Member

In Amendment 214, although I fully appreciate that defences for flick-knives are difficult to consider, we should all be very careful before we change anything there because they continue to be a problem. Six deaths were associated with flick-knives in the year commencing April 2023. The purpose of the Restriction of Offensive Weapons Act 1959 was to target the cheap, foreign flick-knives of the “Teddy boy” era. Not all of the defences in Section 141 of the Criminal Justice Act are appropriate to copy, but there are three sections that, over the past 65 years, have a proven track record of not giving rise to crime and have been treated with a common-sense, Lord Nelson-type approach by enforcement officers.