Knife Crime

Warinder Juss Excerpts

Wednesday 15th October 2025 Westminster Hall

[Jim McMahon (Oldham West, Chadderton and Royton) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms McVey. I congratulate the hon. Member for Ashfield (Lee Anderson) on securing the debate.

Knife crime and the gang activity that comes with it ruin lives and leave whole communities living in fear. This debate has been wide-ranging, but for Greater Manchester, and Oldham in particular, there is an urgency to tackling youth knife crime, gang activity and the real threat of child criminal exploitation in our communities—a threat that continues to hit working-class communities the hardest. I place on record my thanks to Greater Manchester police and their partners in the violence reduction unit—chaired by Kate Green, the deputy mayor for policing—for recognising and acting on the issue, and for meeting me to discuss the issue further.

Since 2020, Greater Manchester police have run the forever amnesty, which has taken thousands of weapons off our streets. However, the police themselves would say that knives remain easily available in households and in everyday lawful life, so unless the culture and environment change, we will not break the cycle of offending and the harm that goes alongside it.

[Warinder Juss (Wolverhampton West) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that, whether we like it or not, social isolation and a lack of opportunities are possible causes of knife crime? I am an OnSide youth zone champion, and my constituency has The Way youth zone. It is launching a comprehensive knife crime prevention initiative to tackle such issues. Does my hon. Friend agree that we need well-funded youth services that prioritise early intervention, empower our youth, foster community safety, and thereby help to achieve safer streets and stronger youth?

[Jim McMahon]

That is very important, and it has to go alongside other interventions. Like my hon. Friend’s constituency, Oldham has an OnSide youth centre, called Mahdlo, which provides significant intervention and support for young people. It is fair to say that the world has changed since I was a child at school. The online world means that it is difficult for young people to escape threats of violence and intimidation, and their glorification on online platforms, which allow videos showing young people threatening young people to be uploaded, seemingly without any challenge whatever. The culture and environment are important.

In Greater Manchester, Operation Venture, which was launched in 2022, has led to hundreds of arrests, improved intelligence and a clearer understanding of where and how weapons are used. However, I want to focus on the young people most at risk, both as offenders and as victims, and to call for stronger safeguarding and prevention response. Gangs have always existed in some areas—lines between estates and postcodes are not new—but what has changed is the speed with which petty disputes can escalate, and the online meeting the on-street, with little escape for those who are at risk. A perceived lack of respect can turn into revenge, and verbal exchanges can quickly become fatal violence involving knives. Many young people live in fear—afraid simply to walk home from school, making them a target.

The same culture that drives that fear also traps young people within it. Simply telling young people to stay away from trouble is not realistic when violence and intimidation follow them home through their phones, consoles and social media—24 hours a day, seven days a week. In that environment, some young children start carrying knives themselves, for what they believe is self-defence—an avoidable and dangerous response to fear.

More sinister still is the impact of child criminal exploitation, or county lines, as it is sometimes called: the systematic grooming of mainly, though not exclusively, working-class boys—girls can be impacted too—by older men and their peers into organised crime such as robbery, drug dealing and violence. In some cases, there is a proven link to sexual exploitation alongside it. In the House, we recognise the patterns of child sexual exploitation and abuse and the characteristics of victims and offenders, as we now know them to be. We also know when we see clear and present safeguarding failures. We must apply the same urgency to understanding and acting on child criminal exploitation.

None of that takes away the importance of individual responsibility or the role of parents, but too often the system looks at these working-class young people and writes them off. It sees them as bad kids or lost causes, instead of as vulnerable children being exploited and abused. That attitude reflects a class bias that is still far too common—the idea that some estates or even some families are just rough and that being drawn into crime is inevitable. Too often, that allows neglect to go unchallenged. If that mindset persists, we will continue to fail young people, and entire communities will remain trapped in fear.

For too many families in Greater Manchester, that fear has become a reality. We have seen repeated knife attacks, many involving children. In New Moston, just streets away from my constituency, a 15-year-old boy was chased down the street and stabbed to death. I cannot say any more, as the Chair reminded us at the start of the debate, because it is an ongoing case, but what is beyond doubt is that another family have lost their son.

In Limeside, in Oldham West, the community has spirit and solidarity, but its foundations have been weakened. The local police post, the GP surgery, the housing office and other public services have been eroded in the last decade and a half. Those who remain, such as the Avro football club and Anthony Crolla’s gym, are doing heroic work to give young people purpose and safety, but they are fighting to survive every single day when the community needs them more than ever. These same areas experience some of the highest numbers of section 60 stop and searches in Greater Manchester. The Limeside estate alone has had seven stop and search orders in the last two years.

There has been some progress. To June 2025, the homicide rate in Greater Manchester was 8.8 per million people, a decrease of 21% compared with the previous year and down 45% on the last three years. While youth violence overall is decreasing, more must be done to prevent children from being exposed to violent crime at such a young age. The police identify that most young people supported by the violence reduction unit are aged between 13 and 15—these are children. Reported knife and offensive weapon offences have risen from 220 in 2014 to 413 10 years later—a significant increase. Some of that reflects increased police activity, including stop and search, which should be welcomed, but let’s not kid ourselves: every one of those cases represents a real threat.

Knife crime is not inevitable. My call today is for a step change in how we safeguard young people from criminal exploitation. That means recognising vulnerability, not just criminality. It means restoring trust in communities where fear has replaced hope. It means tougher action to hold social media giants and messaging platforms to account. It means rebuilding the foundations of our youth services, safe spaces and neighbourhood networks to give young people a sense of belonging and a reason to believe in a better future, to finally break the cycle.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sarah Pochin (Runcorn and Helsby) (Reform)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms McVey. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Ashfield (Lee Anderson) for securing this important debate.

I will speak about some of my experiences as a magistrate for 20 years in Cheshire. I am sure many think of Cheshire as a sleepy county, but statistics show that knife crime increased there by 7% year on year from March 2024 to March 2025, which may surprise some. I will take time to look into that with my chief constable.

Over my 20 years in court, I heard so many reasons—in fact, excuses—for why defendants might have been carrying knives at the time of the incident or when the police caught up with them. Those ranged from “I forgot it was in my pocket” to “I needed it for work”—that was always a standard one, no matter what they actually did for work. Today, there is a mandatory six-month custodial sentence for anyone caught carrying a knife in the community, but the fact is that magistrates often do not enforce it after listening to and accepting the mitigating factors put forward by the solicitor on behalf of the defendant. Sometimes, a suspended sentence might be given, but the point is that this is soft justice, and I have seen it time and again.

The courts must get tougher on doing what they say they will do—doing what we ask them to do—and enforce that custodial sentence, because only by enforcing the custodial sentence will the message start to get through. I would say that the mandatory six-month sentence is not currently a deterrent, because people are not afraid of going to court. That is an issue for people like us who set policy.

[Warinder Juss]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Sarah Pochin]

I will make a little progress, if that is all right.

My only observation about stop and search is that it has an effect, and I believe very strongly that stop and search needs to be brought back with absolutely zero tolerance. We need to support the police in putting aside any worry about being accused of being racist or of targeting particular groups in particular communities, because these policies work in taking knives off the street.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sarah Pochin]

My point is that if stop and search is working, we will eventually get to a point where knives are found less often. That is the measure of success.

We as politicians need to give our courts and our police the power to have a zero-tolerance approach to stop and search. The police need to have the confidence to carry out stop and search without fear of criticism. They need to be given funding to carry out thorough intelligence work on drug gangs, and they are doing an incredible job on the county lines operations that are now overtaking our society. However, they need to be given more funding for that work. The courts also need to be given the funding and resource to enact swift justice.

Clearly, we also need education in schools and the community initiatives we have talked about. All of this is important, all of this is a package, but it starts at the top. It starts with us.

[Warinder Juss]

Of course, it is the job of the state system to act as a deterrent, so I understand the hon. Lady’s point.

I sit on the Justice Committee, and I have visited prisons and spoken to young people. Unfortunately, a lot of people do not think they will be sentenced to a long period in prison if they commit a crime—that is not in their minds. Does the hon. Lady agree that our focus should be on enabling the people who are likely to commit knife crimes to make the right choices in life? That is what we should focus on, rather than trying to get the message across that if they commit a crime, they will end up in jail. We need to be enabling our youth, our young people, to make the right choices in life.

[Sarah Pochin]

Clearly, at the moment, the threat of a custodial sentence is not the deterrent that it has to be, which is an important point. The Sentencing Bill, which will have its next stage on Tuesday, will take away the power of magistrates courts to hand down custodial sentences of less than 12 months. That is a big issue, but I will talk about it on Tuesday.

Finally, it is important for all of us, as politicians, to remember that David Amess was brutally stabbed and killed four years ago today. What we have talked about this morning does not touch on the extremists and the nutcases who are out there in society, and from whom we are all under threat. I acknowledge that today is the four-year anniversary, and I urge everyone to take the utmost care when we are out in our communities.