What does the pledge mean? 

In its 2024 manifesto Labour said it would: “Take back our streets by halving serious violent crime.” This formed part of the third of the government’s five “missions to rebuild Britain”.

However, the government has not been clear what it means by “serious violent crime”. We asked the Home Office in October and November 2024, and in March 2025, but did not receive a response.

When we asked again in September 2026, the Home Office referred us to the Labour party and to the Crown Prosecution Service’s definitions of crime, which contains a “violent crime” category but no grouping of “serious” violent crimes specifically. Indeed it includes information about common assault, a crime “where there is no injury, or injuries are not serious”.

It’s worth noting there’s no nationally agreed definition of serious violence.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) says there is no single measure of “violent crime”. Instead the term covers a variety of offences, including violence with and without injury and murder, as well as offences likely to cause fear or distress such as harassment and stalking.

The manifesto does not give a timescale for when this pledge will be completed, but it does say that Labour intends to halve both knife crime and violence against women and girls within a decade. This was restated in the government’s December 2024 “Plan for Change”, and the notes accompanying the 2024 King’s Speech also suggested the timespan of the pledge to halve serious violent crime would be “a decade”.

We’ve assumed this pledge relates to England and Wales, as the criminal justice system in Scotland and Northern Ireland is largely devolved.

We asked the Labour party for more information in September 2026, but have not yet received a response.

What progress has been made?

We’re rating this pledge as “unclear or disputed” as we don’t know for sure what offences fall within the government’s definition of “serious violent crime”, what metric it plans to use to measure success against this pledge, or the timescale for the pledge.

This is not good enough. When a government makes promises to the public, it should say clearly what those promises mean.

In September 2025, however, then-policing minister Diana Johnson MP referred to knife crime, homicide and gun crime when asked a written question about serious violence crime.

As this matches a definition used by Labour in 2023, this is our best indication so far at how the government intends to measure the pledge.

Police recorded data shows that in the year ending June 2024, just before Labour entered government, there were:

• 51,215 knife-enabled crime offences
• 552 homicide offences
• 5,911 offences involving firearms

The latest data shows that in the year ending March 2026, there were:

• 48,774 knife-enabled crime offences (a decrease of 4.8% compared to June 2024)
• 499 homicide offences (a decrease of 9.6% compared to June 2024)
• 5,151 firearms offences (a decrease of 12.9% compared to June 2024)

So if you assume this definition, and you use police recorded crime (which can be affected by changes in reporting practices), then serious violent crime has been falling since Labour took office, but it has a long way to go before it reaches the promised fall of 50%.

The government has announced a number of initiatives aimed at reducing crime, such as additional police recruitment, new police powers and a reform of neighbourhood policing. Some of these measures are included in the Crime and Policing Act 2026.