Question to the Home Office:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of knife crime in (1) urban areas, and (2) rural areas; and what steps they will take as a result of that assessment.

Figures provided by the Office of National Statistics for Crime in England and Wales show in the year ending September 2021, knife or sharp instrument offences were more concentrated in urban areas with the three police force areas with the highest volume of knife-enabled crime being the Metropolitan Police, West Midlands and Greater Manchester. These figures are available on gov.uk.

Tackling knife crime is a priority and the Government is determined to crack down on the scourge of violence devastating our communities. This is why the Government made £130.5m available in 2021 and 2022 to tackle serious violence, including murder and knife crime.

This includes £35.5m for Violence Reduction Units (VRUs) which bring together local partners to tackle the drivers of violence in the 18 areas across England and Wales most affected by serious violence. VRUs are delivering a range of early intervention and prevention programmes to divert people away from violent crime and reached over 300,000 young people in the first two years alone.

It also includes £30m in the same period to support the police to take targeted action in parts of England and Wales most affected by serious violence through the Grip programme, which uses data to identify violence hotspots and target operational activity in those areas. Through the Grip pilot in Essex, Southend-on-Sea, there was a 73.5% drop in violent crime in hot spot areas on patrol days.

The investment includes up to £20m for additional early intervention and prevention programmes to support young people at high risk of involvement in serious violence. We have separately invested £200m over 10 years for the Youth Endowment Fund, which is funding projects to support children and young people at risk of violence and exploitation.

We acknowledge there is more to do which is why the Government’s Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill includes a duty on public sector bodies to take a joined-up approach to addressing serious violence; the requirement for local agencies to review the circumstances when an adult homicide takes place involving an offensive weapon; and Serious Violence Reduction Orders, which give the police the authority to stop and search known knife and weapons carriers.

We have also prohibited certain particularly dangerous types of knife through the Offensive Weapons Act 2019 and have introduced the offence of possessing specified offensive weapons in private. The Act also introduced Knife Crime Prevention Orders which will provide the police with a vital means to steer those most at risk away from serious violence. On 5 July 2021 we introduced a pilot for KCPOs across the Metropolitan Police area.