Police data for London doesn’t show knife crime is up 72% in a year

The Conservative MP for Tatton and former minister Esther McVey last week made a number of claims about crime in London.

In an opinion piece for the Express, as well as on X, Ms McVey wrote in relation to the capital: “The reality is that knife crime is up 72% in a year.”

However, this isn’t what police statistics on knife-enabled crime show, and we can’t find any other evidence to back it up.

We’ve asked Ms McVey for a source for her claim and will update this article if we receive a response.

What do the figures show?

While there are various different statistics which can tell us about knife crime, the most commonly cited is police recorded crime data published by the ONS, which counts selected serious offences involving a knife or sharp instrument, including offences where a knife or sharp instrument was used to injure or attempt to injure a victim, or was used as a threat. (In total seven offences are considered by the Home Office to be a “knife-enabled offence” in this data, including robbery, homicide, attempted murder and rape. Knife possession is not included.)

The latest Police Force Area data tables show that by this measure, police in London—comprising both the Metropolitan Police and the City of London police—recorded 14,860 selected serious offences involving a knife in the year ending September 2025.

This has fallen by around 11% since the year ending September 2024, when 16,690 offences of this type were recorded.

Data for the year ending June 2025 showed a slight decrease in the number of these offences recorded compared to the year before, and while data for the year ending March 2025 showed a 9% increase, this is still considerably lower than 72%.

The data does, however, show a 72.7% increase in the year ending June 2025 compared to the year ending March 2016, a couple of months before Mr Khan took office. A similar figure has been reported in the media, so it’s possible this might be what Ms McVey intended to refer to.

It’s worth noting that the Metropolitan Police has “reviewed” its recording of knife or sharp instrument offences from April 2024 onwards. The ONS says this “revealed over counting for some crime types and under counting for others” and “resulted in a small decrease in the number of overall offences”, so it warns data prior to this may not be directly comparable.

Shoplifting and theft from the person

Ms McVey also claimed shoplifting was up 38% compared to the year before.

The latest Police Force Area data tables show that shoplifting in London increased by 19% in the year ending September 2025 compared to the same period the previous year.

It’s possible Ms McVey was referring to data for the year ending June 2025 though, in which case her claim was broadly correct. These figures showed shoplifting in London increased by 37%, compared to the year ending June 2024. We’ve also asked Ms McVey about this claim too.

Ms McVey’s claim that “theft from a person has tripled since Khan took office” appears correct.

Mr Khan was elected Mayor of London in May 2016. In the year ending March 2016, the Metropolitan Police and City of London police recorded 34,407 offences categorised as “theft from the person”.

Data for the year ending March 2025 shows police in London recorded 103,931 of these offences—roughly three times as many as in the year ending March 2016.