Popular online shopping store Ebay has recently stated that it will stop selling all knives apart from cutlery on its website. The announcement from Ebay comes after the BBC’s, Watchdog program showed just how easy it was to buy banned knives such as flick knives and stealth knives here in the UK. The knives in question, were being sold by American sellers and then imported into Britain, where it was labelled as ‘tools’ on the packaging.

The news will be a welcome addition to the UK authorities trying to reduce the number of knife crimes commited within our shores. Watching the program I was astounded by some of the knives available to buy including a rather nasty ‘Plastic Knife’, which has its blade made from carbon fibre, so that it could not be picked up metal detectors. Police, interviewed in the programme, said that they were highly concerned by these ‘plastic knives’ as they were made for only one reason – to harm!

Mark Lewis, country manager for eBay UK, said in a statement: “The laws surrounding the sales of knives are extremely complex and so we have decided that the best way to protect our members and achieve the safety guarantees they have come to expect from us is to remove and ban all knives, with the exception of cutlery knives, from our UK and Ireland sites.”