.png)
BHETA General Manager Stephen Richardson attended two Home Office knife summits on Thursday 8 October, chaired by Minister of State for Policing and Crime Sarah Jones MP, to represent the views of the association’s members.
The first summit looked at the online marketing of knives. The second covered the sale and display of knives in shops. Attendees included online marketplaces such as Amazon and TikTok Shop, major retailers including John Lewis Partnership, Boots, Tesco, Kingfisher, ProCook and most of the large supermarkets, as well as Trading Standards and campaign groups Let’s Be Blunt and No Point Knives.
Speaking on behalf of BHETA’s members, who supply kitchen knives to the UK market, Steve confirmed the industry’s support for responsible knife retailing and for keeping knives out of the hands of under-18s. He also raised two key frustrations:
- Cutlery. Blunt cutlery knives remain age-restricted under the Offensive Weapons Act, even though the Home Office’s own guidance accepts they are not the “bladed products” the legislation targets. Compliance is costly, and some individual BHETA members have spent more than £200,000 on age verification for products nobody believes drive knife crime.
- An unlevel playing field. The UK is one of the most highly regulated markets in the world for knife sales, yet overseas sellers can ship into the UK in small parcels with minimal checks. Each new duty falls on UK retailers and suppliers, and many will simply stop selling knives. Demand doesn’t disappear. The risk is that it moves to overseas sellers who are very difficult to prosecute, leaving fewer compliant sellers and more unregulated ones.
BHETA asked the Minister to include an exclusion for cutlery in the Crime and Policing Act 2026, and for greater investment in Border Force so that controls reach overseas sellers.
Steve said: “A butter knife shouldn’t be treated like a lethal weapon. We share the Government’s aims, but regulation has to be proportionate and has to apply to everyone selling into the UK market.”
Find out more about BHETA's lobbying initiativeS below.
