Asked by: Sarah Pochin (Reform UK - Runcorn and Helsby)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps her Department is taking to ensure consistent police response standards in cases of child-on-child sexual abuse that arise within school settings; and if she will issue updated guidance on liaison between police forces, Designated Safeguarding Leads and Local Authority Designated Officers.
Answered by Jess Phillips - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
This Government remains firmly committed to tackling all forms of child sexual exploitation and abuse in all settings across the country. This includes ensuring that statutory safeguarding partners, including the police, have the right resources, tools and training to identify and respond effectively to child sexual abuse. Working Together to Safeguard Children statutory guidance sets out the roles and responsibilities of each safeguarding partner, including how to work together to safeguard children from this horrific crime. We are also working to establish the new National Centre for Violence Against Women and Girls and Public Protection which will drive up best practice and strengthened ways of working amongst key partners. We are also working to establish the new National Centre for Violence Against Women and Girls and Public Protection which will drive up best practice and strengthened ways of working amongst key partners.
Asked by: Sarah Pochin (Reform UK - Runcorn and Helsby)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what discussion she has had with Cabinet colleagues on the estimate of the number of grooming gangs operating in Manchester.
Answered by Jess Phillips - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
Baroness Casey’s rapid national audit into group-based child sexual exploitation set out stark findings on the scale and nature of grooming gang offending. This government is absolutely committed to exposing the failures that have happened across the country and making sure that it can never happen again. We accepted all of Baroness Casey’s twelve recommendations and are working across government to implement these as quickly as possible. The Home Secretary announced the leadership and draft terms of reference of the new Independent Inquiry into Grooming Gangs on 9 December 2025.
To improve our understanding of and response to these crimes, the Home Office funds a number of policing capabilities, including the Tackling Organised Exploitation programme which uses data and intelligence to increase law enforcement’s capability to respond to organised exploitation. We also fund the Child Sexual Exploitation Police Taskforce to improve how the police investigate child sexual exploitation and bring more offenders to justice. The Taskforce work directly with forces to improve data collection and analyse data on a national level. On 10 December 2025, the Taskforce published an annual data report for group-based offending in 2024, which can be found here: https://www.hydrantprogramme.co.uk/latest-news/new-police-recorded-csae-crime-data-analysis.
Neither the Taskforce nor the Home Office publishes data on offending within specific cities.
Asked by: Sarah Pochin (Reform UK - Runcorn and Helsby)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what discussion she has had with Cabinet colleagues on the estimate of the number of grooming gangs operating in Liverpool.
Answered by Jess Phillips - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
Baroness Casey’s rapid national audit into group-based child sexual exploitation set out stark findings on the scale and nature of grooming gang offending. This government is absolutely committed to exposing the failures that have happened across the country and making sure that it can never happen again. We accepted all of Baroness Casey’s twelve recommendations and are working across government to implement these as quickly as possible. The Home Secretary announced the leadership and draft terms of reference of the new Independent Inquiry into Grooming Gangs on 9 December 2025.
To improve our understanding of and response to these crimes, the Home Office funds a number of policing capabilities, including the Tackling Organised Exploitation programme which uses data and intelligence to increase law enforcement’s capability to respond to organised exploitation. We also fund the Child Sexual Exploitation Police Taskforce to improve how the police investigate child sexual exploitation and bring more offenders to justice. The Taskforce work directly with forces to improve data collection and analyse data on a national level. On 10 December 2025, the Taskforce published an annual data report for group-based offending in 2024, which can be found here: https://www.hydrantprogramme.co.uk/latest-news/new-police-recorded-csae-crime-data-analysis.
Neither the Taskforce nor the Home Office publishes data on offending within specific cities.
Asked by: Sarah Pochin (Reform UK - Runcorn and Helsby)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many grooming gangs her Department is aware of operating in London.
Answered by Jess Phillips - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
Baroness Casey’s rapid national audit into group-based child sexual exploitation set out stark findings on the scale and nature of grooming gang offending. This government is absolutely committed to exposing the failures that have happened across the country and making sure that it can never happen again. We accepted all of Baroness Casey’s twelve recommendations and are working across government to implement these as quickly as possible. The Home Secretary announced the leadership and draft terms of reference of the new Independent Inquiry into Grooming Gangs on 9 December 2025.
To improve our understanding of and response to these crimes, the Home Office funds a number of policing capabilities, including the Tackling Organised Exploitation programme which uses data and intelligence to increase law enforcement’s capability to respond to organised exploitation. We also fund the Child Sexual Exploitation Police Taskforce to improve how the police investigate child sexual exploitation and bring more offenders to justice. The Taskforce work directly with forces to improve data collection and analyse data on a national level. On 10 December 2025, the Taskforce published an annual data report for group-based offending in 2024, which can be found here: https://www.hydrantprogramme.co.uk/latest-news/new-police-recorded-csae-crime-data-analysis.
Neither the Taskforce nor the Home Office publishes data on offending within specific cities.
Asked by: Sarah Pochin (Reform UK - Runcorn and Helsby)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether applications for asylum have been approved for people on the security services' watch list in the past 12 months.
Answered by Alex Norris - Minister of State (Home Office)
The first priority of government is protecting national security.
All applications for UK immigration status, including asylum claims, are subject to comprehensive security checks. Where an individual is assessed as presenting a risk to our country, we take swift and robust action.
The Home Office uses various tools to detect and disrupt travel by individuals of national security interest and by individuals excluded from the UK; previously deported from the UK; or using lost, stolen or revoked documents and visas. This includes the use of domestic and international watchlists.
It is longstanding policy not to discuss either the specific data held on the watchlist, the source of the data or how it is used, as to do so would be counterproductive and harmful to the national security of the UK.
Asked by: Sarah Pochin (Reform UK - Runcorn and Helsby)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what estimate her Department has made of the number of victims of grooming gangs who will have convictions for prostitution expunged.
Answered by Jess Phillips - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
The Home Office is setting up a disregards scheme for convictions and cautions issued to under 18s for persistently loitering or soliciting in a street or public place for the purpose of prostitution, contrary to Section 1 of The Street Offences Act 1959.
A preliminary search of centrally held digital records suggests that 352 individuals have been cautioned or convicted for this offence while under 18, since 1995. We are legislating in the Crime and Policing Bill to disregard and pardon these convictions and cautions.
However, it is not possible to calculate the proportion of the 352 individuals who were the victim of group based child sexual exploitation.
We are aware that victims of group based child sexual exploitation may have been convicted for other offences; the Ministry of Justice is working with the Criminal Cases Review Commission to ensure it is properly resourced to review the applications of victims of Child Sexual Exploitation who believe they were unjustly convicted when their position as a victim was not properly understood.
Asked by: Sarah Pochin (Reform UK - Runcorn and Helsby)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many crimes where (a) e-scooters and (b) e-bikes were used by the perpetrator have been recorded by his Department by police force in the last 12 months.
Answered by Sarah Jones - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Home Office collects information on the number of notifiable offences recorded by the police in England and Wales but this does not include whether or not an offence was committed with the use of e-scooters or e-bikes.
Asked by: Sarah Pochin (Reform UK - Runcorn and Helsby)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps her Department is taking to help tackle the misuse of ketamine.
Answered by Sarah Jones - Minister of State (Home Office)
Tackling the harms caused by the use of illicit drugs is critical to delivering the Government’s key missions on safer streets and improving health outcomes, as well as contributing to the opportunity and national growth missions. We are taking an end-to-end approach to disrupt illicit drug supply chains, including working with law enforcement partners upstream and at the UK border to tackle the gangs responsible for drug trafficking.
Ketamine is a dangerous substance, which can cause irreversible bladder damage and in some cases death. Ministers are concerned about the harms ketamine causes and in January 2025 the Government asked the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) to provide an updated harms assessment of ketamine, and advice on reducing those harms, and in particular whether ketamine should be moved from Class B to Class A within the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971. The ACMD carried out a public call for evidence in August and we expect to receive its report soon. We will then carefully consider its recommendations.
This activity sits as part of our work across Government to monitor and respond to emerging trends and harms, including those related to ketamine use. For example, on 16 October 2025 the Department for Health and Social Care launched a campaign to alert young people to the dangers of this drug.
Asked by: Sarah Pochin (Reform UK - Runcorn and Helsby)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many members of staff in her Department currently spend one or more days a week working from home.
Answered by Sarah Jones - Minister of State (Home Office)
On 24 October 2024 the Cabinet Office announced that 60% minimum office attendance for most staff continues to be the best balance of working for the Civil Service. Senior managers will continue to be expected to be in the office more than 60% of the time and individual attendance requirement can be up to 100% based on business need.
Details of the exact number of staff currently working from home one or more days per week are not held centrally.
Asked by: Sarah Pochin (Reform UK - Runcorn and Helsby)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many times police forces in England and Wales have used stop-and-search powers in each of the last five years.
Answered by Sarah Jones - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Home Office collects and publishes data on the number of stop and searches undertaken by the 43 territorial police forces in England and Wales and the British Transport Police, on a financial year basis. The latest data are available here: Stop and search, arrests, and mental health detentions, March 2025 - GOV.UK
Table 1 below shows how many stop and searches were undertaken by police forces in England and Wales in each of the last five complete financial years
Table 1 – stop and searches in England and Wales, 2020/21 to 2024/25
Financial year | Number of stop and searches |
2020/21 | 714,914 |
2021/22 | 530,970 |
2022/23 | 547,000 |
2023/24 | 536,217 |