Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she is taking to tackle drug-related crime in Eastbourne.

To deliver on our pledge to halve knife crime in the next decade, it is crucial that we tackle the gangs that lure children and young people into crime and run county lines through violence and exploitation.

County Lines are the most violent model of drug supply and a harmful form of child criminal exploitation. Through the County Lines Programme, we will continue to target exploitative drug dealing gangs and break the organised crime groups behind the trade.

From July 2024 to March 2025, policing activity delivered through the County Lines Programme has resulted in more than 1,200 deal lines closed, 2,000 arrests (including the arrest and subsequent charge of over 800 deal line holders) and 2,100 safeguarding referrals of children and vulnerable people.

Through our County Lines Programme we are funding the National County Lines Co-ordination Centre (NCLCC), to monitor the intelligence picture and co-ordinate the national law enforcement response. We also have a dedicated fund to help local police forces, including Sussex Police, tackle the scourge of county lines.

In addition, as committed to in the Government’s manifesto, we are introducing a new offence of the criminal exploitation of children in the Crime and Policing Bill to go after the gangs who are luring young people into violence and crime. As part of this legislation, we are also delivering new civil preventative orders which will support the police and NCA to disrupt and prevent child criminal exploitation from occurring or re-occurring.

We are also going further in our response to wider criminal exploitation introducing a new offence of ‘cuckooing’ and have also introduced a new offence to tackle coerced internal concealment. These three new offences will all work to tackle the interconnected and exploitative practices often used by criminal gangs, especially in county lines.