In the run-up to the 2024 general election, the Labour Party set out its vision for policing and criminal justice, setting itself the ambitious target of halving knife crime in a decade. The Crime and Policing Bill is the Government’s legislative follow-through on those promises. Introduced in the House of Commons on 25 February 2025, the Bill is comprehensive and wide-ranging. Among its most significant provisions are those in Part 2 aimed at tightening the regulation of remote knife sales.
Clause 29 & the Criminal Justice Act 1988
Under the Criminal Justice Act 1988 (“CJA 1988”), it is an offence to sell knives or other articles with a blade or point to those under the age of 18 years old. However, current provisions do little to encourage stringent age verification: a person charged with an offence of selling to someone under 18 has a defence if they can prove that they “took all reasonable precautions and exercised all due diligence” to avoid committing it.
Where that sale has taken place remotely (e.g. the buyer was not in the presence of the seller at the point of sale), the seller can only prove that they have taken “all reasonable precautions and exercised all due diligence” if they have:
A key issue is the lack of clarity around what constitutes a system “likely” to prevent underage sales. The ambiguity and use of permissive language creates uncertainty and, in practice, sellers may believe that they are compliant while still exposing themselves to criminal liability.
Clause 29 of the Bill, in its current form, addresses this by proposing to replace the non-descript “system” in Condition A with a more robust two-step age verification process. Sellers will be required to obtain both a copy of the buyer’s passport or driving licence and a photograph of the buyer prior to the point of sale. Whilst it is not yet clear whether the photograph would need to be contemporaneous with the purchase, a measure that would help verify that the buyer was indeed the document holder, it is a marked improvement on the current framework.
Clause 29 also builds upon the delivery obligations on sellers set out in Condition B and Condition C. It requires that packages be clearly marked for delivery to the buyer (rather than someone simply over the age of 18) and that sellers take all reasonable precautions and exercise all due diligence to ensure that the package is then delivered to that buyer. Requiring the buyer and recipient of the package to be the same person is an important safeguard and limits opportunities for abuse.
Delivery of Knives: Clause 30 & the Offensive Weapons Act 2019
At the time of writing, section 38 of the Offensive Weapons Act 2019 (“OWA 2019”) makes it an offence for sellers to deliver, or the arrange the delivery of, a bladed product to a residential premises or locker. Section 40 offers a defence where the seller can prove that they (or, if they merely arranged for the delivery, that the person they had the arrangement with) had procedures in place which were “likely” to ensure that any bladed product would be delivered to someone over the age of 18, and took all reasonable precautions and exercised all due diligence to do so. Again, sellers are disadvantaged by the lack of specificity and the absence of a benchmark for what might be considered an adequate procedure.
Clause 30 goes some way in remedying this deficit; it provides that a seller charged with delivering a bladed product to a residential address will have a defence if they can show that the “delivery conditions” were met, namely:
If the seller merely arranged for the delivery (e.g. by using a third-party courier service), they will need to show that they required the delivery conditions to be met and took all reasonable precautions to ensure those conditions were, in fact, met.
Clause 30 additionally imposes criminal liability on couriers: it is an offence for a courier to deliver a bladed article to someone who is not over 18 and, if the buyer is an individual, is not the buyer themselves. However, if an individual delivers a bladed article on behalf of a courier, they will have a defence if either (a) they can show that they checked the identity document and a reasonable person would have been satisfied that the recipient was both was over 18 and the buyer, or (b) they did not know, and a reasonable person would not have known, that they were delivering a bladed article.
Conclusion
Clauses 29 and 30 of the Bill signify a new age for the remote sale of knives and are a key part of the Government’s plan to halve knife crime in a decade – by tightening the remote sale of knives and, hopefully, stemming the flow of knives before they even reach the streets. If these provisions come into force in their current form, the implications for sellers will be vast. Given that clause 26 of the Bill increases the maximum penalty for underage knife sales from 6 months’ imprisonment to 2 years’ imprisonment on indictment, businesses would be well-advised to keep a watchful eye on the Bill’s passage through Parliament and to start assessing whether, and to what extent, their current processes comply with the prospective requirements.
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