Children are setting up online businesses selling knives in the same way they trade clothes, the policing and crime minister Sarah Jones has said.

Jones heard how children as young as 12 were buying and selling the weapons on the internet and social media at the opening of the new National Knife Crime Centre in Bloomsbury, central London, on Thursday.

She said: “If you look at the current landscape with young people encouraged to set up their own business to buy and sell online, to buy clothes, sell them, make profit, within that landscape, criminals have come into that and gone ‘OK, you can do this by buying and selling knives’.

“And so [the government] have to be on top of that, and we have to come down very hard on that.”

Ministers are reviewing responses to a consultation on the possible introduction of a licensing system for sellers and importers of knives and bladed articles, in a bid to halve knife crime in the next 10 years.

The minister added: “It is too easy to be able to buy and sell and receive knives in this country, and we need to keep pushing to do more.

“There could be a licence regime which licenses who can sell knives and who can’t and what the purpose could be for.”

Jones added new legislation should take into account people who use knives for “legitimate” reasons, such as martial arts.

Police-recorded knife crime was down 9% last year, with 50,430 offences logged in the year to September 2025, according to the latest Office for National Statistics figures available.

The new government-funded National Knife Crime Centre aims to support police forces in identifying and tackling offenders who sell offensive weapons online – often referred to as the “grey market”.

Nikita Kanda, 25, whose 16-year-old brother Ronan was yards away from his home in Wolverhampton, West Midlands, when he was murdered in 2022 with a ninja sword bought online, insisted on the importance of tackling online sales of offensive weapons to teenagers.

Speaking at the event, Kanda said: “The online sale of dangerous weapons is something that should never be taken lightly.

“We know young people have been targeted online, and that means weapons are not harmless objects.

“They are being used to enable, inflict and escalate violence, and that is why decisive action is so important.”

The Crime and Policing Bill, now in its final stages in parliament, plans to crack down on knife crime, antisocial behaviour, violence against women and girls, shoplifting and child abuse.

In February, the deputy prime minister David Lammy said children who carry knives would be given earlier and more targeted support after two pupils were seriously injured after being stabbed at a secondary school in Brent, north-west London.

Lammy said every child in England and Wales caught with a sharp weapon will be given a mandatory, specialised plan from the authorities.