Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment her Department has made of the potential merits of using Nightingale Courts to tackle (a) mobile phone thefts, (b) other robberies at knifepoint and (c) other knife crime.

No specific assessment has been made about the use of Nightingdale Courts for these specific offences ; 20 of which remain open and will continue to be used by judges until at least March 2025.

This Government is committed to halving knife crime over 10 years. Knife enabled robbery accounts for 42% of all police recorded knife crime, so tackling it is a key focus. We are convening a Knife Enabled Robbery Taskforce with policing leaders to take immediate action to halt its rise.

We have implemented a ban on zombie-style knives and zombie-style machetes and will act to ban Ninja swords. We are also introducing the Young Futures programme to stop young people being drawn into a life of violent crime in the first place.

As part of our Safer Streets mission, this government is also determined to crack down on theft and other crimes that make people feel unsafe in our communities.

Set against soaring levels of snatch thefts and pickpocketing in the last year of the previous government, and the demand for stolen mobile phones increasing, we have announced a Home Office Mobile Phone Theft Summit, drawing together the tech companies and law enforcement to see what more can be done to break the business model of mobile phone thieves.