Question to the Home Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the remarks by Lord Hanson of Flint on 4 March (HL Deb col 1399), what aspects of Operation Reckoning are focused on disrupting or removing the organised crime business model for stole mobile phone devices.

Operation Reckoning is delivering a surged enforcement response aimed at tackling all layers of criminal activity associated with the model of phone theft in London, including street level offenders, middle market handlers and those responsible for the export of stolen devices. It is delivering significant results: in the 12 months to February, mobile phone theft in the capital fell by 12.3% on the previous year.

We welcome this significant progress, but too many people are still being subjected to the considerable distress and disruption caused by these criminals and we are determined to bring these numbers down further.

To break the business model that drives mobile phone theft, we need to reduce the value of a stolen device. The Metropolitan Police are leading work with technology partners to look at the quickest and most effective ways of achieving this outcome and we are working in close support of this collaboration.