainable balance between the right to freedom of expression and peaceful protest, and the need to prevent disorder and keep communities safe.
The review is underway and will conclude by Spring 2026.
Asked by: Sarah Pochin (Reform UK - Runcorn and Helsby)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment her Department has made of the adequacy of training provided to police officers on identifying and recording incidents involving gender identity and sex characteristics.
Answered by Mike Tapp - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
Hate crime has no place in our society, and the Government is committed to ensuring it is recorded accurately and addressed effectively.
The accuracy and consistency of crime recording, including hate crime, is the responsibility of individual police forces, who must comply with the Home Office Counting Rules. His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS) independently inspects, monitors and reports on the efficiency and effectiveness of the police, including crime recording practices. However, HMICFRS does not publish annual compliance reports specifically on hate crime recording.
Home Office statisticians work closely with forces to ensure accurate data is provided for the annual statistical publication on hate crime in England and Wales. The latest release, covering the year ending March 2025, is available on GOV.UK. Hate crime, England and Wales, year ending March 2025 - GOV.UK
The College of Policing sets national guidance and standards for policing, including Authorised Professional Practice on hate crime. The Home Office works closely with the College and other policing partners to review and update recording protocols as needed. This ensures forces have clear, consistent guidance for recording hate crime across all protected characteristics.
The government is carefully considering the 34 recommendations made by the Law Commission in its 2021 review of hate crime legislation; this does not contain any formal recommendation on how police should record hate crimes.
Asked by: Sarah Pochin (Reform UK - Runcorn and Helsby)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what consideration the Home Office has given to mandating annual publication of police force level data on hate crime recording compliance.
Answered by Mike Tapp - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
Hate crime has no place in our society, and the Government is committed to ensuring it is recorded accurately and addressed effectively.
The accuracy and consistency of crime recording, including hate crime, is the responsibility of individual police forces, who must comply with the Home Office Counting Rules. His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS) independently inspects, monitors and reports on the efficiency and effectiveness of the police, including crime recording practices. However, HMICFRS does not publish annual compliance reports specifically on hate crime recording.
Home Office statisticians work closely with forces to ensure accurate data is provided for the annual statistical publication on hate crime in England and Wales. The latest release, covering the year ending March 2025, is available on GOV.UK. Hate crime, England and Wales, year ending March 2025 - GOV.UK
The College of Policing sets national guidance and standards for policing, including Authorised Professional Practice on hate crime. The Home Office works closely with the College and other policing partners to review and update recording protocols as needed. This ensures forces have clear, consistent guidance for recording hate crime across all protected characteristics.
The government is carefully considering the 34 recommendations made by the Law Commission in its 2021 review of hate crime legislation; this does not contain any formal recommendation on how police should record hate crimes.