Violent Crime Reduction Bill

My Lords, as ever, my noble friend is 100 per cent right: how could he ever be otherwise? I certainly saw some criticism in the press about the Government’s amendment and, by implication, my amendment, by those who said that increasing the maximum penalty would do no good at all. I agree and there will obviously have to be other measures as well. So it is against the background of other measures that we proposed too that I would agree with this. In addition, I criticised the ““red-topping””, as the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, would say, of the knife amnesty that took place earlier this year. Perhaps the Minister might be able to tell the House how successful that has been. When I tabled Written Questions in the summer, I was told that it was too soon for the Government to have the relevant statistics from the police forces. If the numbers of the great success do not come readily to mind, perhaps he might write to me to let me know what happened. However, in the spirit of ensuring that we have a range of measures to deter people from carrying knives and, possibly, using them, I support the Government’s amendment and will not move mine.