Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she is taking to reduce incidences of (a) violent crime, (b) theft in which a weapon is used and (c) theft in which no weapon is used.

Homicide, gun crime, and knife crime are all below their pre-pandemic levels. The Home Office is investing over £110m to tackle serious violence in 2023/24. This includes:

• Violence Reduction Units and hotspot policing in the 20 areas worst affected by serious violence;
• A Serious Violence Duty which legally requires specified agencies to work together to reduce serious violence locally;
• Piloting Serious Violence Reduction Orders to give the police the power to stop and search adults already convicted of knife or offensive weapons offences; and
• The Homicide Prevention Fund to help national policing organisations and local forces trial new initiatives and approaches.

We are also banning certain types of large knives (such as zombie style knives and machetes), giving the police more powers to seize dangerous weapons, creating a new offence of possession of a bladed weapon with an intent to harm, and increasing sentences for those who import, manufacture or sell dangerous weapons to under 18s.

On theft, we welcome the latest Crime Survey for England and Wales data, which shows a 77% per cent fall in robbery and a 52% fall in theft from the person in the year to March 2023 compared to the year to March 2010.

The Safer Streets Fund lies at the heart of the Government’s strategy for cutting crime, protecting the law-abiding majority, and making neighbourhoods safe. We have invested £120m since 2020 into the Safer Streets Fund to increase the safety of public spaces for all, targeting neighbourhood crimes such as theft and robbery. The Fund is also intended to boost trust in the police and make communities feel safer.

On 28 August police forces across England and Wales committed to a ministerial request to follow up on ‘reasonable lines of enquiry’ where there is a reasonable chance it could lead them to catching a perpetrator and solving a crime. This will include taking full advantage of footage from CCTV, phones and smart doorbells to help identify suspects and tracking stolen items where reasonable and proportionate to do so.