Knives being sold online to Staffordshire children

Sep 5 2008

POTENTIALLY lethal knives can be easily bought online by children, according to research by Staffordshire trading standards officers.

A test purchasing operation in the county resulted in four knives being sold to a 14-year-old using his own visa debit card via an office computer.

One of the knives, a 15 inch machete, was sold for just £1.70.

The news comes after research group MarkMonitor found that more than 9,000 knives were for sale on online auction sites over a three-day period last month. More than half of these were available to buy instantly with no warnings or restrictions.

And in a survey of six of the country's biggest department stores and retailers, four were selling knives with no age limits online.

County Councillor Carol Dean, said: "It is becoming increasingly easy to purchase deadly weapons online at a fraction of the retail price. This happens daily and often with no regulations controlling who is purchasing them and why."

A crackdown on the illegal sale of knives to under-18s has been called for by Home Office Minister Vernon Coaker.

Knife retailers in the West Midlands are among the ten police force areas in England and Wales to become the focus of the Government's Tackling Knives Action Programme (TKAP).

Two hundred and nineteen offences involving knives were committed last year in Staffordshire.