Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment she has made of the prevalence of cryptocurrency use in illicit finance; and what steps she is taking to reduce this activity.

Directed by the Economic Crime Plan 2 (and supported by an Economic Crime Levy funding) UK law enforcement is investing in improving both its capacity and capability to investigate the criminal use of cryptoassets. This includes:

• Investing in specialist capability in the NCA and partner agencies, including the recruitment of an additional 475 Financial Crime investigators (292 currently in post) and developing an improved crypto track and trace capability which will go live in December 2025.
• Funding public-private crypto collaboration teams in police forces and ROCUs through the Asset Recovery Incentivisation Scheme
• New training and upskilling that has been rolled out to improve law enforcement officers’ understanding of cryptoassets, supported by the provision of specialist tooling (i.e. blockchain analytics tools).
• Building a new crypto-specific public/ private partnership within the existing Joint Money Laundering Taskforce structure in order to understand the threat and foment various joint initiatives (including around data sharing).
• Developing a multi-agency operational crypto cell to ensure that knowledge and abilities in investigating cryptoassets are pooled together, and that all available tools and powers and are exploited efficiently.
• Designing a system-wide strategy, with an accompanying roadmap of activities required to prevent and disrupt digital asset-enabled crime impacting the UK. The focus is on ensuring system co-ordination and collaboration, keeping the public / consumers safe, effectively disrupting criminals through robust enforcement and building global co-operation to effectively share information and gain a consistency in regulatory standards.