Lord Clement-Jones (LD)

My Lords, before I come to the Minister’s very constructive response, I want to thank all noble Lords who have spoken in this debate. It has been a very valuable debate, and we have had a huge degree of consensus on the way forward. I very much welcome what the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, had to say about there being no easy answers. I would say that he is lethal not just at the checkout but elsewhere in this House. On a serious note, we have a common cause here to prevent knife crime in any way we possibly can. I very much appreciated what the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, had to say with his experience as a headteacher. He quite rightly gave Idris Elba a namecheck, as he has done so much towards the cause of knife crime prevention. I accept what the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, had to say in caveating this kind of review. It could be as specific as the Minister has said, in looking in particular at design. He certainly indicated that in his response. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Sandhurst—and I very much appreciate the support from the Opposition Front Bench. As he says, it is legitimate to seek adjustments in response to the evidence; that is a very important point that was made. When he says that this is a moderate measure, I will take that; I think moderate is good in this context. I come to what the Minister had to say. He said that the current provisions were an honest attempt to tackle these issues. I entirely take that, but I also took a lot of comfort from what he said about what the Government are doing to explore further preventive measures, including perhaps licensing schemes, or whatever. I very much hope that, between Committee and Report, we can discover a bit more about the shape of that. I also took comfort in what he had to say about the content of the regulations: that appropriate timescales would be included in those regulations. On the basis of those two assurances—I think the Minister has responded—we can take some comfort in the fact that we are not only seeking answers but continuing to question whether we have all the answers.