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 London.

Whilst the Mayor of London has operational responsibility for policing in 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 the London Violence Reduction Unit (VRU) c.£33.7m since 2019, including a c.£12.6m allocation in the last financial year (2022/23). The VRU also received an additional investment of £5.5m in 2021/22 to deliver specific, highly targeted interventions to vulnerable young people.

We are also providing funding to enable the Metropolitan Police to increase enforcement activity where most violence occurs, through our Grip programme (previously known as Surge). The Metropolitan Police have been allocated approximately £50.9m over the last three years, including £7.9m in the last financial year (2022/23) for Grip. Through this programme, the Metropolitan Police are delivering data-driven, targeted visible patrols to suppress violence where it is most concentrated.

Grip and VRU funding is provided in addition to the commitment to increase the number of police officers in England and Wales by 20,000 by March 2023.

The Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) has recruited 3,217 additional uplift officers against a total three-year allocation of 4,557 officers, as of 31 December 2022.

Additionally, the Government continues to encourage police forces to undertake a series of coordinated national weeks of action to tackle knife crime under Operation Sceptre. The latest phase of the operation took place between 16 to 22 May 2022. In the Metropolitan and City Police areas 126 knives were seized during enforcement action with a further 90 being surrendered or seized during sweeps.