Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent assessment she has made of trends in the level of violent robbery offences committed by persons under the age of 18; and what steps she is taking to tackle those trends.

This Government established a Knife-Enabled Robbery Taskforce in October 2024 to respond to surges of 14% of this violent form of robbery in the year before the General Election, a significant proportion of which involves young people. We brought together Chief Constables and policing partners from the seven areas which collectively accounted for approximately 70% of the national problem.

The Taskforce scrutinised police performance in real time and identified common solutions to shared operational challenges, including a specific focus on under-18 knife-enabled robbery along school routes and transport hubs.

The Knife-Enabled Robbery Group now continues this relentless effort, achieving promising results, with knife robberies now down by 15% overall across these seven areas (Oct 2025 vs year to June 2024). Knife robberies are also down nationally by 10%. These results demonstrate the impact of our targeted and evidence-led approach.

Our new Plan to Halve Knife Crime ‘Protecting Lives, Building Hope’ sets out how we will support young people and stop those at risk from turning to crime. This includes the roll out of over 50 Young Futures Panel pilots across England and Wales to identify thousands of children at high risk of knife crime who were falling through the gaps.