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

Sarah Jones heard how children as young as 12 were buying and selling knives online at the opening of the new National Knife Crime Centre (NKCC) in Bloomsbury, central London, on Thursday.

One of those she spoke to was Nikita Kanda, whose 16-year-old brother Ronan was killed in 2022 with a ninja sword bought online, just yards from their Wolverhampton home.

Jones said knife crime continued to have a "devastating" effect on children being exploited. Young people, she said, were somewhat being "encouraged" to make profit within a criminal "landscape."

"Criminals have come into that and gone 'OK, you can do this by buying and selling knives'," Jones continued.

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

At the event, Kanda insisted that tackling online sales of offensive weapons to teenagers was crucial.

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

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

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.

"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," Jones added.

The new government-funded NKCC aims to support police forces in identifying and tackling offenders who sell offensive weapons online - often referred to as the "grey market".

New legislation should however, take into account people who use knives for "legitimate" reasons, such as for use in martial arts.

"The question is: what can we do to stop the illegal sale, what can we do to stop harm and what can we do to stop knives being used on our streets?," Jones asked.

The Crime and Policing Bill, now in its final stages in parliament, has been framed to  improve authorities' crackdowns on knife crime, anti-social behaviour, violence against women and girls, shoplifting and child abuse.

Kanda said: "We totally get that people can be buying these [knives] for legitimate purposes, like the minister said, martial arts.

"But, we also would like these people who are buying knives for martial arts to be licensed, so that they hold accountability and responsibility for what they're buying."

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