Question to the Home Office:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what support they are offering to communities outside London, including (1) Inverclyde, (2) Rochdale, (3) Manchester, (4) Boston, and (5) Leicester, to tackle knife-related crime.

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 Serious Violence Strategy set out the Government’s response to serious violence and it outlines an ambitious programme involving 61 commitments and actions. Since launching the Strategy in April last year, we have made significant progress in delivering on our key commitments including:

• The Early Intervention Youth Fund of £22m, which is already sup-porting 29 projects in England and Wales
• Provision of £3.6m for a new National County Lines Co-ordination Centre. The centre was established to tackle violent and exploitative criminal activity associated with county lines and became fully operational in September 2018;
• The National County Lines Coordination Centre has co-ordinated two separate weeks of intensive law enforcement action resulting in more than 1000 arrests, over 1300 individuals engaged for safeguarding, and significant seizures of weapons and drugs;
• An anti-knife crime Community Fund which provided £1.5 million in 2018/19 to support 68 projects;
• The Offensive Weapons Bill to strengthen legislation on firearms, knives and corrosive substances; and
• A national knife crime media campaign - #knifefree - to raise awareness of the consequences of knife crime.

On 2 October 2018 the Home Secretary announced further measures to address violent crime:

• a consultation on new legal duty to underpin a ‘public health’ ap-proach to tackling serious violence this would mean police officers, education partners, local authority and health care professionals will have a new legal duty to take action and prevent violent crime.
a new £200 million youth endowment fund- this will be delivered over 10 years and will support interventions with children and young people at risk of involvement in crime and violence. It will focus on those most at risk, such as those displaying signs such as truancy, aggression and involvement in anti-social behaviour; funding interventions to steer children and young people away from becoming serious offenders; and
• an Independent Review of Drug Misuse. On 8 February, we appointed Dame Carol Black to lead a major review that will look into the ways in which drugs are fuelling serious violence.

The approach establishes a new balance between prevention and the rigorous law enforcement activity. It will shift our approach towards steering young people away from crime in the first place and put in place measures to tackle the root causes. We believe that the approach set out in the Strategy, with a greater emphasis on early intervention, will address violent crime and help young people to develop the skills and resilience to live happy and productive lives away from violence but we cannot deliver this alone

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. This will allow police to swiftly crack-down on knife crime on the areas of the country and also allow investment in Violence Reduction Units.

Inverclyde is in Scotland and is therefore covered by the Scottish Government. Through the Early Intervention Youth Fund and the anti-knife crime Community Fund, we have invested in projects in Greater Manchester (including Rochdale) and Leicester. All forces, including Greater Manchester Police, Leicestershire Police and Lincolnshire Police (including Boston) participated earlier this month in Operation Sceptre, the national week of enforcement action against knife crime.