'We must find the early triggers to knife crime'

Rother Valley MP Jake Richards is also the minister overseeing youth justice

The government minister responsible for youth justice has said there needs to be more early intervention with knife crime, after a teenager was detained for life for murdering a fellow pupil at school.

Rother Valley MP Jake Richards said knife crime was a "massive challenge" but there were often early warning signs with the young people involved.

He spoke after Mohammed Umar Khan, 15, was detained with a minimum term of 16 years for murdering Harvey Willgoose at Sheffield's All Saints Catholic High School in February.

Richards told the BBC the government would announce a new policy soon, adding: "We need to become much better at identifying and intervening before harm is done."

The MP described the Sheffield stabbing as an "awful case" and said he could not imagine the "pain and anguish" the Willgoose family were going through.

He is involved in the youth early intervention programme Turnaround which he said aimed to identify children "on the cusp of criminality".

• Harvey Willgoose killer sentenced to at least 16 years

• As it happened: Mohammed Umar Khan sentencing

He said: "The government has a manifesto commitment to halve knife crime over a decade and frankly, even though that is a realistic target, I want to be more ambitious than that.

"It doesn't sound good enough to me.

"We have a good sense of trigger or warning signals for when children might be entering criminality, whether that's being absent from school or interaction with children services.

"For a lot of these perpetrators, there are alarms in the system much earlier.

"We need a safeguarding system so we are better aware of those triggers and then act really quickly and firmly.

"We need to introduce new rules if anyone is caught that it is not only punishment, but making sure they are then referred to intensive supervision.

"It is a massive challenge and we are working on it."

Security in schools

Richards said he would be reluctant to impose security measures that schools should have to take.

"If a head teacher says to me, I think airport-style security is necessary to keep children safe, I'm not going to argue with the head teacher.

"But at the same time, we don't want a situation where children going to school every day feel like they have to go through security checks just to go and play football in the playground and go to their classes.

"It's a really difficult balance to strike."

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