Question to the Home Office:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the adequacy of measures in place to tackle knife crime; and what other measures they are considering to prevent more children and young people from carrying knives and other lethal weapons.

Tackling knife crime is a priority for the Government. We continue to encourage police forces to undertake a series of coordinated national weeks of action to tackle knife crime under Operation Sceptre. We hosted an all force briefing event on Operation Sceptre on 23 January and a record 41 police forces have committed to take part in the next action planned for the week commencing 12 February.

We have consulted on new legislation to further tighten the law in relation to knives and offensive weapons. The consultation was closed on 9 December and we are now considering the responses.

We have also agreed a set of commitments with major retailers to prevent the underage sales of knives more generally in their stores and online.

We have awarded £765,000 from the new anti-knife crime community fund launched in October 2017 to support local communities to tackle knife crime, especially supporting work with young people. We announced the 47 successful bids in December.

We are supporting intervention work in hospital emergency departments by providing funding to Redthread to develop its infrastructure and to pilot its youth violence intervention work in hospitals in Birmingham and Nottingham.

We will be launching a national anti-knife crime prevention media campaign this Spring.

We will also be publishing a new Serious Violence Strategy shortly.