Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how much his Department has spent on tackling knife crime in each year since 2010.

The Government does not keep disaggregated records of funding specifically dedicated to tackling knife crime and it is not possible to differentiate out funding on knife crime from funding allocated to police forces.

The Government’s Serious Violence Strategy, published in April 2018, set out a very significant programme of work with an ambitious programme including the following:

• An Early Intervention Youth Fund of £22 million
• £1.5 million for the anti-knife crime Community Fund
• £3.6 million we have provided for the establishment of the new
National County Lines Coordination Centre
• £1.4 million to support a new national police capability to tackle gang
related activity on social media
• Support to the #knifefree national knife crime media campaign
• The Offensive Weapons Bill currently passing through Parliament

In addition, we are allocating £200 million to a Youth Endowment Fund over the next 10 years, supporting police forces to tackle knife crime under Operation Sceptre, are soon to launch a consultation on anew legal duty to underpin a ‘public health’ approach to tackling serious violence, and have announced an Independent Review of Drug Misuse, to be conducted by Dame Carol Black.

On 13 March, the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced in the Spring Statement that there will be £100 million additional funding in 2019/20 to tackle serious violence, including £80m of new funding from the Treasury. The majority of the investment will largely go towards supporting police forces, especially where violent crime is impacting the most. The funding will also support multi-agency Violence Reduction Units in violent crime hotspot areas, and elsewhere. We will prioritise investment in targeted police capacity to tackle serious violence and support for Violence Reduction Units in our Spending Review discussions.