Labour shadow minister Nick Thomas-Symonds accuses the government of failing "comprehensively" to tackle knife crime, citing the rising cases of stabbings since 2015. Mr Thomas-Symonds says Labour would bring about a set of evidenced-based measures, including recruiting extra police officers to increase their presence on the streets. Report by Covellm. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
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00:00 Knife crime has increased by 80% since 2015.
00:04 So this is an area where there's been a comprehensive failure from the government.
00:08 Today we'll be putting forward a vote in Parliament to ban so-called ninja swords.
00:14 So these are swords, single-bladed, with around about a 60cm blade,
00:20 which can have no other use other than a desire to wield violence.
00:25 So we will be putting that vote in Parliament today.
00:28 I hope the government will accept that.
00:31 But in addition to that, what we believe the government needs to do
00:34 is look comprehensively at how people get hold of these swords,
00:39 from the point of purchase to the point of delivery.
00:42 It's important that we do make use of technology, of course,
00:46 but this is about a range of different measures.
00:51 Evidence, intelligence-based stop and search is really important,
00:55 but what's also crucial is that we have more visible policing on our streets.
01:00 That's why if we are privileged enough to form a Labour government,
01:04 and the British public trust us to do that,
01:07 we will recruit an additional 13,000 police officers,
01:11 paid for by taking the procurement for things like uniforms and cars
01:16 that is at the moment happening by each individual police force in England and Wales.
01:21 Let's just take that into one place,
01:24 use the money saved to put police on our streets.