April 2026

My family sadly knows the devastating consequences of knife crime. As the Government launch their welcome action plan today, I think of my cousin David Charlton, who was killed with a knife in 2012. Reducing knife crime is a moral imperative, so that there are fewer families like David’s or indeed like the family of Connor Brown, whose bereaved parents have done excellent work in tackling knife crime in Sunderland and the north-east and were recently recognised with MBEs for that work. Their app

T10. What more can the Government do to ensure that social enterprises delivering NHS services get the same support as internal NHS trusts, and play a bigger role in NHS reform?

My hon. Friend and I take the same approach, and knife crime is such an important issue in our constituencies. It is front and centre of everything that we do and think about. She is right to say that from tragedies come exceptional people doing exceptional things, and those people need support. She is also right to ask the question about long-term sustainable funding. The funding on youth justice interventions is long-term, and our local authorities have now got long-term funding, too. The fund

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Roger. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) on securing this very important debate and on his excellent speech to start it off. I will illustrate the failings of the Financial Conduct Authority in dealing with complaints from businesses who were mis-sold products with high credit liabilities, by using the experience of one of my constituents, Chris, who is in the Public Gallery. In the late

I applaud the work that my hon. Friend has been doing with others, including Leanne Lucas, who was sadly at the horrendous event in Southport, and who has been campaigning on the issue since then. I have had the honour of meeting her several times to talk about this. My hon. Friend is right that ordinary kitchen knives are used extensively in domestic and impulsive violence. When it comes to the streets, there are a whole range of horrific knives that we are looking to reduce in number, ban and

The James Williams healthy living centre recently opened in Chatham town centre in my constituency. It means that more of my constituents can receive care closer to home, rather than travelling to the other end of Medway to visit the hospital. May I invite the Secretary of State to attend its official opening in the summer, so he can see at first hand the fantastic new facilities?

I thank the Minister for her tireless work and campaigning on this issue, both in this place and in our community of Croydon. I know that this moral mission is personal to her, but given her experience, does she agree that tackling knife crime requires a whole-system approach bringing together policing, schools, health and communities? Can she outline how this plan strengthens the partnerships at a local level in communities like ours in Croydon?

These provisions address a gap in existing legislation, so I commend them to the Committee. Question put and agreed to. Clause 27 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill. Clause 28 Rehabilitation periods Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

I regularly raise the need for more resources for frontline policing in Cleveland. We have a small population but high deprivation, and the police funding formula does not take account of the severity of crime in our region—including knife crime, the prevalence of which is among the highest in the country. I welcome the 48 new police personnel who have begun neighbourhood roles over the last year, but what more can we do to get more resources to the frontline and make our streets safe again?

The right to protest is a basic democratic freedom that was won over centuries of British history. It is not a right that was granted, but one that was hard-won by suffragettes, trade unionists, anti-fascists and many others. Today we are focusing only on the Lords amendments, but I place on record that this Bill is a serious and substantial assault on our democratic freedoms. Indeed, before the Bill was introduced to this House, the Policing and Crime Act 2017, the Public Order Act 2023, and ma

I note what the Minister has just said—she said the same to our hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Ms Creasy)—that she derives the assessment of cumulative disruption from the Public Order Act 1986, in that the police must, rather than can, consider cumulative disruption. However, the definition of “cumulative” does not exist in the law as it stands; indeed, the bulk of the text of amendment 312 creates a definition of “cumulative disruption”. Will the Minister clarify where else in the law

I appreciate the Liberal Democrats welcoming the plan. I join the hon. Gentleman in praising the Ben Kinsella Trust and Patrick Green. Patrick has been brilliant throughout the development of the strategy, as have the members of the coalition that brought together a group of people, many of whom have lost loved ones in very difficult circumstances, to push for action to stop other people losing their loved ones. I pay tribute to all of them. The funding for the plan will come from across Governm

I thank my hon. Friend for his question; of course, all our thoughts are with the family of his constituent who has lost his life. These things are always tragic, and I know that he will be involved in trying to help the community heal from such a difficult situation. I know that arrests have been made on suspicion of murder and other offences; I think four people have been arrested. That is good, but of course, nothing will bring back that young lad. We have to understand where knife crime is h

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

Before I come to the statement, I want to echo the Home Secretary’s words yesterday following the publication of the Southport attack inquiry report. That was a truly sickening crime, and my thoughts, and those of everybody in this place, are with the families, victims and everyone who was affected. With permission, Madam Deputy Speaker, I will make a statement on the Government’s plan to halve knife crime in a decade. That commitment, made in our manifesto, is rooted in recognition of a tragic

I really welcome the statement from the Minister, along with the changes and improvements that the Government are making to the scheme, but for many people infected by HIV in the 1980s, fear, stigma and poor health meant that the role of parents, as in the case of my constituents, did not meaningfully change after their child turned 18. Will the Minister please consider adding an enhanced core injury payment for parents whose children died over the age of 18 but who had no partner or children of

I don’t mean to bang on about this, but the fact is that the Government’s approach is too narrow. It is focused on taking down illegal content when it should be the responsibility of the company to prevent harms in the first place, rather than to deal with them after the event. We do not design any other sector’s regulation in this way. When designing aircraft, we do not wait until after the plane has crashed to worry about any of the safety features. This should be the same. During Report stage

Our knife crime concentrations fund of £26 million will be targeted at areas where there is a high concentration of knife crime. It is quite extraordinary: from the state-of-the-art mapping on police-recorded knife crime that we have done, we can see that all of our knife crime happens in less than 2.5% of England and Wales, so targeting resources at those areas is obviously the right thing to do. That does not mean that we do not also have to worry about other areas outside that 2.5%, which is

I thank my hon. Friend for her question—how sorry I am that a 25-year-old lost their life recently. My constituency and that of my hon. Friend are not too far away from each other, and we have faced similar challenges. Of course, I am very happy to fulfil any commitment that my predecessor made, and I would very much like to see what is happening in my hon. Friend’s constituency.

I want to reassure the hon. Member’s constituents in Yeovil that I understand their concern. Neighbourhood policing has been decimated over recent years, which has had a real impact. It is why we have seen shocking rises in things like shop theft and antisocial behaviour—the things that have not been tackled because the police were not physically present on our streets. We are putting that right. We have already put 3,000 more police on our streets in our neighbourhoods—an 18% rise from what we