Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment she has made of trends in the level of gang-related crime in (a) Coventry, (b) the West Midlands and (c) England in (i) each of the last five years and (ii) during the covid-19 outbreak.

Crimes that are gang-related cannot be separately identified from the statistics that are held centrally but research evidence has identified the role that gangs play in serious violence and county-lines drug crime.

The Government is committed to tackling gang-related crime and the Home Office invested £119 million in 2020-21, including £20 million to tackle county lines drug dealing; £35m funding for Violence Reduction Units (VRUs); and £41.5m on extra police resources in the areas most affected by serious violence.