Queen's Speech: Serious Violence Bill

Serious Violence Bill

“A new duty will be placed on public sector bodies, ensuring they work together to address serious violence.”

The purpose of the Bill is to:

• Create a new duty on a range of specified agencies across different sectors, such as local government, education, social services, youth offending, and health and probation, to work collaboratively, share data and information, and put in place plans to prevent serious violence.
• Amend the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 to ensure that serious violence is an explicit priority for Community Safety Partnerships, which include local police, fire and probation services, as well as local authorities and wider public services.

The main benefits of the Bill would be:

• Identifying solutions to tackle the root causes of violent crime through a multiagency approach by placing an emphasis on intervention with young people and acknowledging that law enforcement alone cannot tackle violence.
• Complementing the Government’s investment in Violence Reduction Units in the areas most affected by serious violence by ensuring that agencies work effectively together.

The main elements of the Bill are:

• Placing a duty on relevant public agencies and bodies to prevent and reduce serious violence.
• Providing sufficient flexibility so that the relevant organisations will engage and work together in the most effective local partnership for any given area, whether that be a Community Safety Partnership or other multi-agency partnership such as local safeguarding arrangements. The legislation will enable statutory guidance that will set out the likely implications on a sector- by-sector basis.
• Amending section 6(1) of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, which sets out the strategies Community Safety Partnerships must formulate and implement, to explicitly include serious violence.

Territorial extent and application

• The Bill's provisions would extend and apply to England and Wales.

Key facts

• In 2018 the Government published the Serious Violence Strategy to address serious violence and in particular the recent increases in knife crime, gun crime and homicide. The Serious Violence Strategy made 61 commitments which we have made progress in delivering.
• On 26 July, the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary announced plans to recruit an additional 20,000 police officers over the next three years - the biggest police recruitment drive in decades. The Government announced funding to support the recruitment of the first wave of up to 6,000 additional officers by the end of financial year 2020-21.
• There were 701 homicides in the 12 months ending March 2019, a 4 per cent fall (from 728) compared with the previous year. This is the first fall in the number of homicides since 2014. The rate of homicide remains very low, at 12 homicides per 1 million people. However, excluding terrorist attacks in London and Manchester, the number of homicides has increased by 1 per cent (a volume rise of 8 homicides).
• The measures will complement the Government’s wider response to serious violence, including the investment of £35 million of the Serious Violence Fund in Violence Reduction Units. These Units will operate in the areas most affected by serious violence to tackle the root causes of serious violence by ensuring that local agencies work effectively together.