Knife and Sword Ban

Before we begin the debate on banning knives and swords from UK streets, I remind hon. Members that, under the terms of the House resolution on sub judice matters, they should not refer to any individual cases that are currently before the courts.

I call the shadow Minister.

12.47 pm

I beg to move,

That this House condemns the Government for overseeing a 77 per cent increase in knife crime since 2015; recognises the devastating impact that knife crime has on victims, their families and the wider community; acknowledges that the Government recently announced measures to ban zombie knives and machetes; believes, nonetheless, that this legislation does not go nearly far enough, meaning that a number of dangerous types of knives and swords will remain legal and available on UK streets; therefore calls on the Government to address the shortcomings of the ban by extending it to cover ninja swords and consulting on a further extension; and further calls for the Government to establish an end-to-end review of online knife sales and introduce criminal liability for senior management of websites which indirectly sell illegal knives online.

Ronan Kanda was 16. He went to get a PlayStation controller from his friend, and was yards away from home when he was murdered. He was murdered by two teenagers, who used a ninja sword. They had obtained that sword by buying it online, using someone else’s ID to collect it. They stabbed him in a case of mistaken identity. This is a heartbreaking, tragic story of a young life lost, with a family trapped in the most extraordinary grief, and we are here today because it is time that Parliament acts to tackle knife crime head-on.

Seventy seven per cent. That is how much knife crime has risen since 2015, according to the latest figures released by the Office for National Statistics and the Home Office in recent weeks. That equates to a staggering 48,716 violent and sexual offences committed involving a knife or sharp instrument in the past year. There is a huge human cost to this, with 261 lives lost in the year up to March 2022—the last complete data available to us—and roughly four in 10 murders involving a knife or sharp instrument. For those carrying a knife, almost half of cases led to no further action, with current rules allowing those carrying knives to escape further sanction by writing an apology letter.

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way because he is describing a situation that is virtually identical to the one we faced in Scotland 15-plus years ago. The initiative taken by the then Strathclyde police force and the Scottish Government since has been a very different approach to tackling it—that of treating it as a public health and social problem, with a violence reduction unit. There is nothing in the hon. Gentleman’s motion that I would disagree with, but it is like playing whack-a-mole with the different sorts of knives available. Does not he agree that this issue requires a much more fundamental and radical approach?

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention, and that will be part of my case, so I am sure I will be able to meet that test.

It feels like most days we wake up to another tragic story of death and families torn apart. The most basic search online tells us it is all over the country—Bristol, Feltham, Warrington, Haverhill. My own community of Nottingham was rocked last summer when my constituent Ian Coates and University of Nottingham students Barnaby Webber and Grace O’Malley-Kumar were killed with a knife, and I stand with their families in their attempts establish the facts and failings in this dreadful case.

Things are getting worse, not better, and that means more young lives lost, more children drawn into crime and more exploited by criminals. We know this has a huge impact on our society: hundreds of families crippled by grief for murdered loved ones; life chances of young people squandered; potential left unfulfilled; and the criminals getting away with it and going on to cause further misery. Knife crime destroys lives, devastates families and creates fear in our communities. That is why this debate matters. We must invest in our young people so that they are supported to make the right decisions in life, and we must come down hard on those involved in knife crime—real support, real consequences.

Under the Conservative Government and a Conservative police and crime commissioner, Cleveland has the highest crime rate in the UK, and only this weekend we saw another serious stabbing a mile down the road from me in Norton village. We hear the Government try to talk the talk but the bottom line has to be that they are not taking the necessary actions. I am sure my hon. Friend will agree.

I share my hon. Friend’s view. He talks of a case in his community, and we are waking up seemingly so many days in every week with another case in another area in villages, towns and cities. The public are rightly looking for action from us, and that is what I will be setting out in my explanation of this motion.

I am glad the shadow Minister talked about “us”. I understand that this is an Opposition day debate and the Government will be criticised, but is it not the case that what the public—on the left and the right and the apolitical—are looking for is cross-party consensus where it can be found in this place to deal with what is a very important issue, and that party politics should be set aside for greater cross-party working? Does he also agree that stop and search has a part to play? On machetes and zombie knives, banning them is not the only solution, although it is a good place to start, but the most radical step is to work together.

We have been clear throughout that when the Government bring forward proposals designed to take this issue on we will give them our support. That is true of the forthcoming legislation on zombie knives, although we have concerns about the scope, but there has to be action, and where there is not action it is our role to point that out. I think the right hon. Gentleman will find that in the tone and spirit of my contribution: we serve no one if we do not do that, but of course we will build consensus wherever we can, and I hope the whole House can get behind our motion today.

It would be a key mission of a future Labour Government to make the streets safe and halve knife crime within 10 years. Recently, my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) and the Leader of the Opposition unveiled our plans to deliver this with a crackdown on knife crime today and a radical youth prevention programme, and this motion starts to build that out. We are clear: no more loopholes, no more caveats, no more false promises—we need a total crackdown on the availability of serious weapons on Britain’s streets.

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his comments on this often heartbreaking topic. My constituent Julie’s daughter Poppy Devey Waterhouse was killed in her home with a knife already in her kitchen. Currently, offenders convicted of murder who use a weapon already available at the crime scene have a starting sentence 10 years lower than those who brought a weapon with them. Domestic violence murderers can bank on leniency. Does the hon. Member agree that women killed by knives already in the home need to see equal justice?

The hon. Member raises an important point that needs parliamentary scrutiny. We have an anxiety, as hon. Friends have mentioned many times, that crimes happening in domestic spaces are in some way deemed less significant and that can be reflected in sentencing. This bears our parliamentary scrutiny.

To turn to the motion, we want to see restrictions on the sale of the most serious weapons, those with no functional purpose. Since 2015 the Government have released 16 different press releases about zombie knives but action has been slow to follow. We are pleased that two weeks ago we saw the statutory instrument aimed at taking some of the knives and machetes off the streets, and, as I have said, we will support the Government in that venture, but I hope to hear from the Minister an explanation of why that is a ban not for now or a few weeks’ time, but for September, eight months away. This is an immediate problem that needs more urgency; where is that urgency and leadership? He can be assured of our support, so let’s get on with it.

We also believe, as set out in the motion, that we should go further. We would broaden the ban to include a wider range of weapons and to toughen existing rules on serration and length. That would mean finally banning blades such as ninja swords, the weapon that killed Ronan Kanda. His incredible family are campaigning for this, ably supported by their Member for Parliament, my right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton South East (Mr McFadden), and they are right: any ban on offensive weapons that would not have taken off the street the blade that killed their son is insufficient.

There is also an unintended consequence of leaving out ninja swords. Those who sell these weapons are indifferent to their customers and their customers’ intentions. If colleagues think I am overstating my case, they should just put into a search engine “zombie knives” or “ninja swords” and look at how they are marketed. If knives and machetes are prohibited, these firms will just move on to pushing ninja swords at customers. This is a hole in the Government’s plan and it must be plugged.

My hon. Friend is making a great speech. Will he support two parents in my constituency, Leanne and Mandy, whose children were killed by knife crime? They are calling for much stronger sentences and greater deterrence for knife crime; does he agree with me and their families?

I am going to set out a few of them shortly, but I would be very interested in meeting Leanne and Mandy, if my hon. Friend could help facilitate that, to hear what more they might want to see.

Our commitment is for every offender to be referred to a youth offending team and have a mandatory bespoke action plan to prevent reoffending. As part of that we need tougher new guidance so that serious penalties are always considered where appropriate, such as curfews, tagging and behavioural contracts. Too many of these are being overlooked and insufficient sanctions such as a letter of apology being used in their stead. That is wrong; we need stronger guidance from the centre on this. But speaking to the point made by the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael), all of this on its own will not resolve and remove the issue of knife crime in our communities.

We must invest in young people, because prevention is better than cure. We need a total approach—not an either/or, but both. That is particularly germane to this debate, because we know that those who seek to profit from the sale of dangerous weapons shapeshift and adapt around legislation—that is one of the challenges. So we must tackle demand and tackle issues that mean that young people think they need to carry harmful weapons.

Building on the success of Sure Start—the last truly transformative prevention programme for young children—we would create the Young Futures programme to help prevent violent crime. It would be a targeted programme in every area to identify the young people most at risk of being drawn into violent crime and of buying these products that we are seeking to restrict. We would build around them a package of support that responds to the challenges they face.

As well as providing support to young people—I welcome the £100 million of existing funding to divert and support young people through preventive work—does my hon. Friend agree that it is crucial to provide positive role models through mentoring to every young person in the country? I have worked on that with the charity UpRising, which I have chaired for many years. Does he also agree that we should look at institutions such as the Royal London Hospital and its trauma unit, which has worked on the frontline dealing with the results of knife crime, whether in hospitals or out with paramedics? We can draw on a great deal of knowledge to tackle this epidemic.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention, because she has done incredible work that is admired by me and the shadow Home Secretary. A lot of what I am about to talk about is based on that experience, because that work has been very good.

The Young Futures programme will bring together services locally to better co-ordinate the delivery of preventive, evidence-based interventions around a young person that help to tackle mental health issues, substance abuse issues, and issues that people might get into with their friends and family. We will then bring that together in a national network that shares evidence, delivers support for teenagers at risk of being drawn into crime across boundaries and, where appropriate, could deliver universal youth provision. Then, crucially—this speaks to the point just made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Rushanara Ali)—we would build out from that, with youth workers in accident and emergency units and in custody centres, and with mentors in pupil referral units, to target young people who are starting to be drawn to violence.

Those are change moments, particularly in healthcare and custody settings. We know it might be the moment when an individual who is sliding into serious violence, whether as a perpetrator or a victim, may need that intervention. It might be the moment where we can get that change in behaviour that will in many cases save their lives. That is why it is so crucial that we have this degree of investment into young people, because otherwise such measures will not work.

The hon. Member makes good point. As the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) pointed out, a lot of this work has been going on in Scotland. Has the hon. Member met Medics Against Violence, whose “Navigator” project does exactly what he is talking about within a hospital setting? It intervenes through people with lived experience to try to get young people into that frame of mind where they might want to exit that lifestyle and that violence they have got themselves into.

There is clearly much that we can learn from the Scottish approach. I have not had the opportunity to meet Medics Against Violence, but on the hon. Member’s recommendation I will seek to do that. We strongly support the idea of support and mentors in A&E and custody settings. The evidence shows that would be highly effective.

We need to end the exploitation of children and young people by criminal gangs, and that includes county lines. We need a new criminal offence of child exploitation and a new serious organised crime strategy to go after those cowards who make millions off the back of exploiting young people. To bring the change to deliver that, we need a new, proper cross-Government coalition to end knife crime, bringing together those who have key roles in tackling it and in keeping young people safe, whether they are Ministers, community leaders, faith leaders, the families of victims, sporting bodies, tech companies or young people themselves. Everybody should be brought into this fight. That is the sort of Government that we would seek to lead, if given the opportunity.

The hon. Member is making a passionate speech about bringing various people from across Government and communities together to tackle knife crime. When the shadow Home Secretary and the Leader of the Opposition held a summit in east London last year on knife crime, the Mayor of London, who is the police and crime commissioner, was nowhere to be seen. Can the hon. Member ask the shadow Home Secretary why?

I have to say I am a little saddened by that intervention. This is a deeply serious issue about which the public expect to hear answers. I do not think the public would consider the policing of the diary of the Mayor, the hon. Gentleman or anybody else to be part of a substantive solution. I wrote my note for his intervention ahead of time, because I know that 86 days before a mayoral election, the Tories are much more interested in trying to fight that election than tackling the problem. If he really believes that is the approach—I do not, but it is for him to use his time as he chooses—let us put that to the people of London.

On the point about working together, perhaps outside this House, rather than inside it, may I say I completely agree with the hon. Gentleman—yes, I agree with His Majesty’s Opposition—on working together more cohesively with local authorities, public bodies, health services and, in particular, around pupil referral units and exclusions? There are so many disparities throughout the country, and it makes sense to bring everybody together to look at best practice.