Prime Minister's Questions: The key bits and the verdict

Theresa May went head-to-head with Jeremy Corbyn in the House of Commons. Here's what happened.

Knife crime dominated this week's exchanges. Mrs May made a brief statement at the start of the session expressing sympathy for the victims' families and setting out what the government was doing to tackle the "cycle of mindless violence", including a summit at No 10, with "community leaders".

We did not learn very much more on the subject from Mrs May, despite the best efforts of Jeremy Corbyn, who repeatedly urged her to accept that cuts to police numbers and public services were to blame.

The Labour leader began by asking for more funding to address the "root causes" of knife crime and violent crime.

Mrs May listed some of the things she said the government was already doing, including a crackdown on the drug trade and intervening "at every stage to turn young people away from violence".

Then the two leaders clashed about what Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick had said about knife crime.

According to Mr Corbyn, she had said there was an obvious link between falling police numbers and rising knife crime - and he reminded the PM that "21,000 police officers' jobs have been cut".

Mrs May focused on another quote from Cressida Dick, who, according to the PM, had said more officers alone were not the answer and "we cannot arrest our way out of this problem".

The PM listed various strategies the government had introduced to tackle violent crime - and claimed more money was going into the police.

Mr Corbyn replied that the police "clearly do not have the resources" to deal with knife crime. Did the prime minister regret cuts to police numbers, he asked, and would she restore them to previous levels?

Theresa May insisted that the government is putting "more resources" into the police - rapidly becoming a familiar theme - and accused Labour of voting against that.

For the first time in a while, Mr Corbyn read out a letter from a member of the public.

Mike, from Gosport, wrote that "the crime rate has run out of control because there is no police presence - it is becoming a really unsafe town to live in".

"More resources" had gone into policing, repeated the PM. Not only that, she cried, Mr Corbyn had voted against tougher laws against carrying knives.

Mr Corbyn said police officers had told him there were "simply not enough of them to do the job".

The number of rapes, murders and other violent crimes has risen by more than 50% since the privatisation of the probation service four years ago, said the Labour leader.

At least one company had reclassified violent offenders as "low risk" to meet government targets, he claimed.

• Ten charts on the rise of knife crime

• Reality Check: Are there more police now?

Privatisation of probation, he declared, had been a "disaster" and it should be reversed,

The government is "genuinely" reducing the level of re-offending, claimed the PM - something, she said, Labour never did.

Mr Corbyn broadened out his attack to claim that the rise in violent crime is "driven by austerity - something the prime minister said a few months ago was over".

Mental health services are underfunded, youth centres have been closed, school funding has been cut, he said.

"You cannot keep communities safe on the cheap by cuts and privatisation," he told the prime minister.

But more money was going in to the police, Mrs May repeated.

She said government cuts had been needed "because of the state of the economy left by Labour," whose policies "would take us right back to square one".

What else came up?

The SNP's Ian Blackford asked about the government's post-Brexit registration scheme for EU citizens. He asked why Tove MacDonald, an 87-year-old woman, who was "brought up under Nazi occupation" in Denmark and had called Scotland home for 59 years was now being forced to register?

The SNP's Kirsty Blackman asked about a joint motion passed on Tuesday night in the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly calling for Brexit to be delayed. Mrs May told her the SNP has no mandate from the Scottish people to continue to pursue independence, prompting uproar on the SNP benches.

Labour MP Anna McMorrin raised police investigations into EU referendum campaigns and asked the PM to delay Brexit as a birthday present to her daughter, who will be 16 on 29 March.

Conservative MP Chris Philp raised the case of Breck Bednar, a 14-year-old who was raped and murdered, and whose family is being taunted online by someone purporting to be his killer.

The Verdict

Here is BBC Political Editor Laura Kuenssberg's take on the session:

Here is BBC Political Correspondent Sean Curran's take on the session:

Westminster is in waiting mode ahead of next week's votes on Brexit.

The empty green benches on both sides of the House told the story. Many MPs had decided to give PMQs a miss.

The 55 minute session was - like the news headlines - inevitably dominated by knife crime.

This is not a problem that can be solved with a few exchanges in Parliament but this was an opportunity for political leaders to show they were in touch with the public mood over violent crime.

Theresa May sought to get on the front foot with her announcement about a summit in Downing Street. There will be a further meeting with victims of knife crime and their families.

There's not much to argue about there.

But the prime minister's comments earlier in the week when she argued there was no direct link between the number of police officers and violent crime put her directly at odds with the Labour leader.

Jeremy Corbyn used all of his questions to link fears about crime to austerity and cuts in public spending.

The Conservatives were mostly silent for the exchanges and only started to offer the prime minister vocal support when she attacked Labour's voting record and economic policy.

Perhaps the most significant contribution came from Conservative MP Julia Lopez, whose constituent, 17-year-old Jodie Chesney, was stabbed and killed last Friday.

Her verdict on exchanges between Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn was that the public didn't want to see politicians throw blame at one another for "stolen lives".