'Harder for children to buy paracetamol than a knife' warns Met Police

Evening Standard

Age verification for buying knives online is “a huge vulnerability” at sale and delivery, a review has found, with thousands of weapons also sold illegally on social media.Metropolitan Police Commander Stephen Clayman, who is the national lead for knife crime, said it is sometimes harder to buy paracetamol than it is to buy a knife.The Home Office announced a raft of anti-knife crime plans on Wednesday, including making retailers report bulk or suspicious sales to police, and increasing the jail sentence for selling weapons to children, or illegal blades such as zombie knives, to two years.

Transcript

00:00If you look at the online sales and look at, there is some work that's gone on around what

00:06makes knives attractive, affordable, accessible. And yes, there are people who go to a kitchen knife.

00:12So if we park the domestic element, because that is different, the knives that we see in the street

00:19tend to be the more, I would call, status knives, some of whom are prohibited or are now prohibited.

00:26Swords, you know, there's this consultation going on now about banning ninja swords. These are the

00:31things that they're using in the streets. So, and I try to come back to my point, there is no one

00:38single element that will reduce knife crime. It has to be a collection of things. Your first and

00:45most important thing is understanding why they pick up a knife and use it in the first place.

00:48That's the fundamental thing which needs to be fixed. Bizarrely, it's harder to buy paracetamol

00:54in some respects than it is to buy a knife and that can't be right.

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