Home Secretary vows to halve knife crime during speech in Liverpool

In her speech at the Labour conference on Tuesday she said it’s too easy for children to order “lethal weapons” online without checks.

Ms Cooper said the Government will bring in new laws to crack down on dangerous online sales and the gangs who draw children in, alongside new youth hubs, to steer young people away from violence.

She said: “We will make it a mission for our whole country to halve knife crime in a decade and this Labour government will pass Ronan’s Law, a ban on ninja swords.”

Owning zombie-style knives and machetes is now illegal and follows a four-week amnesty scheme where owners were encouraged to hand the weapons in to police, local authorities or knife crime charities.

Ms Cooper said: “This Labour Government will bring in new laws to crack down on dangerous online sales and the gangs who draw children in, alongside new youth hubs to steer young people away from violence – a teenage Sure Start to build hope in the future."

Ms Cooper has previously said Labour policy on knife was shaped following a powerful meeting with North East mum who both lost their sons at the age of 18 to knife crime.

She met Zoey McGill, from Newton Aycliffe, and Tanya Brown, from Sunderland, along with Keir Starmer during a visit to Hartlepool.

The meeting was set up by the Northern Echo as part of the newspaper campaign launched two years ago to address the root causes of knife crime.

Get more content including the stories that matter to your community from The Northern Echo with a £1 trial subscription for four weeks here.

The North East Knife Crime Taskforce met at Durham University (Image: Sarah Caldecott)

Most read:

•  Man who died in Dalton Park roundabout crash named
• Former hotel to be flats, a restaurant, shops and a pub
• Billingham International Folklore Festival launch in Darlington

Ms Cooper also attended The Echo’s North East Knife Crime Taskforce and said the forum model was a ‘blueprint’ that should be rolled out across the country.

Northern Echo editor Gavin Foster, who chairs meetings of the taskforce, said: "Any movement to prevent tragedies like the ones we have had to write about has to be welcomed.

"We set up the North East Knife Crime Taskforce to create a multi-agency approach with three aims, to educate young people on the impact of knife crime, to campaign for increase in sentences to act as a deterrent and tackle the access to knives.

"These bans help towards the latter - but we still need to go further and target those who companies who are still willing to sell weapons like this.

"We will continue to campaign with the forces and agencies we work with to tackle this scourge."