The Home Secretary, Priti Patel, has hit back at Diane Abbott’s criticism of the government’s “offensive” campaign to cut down on knife crime by claiming she is “just playing politics”. The Home Office announced a new scheme to cut down on knife crime yesterday which included boxes in Chicken Shops with the hashtag #knifefree after government statistics from April 2018 to March 2019 showed an eight percent rise each year on knife crime. The Home Office said: “We are rolling out our #KnifeFree chicken boxes in over 210 chicken shops in England and Wales, including Morley’s, Dixy Chicken and Chicken Cottage.

Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott as well as David Lammy have been massively critical about the new scheme. She dubbed it “crude and and offensive” and shared concerns it will “demonise” communities. She also said on Twitter: “Instead of investing in a public heath approach to violent crime, the Home Office have opted for yet another crude, offensive and probably expensive campaign. They would do better to invest in our communities not demonise them.”

But Patel hit back at Ms Abbott’s comments as she believes the chicken box initiative will help tackle the level of violent crime.

She said:

“Shame to see Diane Abbott playing politics with knife crime. I will do everything in my power to stop it traumatising communities – recruiting 20k officers, empowering police to stop and search, communicating tragic consequences of carrying a knife. I will not apologise for that.”