Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she is taking to tackle (a) knife crime and (b) gang activity in Great Yarmouth constituency.

Halving knife crime over the next decade is a key part of the Government’s Safer Streets Mission. To do this, we have:

• Launched a Halving Knife Crime Coalition, including representation from Norwich, to agree how best to tackle youth knife crime.
• Implemented a ban on zombie-style knives and zombie-style machetes. It is now illegal to sell, manufacture or possess these weapons.
• Introduced new legislation in Parliament to ban ninja swords.
• Planned a surrender scheme in July to allow those who currently own these weapons to hand them in. From 1 August 2025 it will be illegal to sell or own these weapons.
• Allocated £66.3m nationally, including £1m for Norfolk, for the Hotspot Action Fund for 25/26, to deliver high visibility patrolling in hotspots of knife crime, serious violence and ASB.
• Launched a Knife-Enabled Robbery Taskforce to deliver new operational tactics to bring down levels of knife-enabled robbery.
• Started development of a new Young Futures programme to intervene earlier to ensure young people facing poorer outcomes and vulnerable to being drawn into crime are identified and offered support in a more systematic way.
• Invested £1.5 million to support Violence Reduction Units to expand their Focused Deterrence Interventions to steer young people away from criminality.

To deliver our pledge to halve knife crime in the next decade, it is crucial that we tackle the gangs that run county lines through violence and exploitation.

Through the County Lines Programme we will continue to target exploitative drug dealing gangs and break the organised crime groups behind the trade. Between July and September 2024, policing activity delivered through the County Lines Programme has resulted in over 400 deal lines being closed, the arrest and charge of over 200 deal line holders, 500 arrests and 800 safeguarding referrals of children and vulnerable people.

Through the Programme, we fund the National County Lines Co-ordination Centre to monitor the intelligence picture and co-ordinate the national law enforcement response. In addition, we have a dedicated surge fund which provides local forces with additional funding to tackle county lines, including Norfolk Police.

As committed to in the Government’s manifesto, we are also introducing a new offence of child criminal exploitation in the Crime and Policing Bill to go after the gangs who are luring children into violence and crime, and we are providing specialist support for children and young people involved in county lines to exit safely.