Knife Crime

Monica Harding Excerpts

Tuesday 14th April 2026 Commons Chamber

[Monica Harding (Esher and Walton) (LD)]

I had the opportunity to go out with the local police in my constituency on an operation to combat youth crime. One thing I found most distressing was the liberal ownership and unthinking use of knives among teenagers, which I know the police in my constituency are desperate to sort out. Following the Government’s consultation on knife sales, will the Minister reassure my constituents, the police and the public that the Government will put forward a knife licensing scheme, whereby all knife retailers, including online, bricks-and-mortar and private sellers, must be registered to sell any kind of knife in order to prevent attacks from taking place?

[Sarah Jones]

We are already putting in place a range of interventions through the Crime and Policing Bill—which is going through Parliament and which we are debating this afternoon—to strengthen age verification for knives, and to ensure that online companies have a duty to remove violent content and knife sale content, and are doing more to do so. As the hon. Lady says, we have also consulted on whether we should have a licensing scheme. We are looking through that at the moment and deciding where we go. The campaign has been led by Pooja Kanda, the mother of Ronan Kanda, who died; she has been campaigning on this issue ever since. We are certainly very sympathetic, but we are the stage of looking at the consultation and seeing what a workable licensing scheme would look like.