Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, whether his Department has taken steps to support victims of intellectual property theft.

We recognise the importance of victims having access to the support they may need to cope and recover from the impact of crime. The Ministry of Justice (MOJ) provides Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs) with grant funding to commission victim support services for victims of all crime types. The Government is quadrupling funding for these services by 2024/25, up from £41 million in 2009/10. This includes a range of services commissioned locally for all victims of crime, including victims of fraud, based on assessments of need. PCCs are best placed to understand their local communities and providers, and to commission appropriate support to meet that need.

This is in addition to the support provided by the Action Fraud National Economic Crime Victim Care Unit (NECVCU), which is a focussed and targeted service providing victims of fraud and cyber-crime, with not only a consistent and high-quality response, but also a national standard of care and support. NECVCU is supporting all 43 forces in England and Wales at Level 1 (non-vulnerable victim care) and 38 forces at the enhanced Level 2 service. Since its inception in 2018, NECVCU has supported 403,432 (vulnerable or non-vulnerable) victims of fraud and prevented £2,882,616 being lost to fraud.

The Government is also taking steps to reduce intellectual property infringement and support the enforcement of intellectual property rights through the Intellectual Property Office (IPO). In February 2022, the IPO published its 5-year Intellectual Property Counter Infringement Strategy, which focuses on getting the right structures and processes needed to work together more effectively at home and internationally, to better understand the full threat and impact of intellectual property crime and infringement.