The Government will fast-track plans to clamp down on how ‘shockingly easy’ it is for young people to buy knives online, with tougher measures to prove customers’ ages being introduced in the wake of the Southport knife attack last year.
Axel Rudakubana, who has admitted carrying out the attack, bought a knife on Amazon when he was aged 17. It is illegal in the UK to sell most knives and bladed articles to people under the age of 18.
Under the new measures, online retailers will be required to ask anyone purchasing a knife for two different types of identification, such as a passport or live video that proves their age.
Writing in the Sun, Prime Minister Keir Starmer said it “remains shockingly easy for our children to get their hands on deadly knives”.
“The lessons of this case could not be clearer,” he said. “Time and again, as a child, the Southport murderer carried knives. Time and again, he showed clear intent to use them. And yet tragically, he was still able to order the murder weapon off the internet without any checks or barriers. A two-click killer. This cannot continue.”
A review of online knife sales is currently being conducted by Commander Stephen Clayman, the National Police Chiefs’ Council’s lead for knife crime. The review had already proposed tougher checks on online knife sales, and those recommendations will now be incorporated into the Crime and Policing Bill, due to be put before Parliament in the spring.
The announcement comes following revelations from Rudakubana’s trial, which began this week. On Monday, Rudakubana pleaded guilty to the murder of six-year-old Bebe King, seven-year-old Elsie Dot Stancombe, and nine-year-old Alice da Silva Aguiar at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class last July.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper told the Commons it was a “total disgrace” that Rudakubana had been “easily able to order a knife on Amazon” despite his age and a prior conviction for a violent offence against another child.
An Amazon spokesperson told the BBC that it takes its “responsibility around the sale of all age-restricted items – including bladed products – extremely seriously” and has launched an investigation. “We use trusted ID verification services to check name, date of birth and address details whenever an order is placed for these bladed items,” they added.
Trading Standards teams across the UK have been working to tackle underage knife sales; one project in Barking and Dagenham, for example, involves enforcement work, a trusted retailer scheme, and a campaign to educate young people about the dangers of knife crime. A recent series of test purchases by Lancashire Trading Standards revealed a worrying lack of compliance on knife sales among bricks-and-mortar retailers, with 24 out of 59 retailers failing to ask for proof of age before selling age-restricted items.
