The crew member remains in hospital with serious injuries, but authorities said he was in a stable condition.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer praised the train crew members as heroes.
“There’s no doubt that their collective action, their brave action, saved countless lives and I know the whole country is grateful for that,” he told the House of Commons.
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While authorities initially said nine victims were facing life-threatening injuries in hospital out of 11 who were being treated, at least five have since been released. None are described as in a life-threatening condition.
Knife crime has become a major concern in Britain over several years, with official statistics showing there were 49,600 attacks with sharp instruments in England and Wales in the year to March 2025. This was similar to the levels in previous years, according to a study by the House of Commons Library.
Aware of the community fears about knife crime, the UK government announced three days ago that almost 60,000 knives had been removed from streets in England and Wales through “knife surrender schemes” and police operations.
It said knife homicides had fallen by almost 20 per cent and that the latest admissions data for National Health Service hospitals in England and Wales showed a 10 per cent fall in admissions for knife assaults.
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood suggested the government would consider allowing greater use of facial recognition to prevent crime.
“This government will consult on a legal framework so that all police forces across the country can use live facial recognition technology, confident that they will not find themselves defending those decisions in courts in the future,” she said.
“I think there is much more that we can do to use new and emerging technology in order to help us tackle this type of criminality.”
While the train attack has sparked a debate about whether security on railways should be upgraded to levels closer to the security on airlines, the government has not canvassed measures of that kind.
Police said the first call to emergency services about the attack on the intercity service came at 7.42pm on Saturday (6.42am AEDT on Sunday) as the train headed from Doncaster to London. They allege the suspect attacked a victim at the London light trail station at 1am on Saturday.
The earlier attack is alleged to have taken place at the Pontoon Dock station in the docklands district of London, east of the city centre. Other attacks are said to have taken placed in Peterborough before and after the London attack, suggesting Williams was moving around the rail network in the days before he boarded the high-speed train at Peterborough.
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