Knives: Amnesties
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, with reference to recent data obtained by StopWatch via Freedom of Information of this year’s Operation Sceptre results, what assessment will be made of the cost-effectiveness of public knife amnesty bins compared with enforcement options for recovering knives and other weapons.
Answered by Sarah Jones
The Government continues to encourage police forces to undertake a series of coordinated national weeks of action to tackle knife crime under Operation Sceptre. In 2025 police have delivered two national weeks of intensification in May and November, and the data and operational results from these are owned and held by the police.
The Government ran an extended knife surrender arrangement in July 2025 in various areas in the West Midlands, Greater Manchester and London. This allowed members of the public to surrender weapons anonymously at a mobile surrender van operated by FazAmnesty and in 37 new surrender bins installed by Word 4 Weapons with Home Office funding.
A total of 3,570 knives and weapons were surrendered through these arrangements. The figures were set out in a Written Ministerial Statement on 30 October: Written statements - Written questions, answers and statements - UK Parliament
Across police operations, border seizures and knife surrender schemes this Government has already seen nearly 60,000 knives taken off our streets.
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