Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what the budget has been for the Ending Gang Violence and Exploitation Peer Review Network for each of the last eight years.

The Ending Gang and Youth Violence programme, of which the peer review network was a part of, was introduced in 2012.

By year, the EGYV programme budget was:

• 2012/13 £734,000

• 2013/14 £700,000

• 2014/15 £500,000

• 2015/16 £425,000

The EGYV programme budget included funding to pay peer reviewers’ fees and expenses when they undertook work on peer reviews in local areas.

We have now completed the stage of work aimed at building local resilience and also have a much better understanding of the problem. Ending gang violence and exploitation remains a priority for the Government and on 13 January 2016 we published a paper setting out our new Ending Gang Violence and Exploitation (EGVE) approach. We are now mainstreaming what we have achieved with local authorities and other partners, and are working in partnership on the new EGVE priorities to reduce violence and gang related exploitation.