New rules for anyone buying knives online after Southport stabbings

Anyone buying a knife online will face stricter age checks following the stabbing attack that left three young girls dead in Southport.

Buyers will now have to submit official photo ID and proof of address at the point of sale and show their ID again on delivery as part of new the rules, the government has announced.

It comes days after Axel Rudakubana was jailed for a minimum of 53 years for the murders of Bebe King, six, Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven and Alice da Silva Aguiar, at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class on July 29 last year.

Rudakubana, aged 17, at the time, used a knife bought from Amazon to kill the girls and injure several others.

Official ID can be a person’s driver’s licence or passport, for example, while proof of address includes utility bills and bank statements.

Some retailers may ask the buyer to also submit a current photo or video of themselves, the Home Office said.

Companies will only be able to deliver a knife to the person who bought it, and it will be illegal to leave a package containing a bladed article on a doorstep when no one is in.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer had promised urgent action to prevent under-18s buying knives online, saying it was ‘shockingly easy’ for killers such as Rudakubana to get their hands on weapons.

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, meanwhile, said: ‘It’s a total disgrace how easy it still is for children to get dangerous weapons online.

‘More than two years after Ronan Kanda was killed with a ninja sword bought by a teenager online, too many retailers still don’t have proper checks in place.

‘It’s too easy to put in false birth dates, parcels are too often being dropped off at a doorstop with no questions asked.

‘We cannot go on like this. We need much stronger checks – before you buy, before it’s delivered.

‘The measures I am setting out today will be crucial in addressing this problem and are part of our Plan for Change and mission to make streets safer.”

It is illegal to sell knives with a fixed blade of more than three inches long to under-18s in England and Wales, with retailers facing fines or prosecution if they breach the law.

Current laws require sellers to operate an age verification system to stop under 18s from buying a knife, but the legislation does not stipulate what the system should be.

At Rudakubana’s sentencing on Thursday, prosecutors said he had bought two identical knives from Amazon on July 13 2024, taking steps to hide his identity when he did so ‘by using a virtual private network (VPN), which encrypts personal data’.

Amazon said it took its responsibility around the sale of knives ‘extremely seriously’ and had launched an urgent investigation into the case.

It confirmed it used ‘trusted ID verification services’ to validate the age of customers on orders of age-restricted items at purchase, and also followed an age verification delivery process requiring drivers to verify the recipient’s age.

In Rudakubana’s case, records showed the driver recorded a year of birth that would not make the person under 18 and marked the recipient as visibly over 25-years-old, in accordance with its policies and industry practice.

The new measures announced by the Home Office on Sunday are to be included as part of the Crime and Policing Bill which is expected to be introduced to Parliament by spring, with more proposals still to come in the coming weeks.

Last year, Ms Cooper commissioned Commander Stephen Clayman, the national police lead on knife crime, to carry out a full review into the online sale and delivery of knives.

The full report is expected at the end of January and stronger ID checks are one of the recommendations, the Home Office said.

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