Asked by: Damien Moore (Conservative - Southport)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if he will make an assessment of the potential impact of trends in the number of police officers operating visibly in communities on the number of drug-related offences recorded in the last five years.
Answered by Chris Philp - Shadow Home Secretary
It has not proved possible to respond to the hon. Member in the time available before Prorogation.
Asked by: Damien Moore (Conservative - Southport)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps his Department is taking to support victims of (a) domestic abuse and (b) coercive control post-separation.
Answered by Laura Farris
It has not proved possible to respond to the hon. Member in the time available before Prorogation.
Asked by: Damien Moore (Conservative - Southport)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps his Department is taking to help tackle (a) antisocial behaviour and (b) other (i) dangerous and (ii) illicit acts caused by illegal drug cultivation.
Answered by Chris Philp - Shadow Home Secretary
Drugs devastate lives, ruin families and damage communities. The Government's ten-year Drugs Strategy demonstrates our commitment to cut off the supply of drugs, reduce their recreational use and make the UK a significantly harder place for organised crime groups to operate in. Through our end-to-end plan to tackle drug supply, we are tackling the supply of drugs at every level from production overseas to cultivation in the UK. Our approach recognises that the organised criminals behind drug cultivation are often involved in a range of wider offences including firearms, money laundering, slavery and human trafficking.
Working with the National Crime Agency, the Regional Organised Crime Unit network and a range of agency partners, police in England and Wales coordinated Operation Mille - the most significant operation of its kind aimed at disrupting organised crime groups by dismantling large-scale cannabis farms – a key source of illicit income for organised crime gangs. Throughout June of 2023, police executed over 1,000 search warrants, arresting hundreds of individuals and seized 20 firearms, over £635,000 in cash and over 180,000 cannabis plants worth around £130 million. Of those arrested, more than 450 were later charged with a range of offences. The Home Office provided police with £1.5m funding in 2023/24 to support Operation Mille.
Last year the Government launched the Anti-social Behaviour Action Plan ensuring the police, local authorities and other relevant agencies have the tools and powers they need to tackle anti-social behaviour. Under the Plan, which is backed by £160m of funding, we are taking a zero-tolerance approach to all forms of anti-social behaviour, including by toughening up the police response to drugs, expanding testing on arrest and banning nitrous oxide.
Asked by: Damien Moore (Conservative - Southport)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what progress his Department has made on ending the use of seaside hotels for housing asylum seekers.
Answered by Tom Pursglove
The Home Office has been clear that the use of hotels is a temporary and short-term measure to ensure we meet our statutory obligation to accommodate destitute asylum seekers. We have made significant progress in returning 150 hotels to communities across the UK as of the beginning of May.
Our statutory accommodation needs are kept under continuous review, and we will write to MPs and local authorities as further decisions on hotels are made.
Asked by: Damien Moore (Conservative - Southport)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether his Department is taking steps through the criminal justice system to support small businesses affected by criminal damage.
Answered by Chris Philp - Shadow Home Secretary
The Crime Survey for England and Wales estimates 623k criminal damage offences in the year ending December 2023, which is a decrease of -73.9% since year ending March 2010.
The Government is working to reduce crime against businesses. Police forces across England and Wales made a significant commitment to follow up on any available evidence where there is a reasonable chance it could lead them to catching a perpetrator and solving a crime. This is a substantial and meaningful commitment that we believe will help drive down crime, improve investigations and improve the criminal justice system outcomes to support all victims.
We are taking action to support the retail sector, including small, independent retailers. The Government’s plan – "Fighting retail crime: more action" was launched on 10 April and includes commitments to make it easier for small independent businesses to report crime to the police.
In 2021-22, the Home Office provided £75,000 to the National Business Crime Centre to support the creation of a retail crime hub on their website and to establish it as a ‘one-stop-shop’ for business crime. The crime hub hosts a range of information and crime prevention guidance for businesses, including specific resources for preventing shop theft and prolific offending: Business Support (nbcc.police.uk). The Home Office will be providing further funding to the NBCC to carry out commitments in the Government’s retail crime plan.
We know anti-social behaviour blights neighbourhoods, makes people’s lives a misery and stops businesses and individuals from flourishing. That is why last year the Government launched the Anti-Social Behaviour Action Plan to crack down on anti-social behaviour and restore public confidence that these crimes will be quickly and visibly punished. Under the Plan, which is backed by £160m of funding, we are supporting increased patrols in anti-social behaviour hotspot areas, and making sure offenders are made to repair the damage they cause, in some cases within as little as 48 hours.
Asked by: Damien Moore (Conservative - Southport)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps he is taking to prevent the provision of large dinghies by suppliers to people smuggling gangs.
Answered by Michael Tomlinson
We are taking a whole-of-route approach from source countries all the way through to the UK and have signed international agreements to enhance co-operation on organised immigration crime.
As announced by the Prime Minister in December 2022, we have doubled funding to the National Crime Agency and other partners to provide £74 million funding to tackle OIC.
Asked by: Damien Moore (Conservative - Southport)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps his Department has taken to tackle (a) violence and (b) intimidation against young women and girls.
Answered by Laura Farris
We have made significant progress since we published the Tackling VAWG Strategy in July 2021 and the complementary Tackling Domestic Abuse Plan in March 2022.
In the Tackling VAWG Strategy, the government committed to invest £3 million to better understand what works to prevent violence against women – to invest in high quality, evidence-informed prevention projects, including in schools, aiming to educate and inform children and young people about violence against women, healthy relationships and the consequences of abuse.
Our Domestic Abuse Act became law in April 2021. This is a landmark piece of legislation which includes important new protections and support for victims. Abusers are no longer be allowed to directly cross-examine their victims in the family and civil courts, and victims have better access to special measures in the courtroom to help prevent intimidation – such as protective screens and giving evidence via video link.
To improve the police response to tackling these crimes, we have supported the introduction of a new full-time National Policing Lead for VAWG, DCC Maggie Blyth, and have added violence against women to the Strategic Policing Requirement, meaning it is now set out as a national threat for forces to respond to alongside other threats such as terrorism, serious and organised crime and child sexual abuse.
The Government also supported the Protection from Sex-Based Harassment in Public Act 2023, which makes public sexual harassment a specific offence. The Act will come into force as quickly as reasonably possible.
Asked by: Damien Moore (Conservative - Southport)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent progress his Department has made on ending the use of hotels for asylum seekers in seaside towns.
Answered by Tom Pursglove
We are making significant progress in closing hotels, with 50 due to be closed by the end of January, and more in the coming months.
We are also working to move asylum seekers into alternative, cheaper accommodation and have successfully cleared the legacy backlog by deciding more than 112,000 cases, while maintaining the integrity of the system.
Asked by: Damien Moore (Conservative - Southport)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many additional police officers Merseyside Police has recruited since the the Police Uplift Programme was announced in July 2019.
Answered by Chris Philp - Shadow Home Secretary
During the Police Uplift Programme, the Home Office published data on the number of police officers in post and police officer recruits in England and Wales in the 'Police Officer Uplift’ statistical bulletin which can be accessed here: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/police-officer-uplift-statistics.
Table U2 of the data tables accompanying the final ‘Police Officer Uplift’ release, covering the position as at 31 March 2023, provides a breakdown of additional officers recruited through the Police Uplift Programme by month since October 2019. These data can be accessed here: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1171838/police-officer-uplift-final-position-as-at-march-2023-tables-260723.ods. Data are provided on a headcount basis and broken down by Police Force Area.
As at 31 March 2023, Merseyside Police have recruited 724 additional police officers attributable to the Police Uplift Programme. This is against an allocation to recruit 665 additional police officers for the three-year programme.
Asked by: Damien Moore (Conservative - Southport)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether she has made an assessment of the potential merits of creating a safe route for visa applications from Sudanese nationals fleeing conflict.
Answered by Robert Jenrick - Shadow Secretary of State for Justice
The UK has a proud history of supporting refugees. Since 2015, we have offered a safe and legal route to over half a million people seeking safety in the UK. The UK continues to welcome refugees through our existing resettlement schemes which include the global UK Resettlement Scheme (UKRS), Community Sponsorship and the Mandate Resettlement Scheme.
The UK is proud to have welcomed Sudanese nationals through both our UK Resettlement Scheme and Community Sponsorship in 2021 and 2022, and we also welcome eligible Sudanese nationals through our refugee family reunion route.
While our safe and legal routes are some of the most generous anywhere, we cannot accommodate everyone who wants to come to the UK, and we are not able to open a bespoke route for every situation. The UK has no plans to introduce a designated resettlement scheme for Sudanese refugees.
It is our long-standing principle that those in need international protection should claim asylum in the first safe country they reach – that is the fastest route to safety.