Asked by: Tracey Crouch (Conservative - Chatham and Aylesford)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether the Government provides support for young people who have been arrested for rough sleeping under the Vagrancy Act.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Government has made the unprecedented commitment to end rough sleeping within this Parliament and to fully enforce the Homelessness Reduction Act. We have already embarked on a strategy to shift the focus to prevention and move vulnerable individuals into multi-agency support, backed by £2.4 billion over three years.
The government’s ‘Ending Rough Sleeping for Good’ strategy published in 2022 recognises that young people face particular challenges in accessing and maintaining accommodation. The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities is funding £2.5 million is being provided through the Rough Sleeping Initiative 2022-25 to fund youth services in local areas. The youth interventions provide funding to 8 local authorities across England to develop specialist youth support such as outreach workers, prevention officers and specialist housing for those under 25. The Single Homelessness Accommodation Programme (SHAP) is also delivering over 2,000 homes by March 2025, including 650 homes for young people sleeping rough or at risk of rough sleeping and funding for wrap-around support tailored to individual needs.
Where anyone is arrested, Liaison and Diversion (L&D) services have been introduced into police custody, to seek to ensure that vulnerable people are identified and offered access to the help they may need. A key component of these schemes is to provide referrals to community treatment and support services and to provide advice to police custody staff on how best to support people with these vulnerabilities.
In certain circumstances, local authorities have a duty to provide accommodation to young people in their area aged under 18 deemed ‘in need’ under the Children’s Act 1989.
Asked by: Tracey Crouch (Conservative - Chatham and Aylesford)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many 16 to 25 year olds have been arrested for rough sleeping under the Vagrancy Act.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
The government does not collect figures on police usage of the Vagrancy Act where this does not result in prosecution. Policing is operationally independent of the Home Office, and we cannot comment on operational decisions.
Asked by: Tracey Crouch (Conservative - Chatham and Aylesford)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if he will take steps to ensure that (a) technology and (b) telecommunications companies help to prevent fraud.
Answered by Tom Tugendhat - Minister of State (Home Office) (Security)
The Online Safety Act (OSA) received Royal Assent last year and will require the tech sector to tackle fraud on their platforms or face significant fines from Ofcom.
Alongside the OSA, on the 30th November, the Government announced the Online Fraud Charter. This is the first voluntary agreement of its kind, in which the largest tech companies in the world have committed to implementing new measures to combat fraud in the UK. The Charter’s commitments seek improvements to blocking fraud at source, making reporting fraud easier for users and decreasing the time it takes to remove content and ads found to be fraudulent. The Charter also seeks to improve data sharing across the sector and with law enforcement, and to increase the transparency of risks on platforms and services.
The Government and the telecommunications industry also signed the Telecommunications Fraud Sector Charter in 2021. Since then, the sector has introduced firewalls that detect and stop scam texts from reaching customers, as well as deploying measures to prevent scam calls. The firewalls have stopped 870 million scam text messages since January 2022.
The Government is also taking legislative action to ban “SIM farms”, devices that allow criminals to send scam texts to thousands of people at the same time.
Asked by: Tracey Crouch (Conservative - Chatham and Aylesford)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if he will appoint a Minister for Economic Crime.
Answered by Tom Tugendhat - Minister of State (Home Office) (Security)
The Home Office and HM Treasury lead the policy response to economic crime for government and are responsible for coordinating the public-private Economic Crime Plan 2, published in March 2023.
Fraud and economic crime are complex and multifaceted issues that touch upon much of the economy and manifest in many different ways. It is right that these two departments jointly lead the government’s response, to support system leadership that fully considers the long-term ramifications of decisions that impact both the UK’s prosperity and security.
A single departmental approach or single Economic Crime minister would, in the government’s view, undermine our efforts to tackle holistically the challenge that economic crime presents.
Asked by: Tracey Crouch (Conservative - Chatham and Aylesford)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if he will introduce legislation to mandate information sharing between (a) payment service providers, (b) technology companies and (c) telecommunications companies.
Answered by Tom Tugendhat - Minister of State (Home Office) (Security)
Under current regulations, victims of unauthorised bank fraud are automatically entitled to reimbursement in virtually all cases. This is not the case with victims of authorised push payment (APP) fraud – currently ten of the UK’s largest banks are signed up to the voluntary Contingent Reimbursement Model (CRM) Code.
The government have legislated through the Financial Services and Markets Act 2023 to require the Payments System Regulator (PSR) to introduce mandatory reimbursement for APP scams within the Faster Payment System, where 98% of APP fraud takes place.
The PSR have confirmed that mandatory reimbursement will come into force in October 2024.
Asked by: Tracey Crouch (Conservative - Chatham and Aylesford)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether he has made an assessment of the potential merits of a fair and proportional reimbursement framework for bank fraud.
Answered by Tom Tugendhat - Minister of State (Home Office) (Security)
Under current regulations, victims of unauthorised bank fraud are automatically entitled to reimbursement in virtually all cases. This is not the case with victims of authorised push payment (APP) fraud – currently ten of the UK’s largest banks are signed up to the voluntary Contingent Reimbursement Model (CRM) Code.
The government have legislated through the Financial Services and Markets Act 2023 to require the Payments System Regulator (PSR) to introduce mandatory reimbursement for APP scams within the Faster Payment System, where 98% of APP fraud takes place.
The PSR have confirmed that mandatory reimbursement will come into force in October 2024.
Asked by: Tracey Crouch (Conservative - Chatham and Aylesford)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, when she plans to bring forward legislation making it a criminal offence to be in possession of NOS canisters.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Government has committed to control nitrous oxide as a Class C drug before the end of the year.
We will bring forward legislation as soon as possible, but this will remain subject to Parliamentary procedure.
Asked by: Tracey Crouch (Conservative - Chatham and Aylesford)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she is taking to increase levels of staffing at HM Passport Office to help tackle the backlog of applications following the covid-19 outbreak.
Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)
His Majesty’s Passport Office has added 1200 additional staff since April 2021. The increase in staffing delivers against both the capacity plan for this year, and in preparation for 2023. These staff have helped to process passport applications in record numbers, and recruitment will continue to ensure that attrition is covered so that it remains fully resourced.