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Knife Crime

I thank the shadow Minister for welcoming the target of halving knife crime, the content of the plan and the knife crime concentrations fund in particular. Where we can, we should try to work cross-party on tackling such heinous crimes.

The shadow Minister mentioned sentencing. It will always be the case that people found guilty of serious knife crime offences will go to prison—that is not changing. We are making a couple of changes that he would hopefully support. To give one example, currently around 1,000 children a year are found in possession of a knife, and no action whatsoever is taken to try to get them away from that activity—none whatsoever. We have changed the rules on that, so that every single child who is found in possession of a knife will be given a plan, which will ensure that they get the support and the interventions they need to move away from crime. If they do not adhere to those conditions, it will become a criminal matter if necessary. That is a big gap we are filling.

In the Crime and Policing Bill, which the House will debate this afternoon, we are introducing a new offence of knife possession with intent—currently, there are offences of possession of a knife, and possession involving a threat to life—and there will be a seven-year maximum sentence for that crime. I hope that that reassures the shadow Minister.

We could get into a debate about numbers, but I do not want to do that today, because we have done it many times before, and I am sure we will do it many more times. However, I reiterate that there are 12,000 officers in our country who are sitting behind desks. We do not think that is right. We want to get them out into our communities. There has been an 18% increase in the number of police in our neighbourhoods in the last year. We want those officers to do the job that we want them to do, not waste time on bureaucracy, so we are investing hugely in artificial intelligence and new technology. That will free up the equivalent of 3,000 full-time officers—just by giving them the tech that they should already have had to help them do their job. We are pushing as hard as we can, not on the exact number of officers, but on outcomes.

I end by repeating a statistic that I am very pleased about, and that shows that we are moving in the right direction: knife crime is down 8% overall, and knife murders are down 27%. We are focusing on outcomes, not police numbers.