Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments 211, 212, 213 and 214 in my name and that of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas. I am grateful to the noble Lord for his support in these amendments. This area is about producing consistency and fairness. I would not like anyone to be confused about thinking that I wanted to be more liberal—not Liberal Democrat, but liberal—about knife crime. It is about producing consistency for people who possess knives with innocent intent. Generally speaking, I welcome the update of the penalties associated with offensive weapons under the Restriction of Offensive Weapons Act 1959 and Section 141 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988, in line with more modern regulation. I suggest that, as well as reviewing the penalties, it is appropriate for us now to review the defences as set out in my Amendments 211 to 214. The last two pieces of legislation on zombie knives and ninja swords have included a range of defences, such as historical importance, being a blunt weapon or skilled handmade items, in addition to existing global defences of religious ceremony, Crown and visiting forces, antique theatrical and media productions, museums —when the public have access—and ownership for educational purposes. In the new legislation, items such as zombie-style knives, machetes and ninja swords have the defence of historical importance, which applies to sale, gift, loan and importation. In my view, there is no good reason for that not to apply as a defence in a consistent global manner to the other 20 items in that schedule. For example, if the family of a World War II veteran or a collector can prove that the item they own in private is historically important, it allows them to own it legally, so there is no good reason to prevent them passing it on to the next custodian. The defence relates to the nature of the item, not the person who owns it. We should feel confident that, in doing this, it will follow what happened in 2018, when many thousands of historical weapons from the trenches of World War I dropped out of the scope of the legislation because they became antiques. That was not accompanied by a surge in crime involving these knives. Historical knives do not play a significant role in crime; they are far too expensive for that, and, with the public interest in the end of World War I, the only surge seen was a rise not in crime but in the auction prices they realised because they became antiques and were, therefore, more valuable.