Knife Crime

Lord Barber of Chittlehampton Excerpts

Wednesday 15th April 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I agree with the noble Baroness on that. As I said, as part of my general contribution, some of the work that the MoJ is doing and is for individuals who are on that cusp and who might well be getting involved in a gang and carrying a knife. There are resources in the knife crime action plan for the Ministry of Justice not to have a criminal justice outcome for those individuals but to try to find ways in which we can divert them and support them to choose a different lifestyle and break with that gang culture.

Interestingly, some 63,611 knives have been taken out of circulation since the general election through the surrender scheme; that includes weapons through the ninja sword surrender scheme, which had cross-party support, as well as the schemes for zombie knives and machetes, and knives seized by Border Force when they entered the country. We are trying to reduce the types of knife that can be carried or used for those offensive purposes. Every one of us will use a knife in our daily work or life; we have to look at what we do with the ninja knives that we have banned and with the import of the wrong type of knife and the measures that we have taken on registration. The noble Baroness makes a very important point that criminalising young people is not necessarily the best way in which to help them to have a lifetime free of criminal activity, which is key to the plan.

[Lord Barber of Chittlehampton (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend on the strategy and specifically on the collaboration across government, which is fundamental to ensuring that this knife crime plan works, as I am sure it will. I draw attention to the big increase in school attendance that the DfE and Ministers there achieved in 2024-25. I know that they are building on that now—5 million extra days of school attendance in that single year, which must make a contribution. Can we encourage the DfE to focus specifically on the most persistent truants in the most dangerous hotspot areas? That would make a significant contribution to the strategy.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

The ambition of the Government through the Department for Education is to look at improving attendance at schools across the board. I have sat on a couple of Cabinet committees where that work has been shown to prove successful. That is a cross-government initiative to get children and young people into school. My noble friend makes a valuable point. I mentioned earlier, and I think it is worth mentioning again, that the pupil premium funding led by the Department for Education is now available to fund particular challenges in state schools that have disadvantaged children and where school attendance is down and there are interventions to support pupils’ social, emotional and behavioural needs. The pupil premium grant is £3.2 billion this year, and there is significant evidence that, as my noble friend has mentioned, it is an effective way to reduce the risk of serious violence, including knife crime. That is a Department for Education-led approach but, as I have said, the knife crime plan is a prime ministerial objective. The Home Office is leading this, but all departments involved—the MoJ, the Department for Education, the Department of Health and Social Care—are playing a role to meet some objectives to help that ambitious target of halving knife crime.