Minister backs escalation of police stop and search to tackle knife crime

TRANSPORT Minister Richard Holden has said he would back police if they used their stop and search powers more extensively in tackling knife crime.

He told GB News: “I’m certainly not against that. There are powers that local police forces can use them when necessary when there are issues on the ground.

“We need to get these knives off the street. We’ve banned them obviously from sale in the UK, the zombie knives, back in 2016 and 2019 the ban the cyclone knives. We’re constantly tightening up that regulation and we’re doing everything we can to also increase the sentences for people illegally importing them as well.

“But this is about making sure also that we’re if you know somebody’s out there with a knife that you report them to the police or somebody you’re concerned about. We have to stop these knives on the street. It’s totally unacceptable.”

In a discussion during Breakfast with Eamonn Holmes and Isabel Webster, he continued: “The Prime Minister has already talked about what we can do more to increase sentencing for people trying to illegally import them [zombie knives] because they’ve been banned for sale in the UK.

“Some of these are being smuggled in illegally, we’re going to quadruple the minimum sentencing on those.”

He also announced that the Government is to give local authorities additional funds to invest in local bus schemes.

Mr Holden said: “I’m talking about is an extra £80 million pounds for local authorities. This is for the next financial year.

“This is that bus support to help them. We’ve seen a real issue since the pandemic and this is the last tranche of that financial support for local authorities, 64 local authorities right across the country. This builds on this as part of the 300 million pound package we announced earlier this year.

“These are the specifics of that package for the individual local authorities concerned but it’s actually part of a £3.5 billion package that we’ve put forward in supporting bus networks since March 2020.”