Question to the Home Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the particular circumstances which make people vulnerable to exploitation through 'cuckooing', and of the needs of those victims for protection and support.

This Government is aware of the abhorrent practice of cuckooing which often occurs in the context of the county lines drugs supply model.

We are determined to crack down on county lines gangs and that is why, through the ten-year Drugs Strategy, we are investing up to £145m over three years in our successful County Lines Programme.

Since November 2019 the County Lines Programme has closed over 2,400 lines, made over 8,000 arrests, and engaged over 9,500 individuals through safeguarding interventions.

Whilst data on cuckooing is not held centrally, the latest week of intensification against county lines (conducted by the Home Office-funded National County Lines Co-ordination Centre (NCLCC) in March 2022), saw 799 cuckooed properties visited.

The Home Office is working with NCLCC to raise awareness of cuckooing through training and peer reviews as well as promoting best practice of how to tackle it through the use of civil orders and multi-agency partnership working and intelligence sharing.