Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment she has made of the effect of changes to stop and search guidelines on the level of knife crime in (a) north east Essex and (b) other areas with a higher than average incidence of such crime.

No assessment has been made of the effect on knife crime or other offences of the amendment to the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 Code of Practice A which makes clear what ‘reasonable grounds for suspicion’ are and that officers would be subject to conduct or performance procedures as a result of misusing the power. The changes came into force on 19 March 2015. More generally, statistical evidence does not suggest a clear relationship between changes in the use of stop and search and knife crime. The Home Office continues to monitor levels of knife crime but the latest figures show that nationally it is 17% lower than in June 2010, and although it has seen a slight rise of 4% in the last year (to June 2015) it remains close to its lowest level since data was first collected.