Chris Philp MP: speeches

Speeches

• 3 Nov 2025 · Huntingdon Train Attack · Hansard source

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  I thank the Home Secretary for advance sight of her statement. Our thoughts are with the victims of this appalling attack and their families, as the Home Secretary rightly says. I join her in paying tribute to the emergency services who responded so fast and the brave interventions by members of the public and the train staff that prevented an even worse tragedy from occurring. They are truly heroes. This attack has horrified and shocked the whole nation. People simply travelling by train were indiscriminately attacked. The horror the passengers experienced will likely stay with them forever. Anthony Williams has now been charged. As the Home Secretary says, he had been involved in previous incidents in Peterborough and, in the early hours of Saturday morning, was also allegedly involved in an attack on the docklands light railway in London. Will the Home Secretary confirm that, as I have been told, police in London knew Williams’s identity following that attack, and if so, whether Cambridgeshire police were informed so that they could track him down? In essence, I am asking whether there were any opportunities to prevent this attack from occurring. The Home Secretary says that Williams was not previously known to the security services, Counter Terrorism Policing or Prevent. Can she tell the House whether Williams was previously known to the police more widely or to mental health services? This all comes just weeks after a murderous Islamist terror attack on a Manchester synagogue and just days after the horrendous murder of Wayne Broadhurst by an Afghan asylum seeker, both using knives. Although homicide has thankfully fallen by about 15% since 2010 and, as the Home Secretary said, knife crime has fallen in recent years, every homicide and every knife attack is one too many. The Minister for Policing and I saw the grief it causes at the funeral of 15-year-old Elianne Andam, who was murdered in Croydon just over two years ago. Speaking in general—not in relation to this incident—does the Home Secretary agree that knife crime and knife homicide figures are still too high, and that we must do yet more? Does she agree that more knife crime offenders should go to jail? This is important because when offenders are in jail, they cannot attack the public. Does she agree that we must ensure that more people who carry knives, especially where they use them to threaten others, are jailed? Of course, there is pressure on prison places, but by deporting more of the 10,000 foreign nationals in prison, we could create more space. We also need to take more knives off our streets, which means we have to dramatically increase the use of stop and search. A study this year by Professor Lawrence Sherman, the Met’s former chief scientific officer, found that raising stop and search levels in London to 2011 levels would lead to a one-third reduction in knife homicide. Some complain that stop and search is used disproportionately in relation to some groups, but, when measured in relation to the offending population, the disproportionality disappears, as was set out in a recent Policy Exchange study. We should triple the use of stop and search to get knives off our streets, and we should introduce year-round surge policing in the top 5% of high crime hotspots, which will include many train stations. We must also use technology more. I know that there is work under way at the Home Office on scanning for knives at a distance, and it is hoped that it can distinguish knives from keys or mobile phones. This could help police rapidly identify those carrying a knife in a public place. I wonder if the Home Secretary could provide an update on the development of that work, either straightaway or in writing later if she would prefer. I really do think that it could make a big difference. Finally, retrospective and live facial recognition can identify wanted criminals, including those involved in knife crime. In Croydon town centre—the borough that the Minister for Policing and I represent—in the last couple of years around 200 wanted criminals were arrested using live facial recognition, including two wanted rapists and others guilty of knife crime who would not otherwise have been caught. Crime in Croydon town centre, including knife crime, has gone down as a result. The images of innocent passers-by are immediately and automatically deleted, which addresses civil liberties concerns. I really hope that the Home Secretary and the Minister for Policing agree that rolling out this technology nationally would make a dramatic improvement to public safety, and they will certainly have my full support if they choose to roll it out. I know that everyone in the House wants to see knife crime eradicated—today more than ever before, I am sure—so I hope the House will also support the tough steps needed to eradicate knife crime. We owe the victims of these appalling crimes actions as well as words.