Home Office written question – answered at on 9 January 2026.
Siân Berry
Green Spokesperson (Crime and Policing), Green Spokesperson (Justice), Green Spokesperson (Transport), Green Spokesperson (Work and Pensions), Green Spokesperson (Culture, Media and Sport), Green Spokesperson (Democratic Standards)
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.
Sarah Jones
The Minister of State, Home Department
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.
Yes1 person thinks so
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Secretary of State was originally the title given to the two officials who conducted the Royal Correspondence under Elizabeth I. Now it is the title held by some of the more important Government Ministers, for example the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.