Question to the Home Office:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of any correlation between the reductions in youth services provision and police numbers and the levels of gun and knife crime in the UK.

On 9 April 2018, the Government published a new Serious Violence Strategy to take action to address serious violence and in particular the recent increases in knife crime, gun crime and homicide. The strategy outlines an ambitious programme and is based on evidence about the trends and drivers of serious violence and analysis of what works in terms of interventions. Our analysis clearly points to a range of factors driving increases in serious violence including improvements in police recording, but changes in the drugs market is a key driver of recent increases in knife crime, gun crime and homicide.

Our multi agency approach means that the strategy is not solely focused on law enforcement, but depends also on partnerships across a number of sectors such as education, health, social services, housing, youth services, victim services and others. In particular, the strategy stresses the importance of early intervention to tackle the root causes of serious violence and provide young people with the skills and resilience to lead productive lives free from violence.

The Strategy sets out 61 commitments including:

• A new Early Intervention Youth Fund, this has been doubled from £11 million to £22 million and was launched by the Home Secretary on 30 July.
• A new round of the (anti-knife crime) Community Fund in 2018/19. Due to the number and quality of bids submitted, and as part of the Government’s commitment to early intervention and prevention to tackle serious violence, the funding available has been increased from £1 million to over £1.5 million. We announced the successful 68 bids on 2 August.
• A new £3.6m National County Lines Co-ordination Centre to tackle violent and exploitative criminal activity associated with county lines.
• A new Offensive Weapons Bill to strengthen legislation on firearms, knives and corrosive substances.

We have also established a Serious Violence Taskforce, chaired by the Home Secretary, to oversee delivery of the strategy and this group has met three times since April.