Knives: Crime

(asked on 28th March 2018) - View Source

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how much her Department has spent on tackling knife crime in each of the last seven years.


Answered by
Victoria Atkins Portrait
Victoria Atkins
Secretary of State for Health and Social Care
This question was answered on 16th April 2018

It is not possible to disaggregate all funding for tackling knife crime as it is provided through a number of routes. This includes funding for police forces in England and Wales and our overall investment in policing will grow from £11.9 billion in 2015/16 to around £13 billion in 2018/19. Our work to tackle knife crime has been taken forward through the Ending Gang and Youth Violence programme and the subsequent Ending Gang Violence and Exploitation programme.

In October 2017, we launched our anti-knife crime Community Fund through which we awarded £765,000 to 47 successful projects to support local communities tackle knife crime, and we announced in March up to a £1million for a new round of the Community Fund in 2018/19 and this will be launched later this Spring. We have also just launched a new £1.3 million national media campaign under the banner of #knifefree which is aimed at 10 -21 years old and is aimed at bringing home the consequences of carrying a knife and to inspire young people to take up more positive activities.

On 9 April, we published the Serious Violence Strategy to take action to address serious violence and in particular the recent increases in knife crime, gun crime and homicide. The strategy represents a step change in the way we think and respond to serious violence. Our approach is not solely focused on law enforcement, very important as that is, but depends also on partnerships across a number of sectors such as education, health, social services, housing, youth services, victim services and others.

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