Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she is taking to help tackle knife crime in the north of London.

Whilst the Mayor of London has operational responsibility for policing in the north of London and the rest of the capital, this Government is committed to providing additional resources to the police and their partners to tackle violent crime and make our streets safer.

To support the prevention of violence in London we have allocated £33.7m since 2019 to the London Violence Reduction Unit (VRU) including a c.£12.6m allocation for this financial year (2022/23), and an additional investment of £5.5m in 2021/22 to deliver specific targeted interventions to vulnerable young people. The London VRU is delivering multiple initiatives with this funding projected to support over 3,200 young people in the capital next year.

London VRU has been allocated £50m from the Government Funded Youth Endowment Fund, a £200m fund set up by the Home Office to prevent children and young people at risk of involvement in serious violence and crime. Since 19/20, further £52.6m, including c£8.7m for this financial year (2022/23) has been allocated through the Grip programme to the Metropolitan police to deliver additional patrols in streets and neighbourhoods most affected by violent crime.

The Government continues to encourage all police forces to undertake a series of coordinated national weeks of action (with the latest phase between 16 to 22 May) to tackle knife crime under Operation Sceptre. In the Metropolitan and City Police areas, 126 knives were seized during enforcement action with a further 90 being surrendered or seized during preventative weapon removal sweeps to safeguard public spaces.

Grip, VRU & YEF funding are provided in addition to the commitment to increase the number of police officers in England and Wales by 20,000 by March 2023. As of 30 September 2022, the Metropolitan Police Service has recruited 3,109 additional uplift officers against a total three-year allocation of 4,557 officers. The deployment of all officers is an operational decision for Chief Constables.