Sale of Knives

Debate between Baroness Williams of Trafford and Baroness Hollins

Tuesday 8th October 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I join my noble friend in paying tribute to the supermarkets and the work they have done in this area. I think it is Morrisons and Lidl which have decided not to sell knives in store. Asda has stopped selling single knives and other supermarkets have either stopped or restricted the sale of knives in areas where levels of knife crime are particularly high. We enforce this Act through trading standards and the use of test purchase operations in store and online. The £500,000 prosecution fund, which was introduced as part of the serious violence strategy, helps trading standards to prosecute rogue retailers that repeatedly fail test purchases.

[Baroness Hollins (CB)]

My Lords, I speak as the mother of a victim of knife crime. I am surprised that the “No Points” campaign has not been mentioned; perhaps Members are unaware of it. However, identifying which variables can be changed to make it difficult to commit a particular harm has been proven to succeed. For example, restricting the amount of paracetamol that you can buy led to fewer deaths from paracetamol overdoses. Sixty years ago, our domestic gas supply changed from coal gas to natural gas, thus effectively removing an effective means of taking one’s own’s life that was readily to hand, and there was a profound drop in the rate of suicide. Does the Minister agree that it would be worth piloting the recommendations in the “No Points” campaign to see if it can achieve similar results for homicide? The point of the campaign is that you do not need a point in the kitchen, and there are good designs available.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I totally empathise with where the noble Baroness is coming from. She speaks from personal experience when she outlines the devastation that knives can cause to communities. I have some empathy with the “No Points” campaign, although there are very dangerous knives that do not have points at all, such as machetes. The Government believe that the current controls, which will be strengthened by the Offensive Weapons Act, will support this. A further point—no pun intended—is that it is not only legislation that will reduce and curtail knife crime.

Child Sexual Exploitation Victims

Debate between Baroness Williams of Trafford and Baroness Hollins

Tuesday 19th March 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

The noble Baroness is absolutely right that I cannot comment on an ongoing legal case. What I can understand—and what the Government have sought to do and succeeded in doing over the last few years—is to see people as both victims and perpetrators through some of the coercion and exploitation in which they have been involved. We will consider this as the case proceeds, but the Government have put a great deal of time and effort into working with people who have been exploited and who find themselves victims of child sexual exploitation, gangs, knife crime or drug involvement. There have been various interventions: the noble Baroness will have listened to debates on the Offensive Weapons Bill and will have heard me outline the youth endowment fund, which we are bringing forward. She will have listened to the various multiagency approaches to helping victims of child sexual exploitation get over the terrible pain that has been caused to them, to avoid getting trapped in what originally happened to them, and to go on to lead good lives.

[Baroness Hollins (CB)]

My Lords, it is very concerning to hear that young people who have been groomed into criminal activity and then become victims of sexual abuse and discouraged from even disclosing their abuse because of the fear of their own criminalisation should then not have the opportunity to have those crimes forgotten. Can the Minister tell the House whether such young people are also then denied access to criminal injury compensation? Is this indeed the case?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

The noble Baroness will of course appreciate that every case is different. She will also realise that, as I just outlined to the noble Baroness, Lady Burt, the big spectrum of exploitation that children can suffer can also manifest itself in different ways. The Government are determined to deal with some of these problems at source, with early intervention and prevention, so that children do not find themselves sexually exploited and are able to go on to lead lives that are free from the sorts of harms that we have been talking about.