Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, whether he has held recent discussions with vehicle manufacturers on the adequacy of onboard security measures to prevent vehicle thefts.

Answered by Guy Opperman - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)

The Government is committed to reducing vehicle crime and new vehicles have a range of features fitted on a mandatory basis to deter theft of and from vehicles. In addition, the Criminal Justice Bill will create offences aimed at reducing vehicle crime.

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many reported vehicle thefts there were in (a) the London Borough of Hounslow and (b) London in the last four years.

Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)

The Home Office collects and publishes information on the number of vehicle theft offences reported to and recorded by the police in England and Wales, on a quarterly basis. These are available at the Police Force Area and the Community Safety Partnership Area levels, and can be accessed here: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/police-recorded-crime-open-data-tables

The Office for National Statistics’ Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) and its latest estimates shows that the number of incidences of theft of vehicles has fallen by 23% since the year ending March 2010, to 86,000 incidences. The sample size of the CSEW is not large enough to yield estimates at borough or local authority level.

The Government is committed to tackling vehicle crime. We are working closely with police and motor manufacturers through the National Vehicle Crime Working Group (NVCWG), chaired by ACC Jennifer Sims, the National Police Chiefs’ Council lead for vehicle crime, to take forward a programme of work to prevent and reduce theft of and from vehicles. This includes training police officers on methods used to steal vehicles, encouraging vehicle owners to secure their vehicles and working with industry to prevent theft. Through the NVCWG a network of vehicle crime specialists has been established, involving every police force in England and Wales, to ensure better sharing of information and intelligence.

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment she has made of the trend in the number of car thefts in (a) the London Borough of Hounslow and (b) outer London boroughs.

Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)

The Government is committed to tackling vehicle crime and catalytic converter theft.

We are working closely with police and motor manufacturers through the National Vehicle Crime Working Group (NVCWG), chaired by ACC Jennifer Sims, the National Police Chiefs’ Council lead for vehicle crime, to take forward a programme of work to prevent and reduce theft of and from vehicles. This includes training police officers on methods used to steal vehicles, encouraging vehicle owners to secure their vehicles and working with industry to prevent theft. Through the NVWG a network of vehicle crime specialists has been established, involving every police force in England and Wales, to ensure better sharing of information and intelligence.

The Metropolitan Police Service is represented on the Working Group and the Home Office regularly engages with the NCA on crime related to criminal gangs.

The most recent meeting of the NVCWG took place on 4^th May 2023.

The Government is also working closely with the National Infrastructure Crime Reduction Partnership (NICRP) to tackle theft of catalytic converters. The Home Office provided funding in 2021 to set-up the NICRP, the work of which ensures national co-ordination of policing and law enforcement partners to tackle metal theft, providing training, sharing intelligence to target offenders, and implementing crime prevention measures.

Crime Survey data on vehicle theft since 2010 being down 42%. The Home Office collects and publishes information on the number of car thefts recorded by the police in England and Wales, including data by London Boroughs.

Police recorded crime and outcomes open data tables - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

Table 1 Volume of Police recorded offences for ‘Theft of a motor vehicle’, Outer London Boroughs

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps her Department is taking to reduce the number of car thefts in London; and if she will make a statement.

Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)

The Government is committed to tackling vehicle crime and catalytic converter theft.

We are working closely with police and motor manufacturers through the National Vehicle Crime Working Group (NVCWG), chaired by ACC Jennifer Sims, the National Police Chiefs’ Council lead for vehicle crime, to take forward a programme of work to prevent and reduce theft of and from vehicles. This includes training police officers on methods used to steal vehicles, encouraging vehicle owners to secure their vehicles and working with industry to prevent theft. Through the NVWG a network of vehicle crime specialists has been established, involving every police force in England and Wales, to ensure better sharing of information and intelligence.

The Metropolitan Police Service is represented on the Working Group and the Home Office regularly engages with the NCA on crime related to criminal gangs.

The most recent meeting of the NVCWG took place on 4^th May 2023.

The Government is also working closely with the National Infrastructure Crime Reduction Partnership (NICRP) to tackle theft of catalytic converters. The Home Office provided funding in 2021 to set-up the NICRP, the work of which ensures national co-ordination of policing and law enforcement partners to tackle metal theft, providing training, sharing intelligence to target offenders, and implementing crime prevention measures.

Crime Survey data on vehicle theft since 2010 being down 42%. The Home Office collects and publishes information on the number of car thefts recorded by the police in England and Wales, including data by London Boroughs.

Police recorded crime and outcomes open data tables - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

Table 1 Volume of Police recorded offences for ‘Theft of a motor vehicle’, Outer London Boroughs

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what discussions her Department has had with officials at the National Crime Agency on the theft of cars by criminal gangs.

Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)

The Government is committed to tackling vehicle crime and catalytic converter theft.

We are working closely with police and motor manufacturers through the National Vehicle Crime Working Group (NVCWG), chaired by ACC Jennifer Sims, the National Police Chiefs’ Council lead for vehicle crime, to take forward a programme of work to prevent and reduce theft of and from vehicles. This includes training police officers on methods used to steal vehicles, encouraging vehicle owners to secure their vehicles and working with industry to prevent theft. Through the NVWG a network of vehicle crime specialists has been established, involving every police force in England and Wales, to ensure better sharing of information and intelligence.

The Metropolitan Police Service is represented on the Working Group and the Home Office regularly engages with the NCA on crime related to criminal gangs.

The most recent meeting of the NVCWG took place on 4^th May 2023.

The Government is also working closely with the National Infrastructure Crime Reduction Partnership (NICRP) to tackle theft of catalytic converters. The Home Office provided funding in 2021 to set-up the NICRP, the work of which ensures national co-ordination of policing and law enforcement partners to tackle metal theft, providing training, sharing intelligence to target offenders, and implementing crime prevention measures.

Crime Survey data on vehicle theft since 2010 being down 42%. The Home Office collects and publishes information on the number of car thefts recorded by the police in England and Wales, including data by London Boroughs.

Police recorded crime and outcomes open data tables - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

Table 1 Volume of Police recorded offences for ‘Theft of a motor vehicle’, Outer London Boroughs

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she is taking to tackle (a) the theft of motor vehicles and (b) the use of signal blockers in those crimes.

Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)

The Government is committed to tackling vehicle crime.

We are working closely with police and motor manufacturers through the National Vehicle Crime Working Group, chaired by ACC Jennifer Sims, the National Police Chiefs’ Council lead for vehicle crime, to take forward a programme of work to prevent and reduce vehicle crime nationally. This includes training police officers on methods used to steal vehicles, encouraging vehicle owners to secure their vehicles and working with industry to prevent theft.

A network of vehicle crime leads has been established in every police force in England and Wales, ensuring forces share information about emerging trends in vehicle crime and are better able to tackle regional issues.

A vehicle crime intelligence group has been set up to monitor emerging trends in vehicle crime, such as the use of signal blockers, and provide a link between the Home Office, police, vehicle manufacturers and Thatcham Research, the automotive insurer’s research centre.

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what estimate her Department has made of the number of vehicles stolen in (a) Enfield North constituency, (b) London and (c) England in each of the past 12 years.

Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)

The number of ‘theft of a motor vehicle’ offences recorded by the territorial police forces in London and in England in each year is presented in the table below. Data at the constituency level are not published by the Home Office.

The number of ‘theft or unauthorised taking of motor vehicle’ and ‘Aggravated vehicle taking’ offences recorded by police forces:

Source: Home Office police recorded crime open data tables

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she is taking to help tackle the theft of keyless vehicles.

Answered by Kit Malthouse

We are continuing to work closely with police and motor manufacturers through the National Vehicle Crime Working Group to tackle vehicle-related thefts. This includes taking forward discussions with manufacturers about how to further build intelligence to prevent thefts of vehicles using electronic compromise.

The National Vehicle Crime Working Group has established a horizon-scanning group to identify potential future trends, threats and vulnerability in vehicle security and vehicle-related crime. Through this group we engage closely with academics, vehicle manufacturers and policing leads to undertake research and implement actions to mitigate future opportunities to criminally exploit technological and design changes in the automotive industry.

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many convictions have been recorded for motor vehicle theft in each year since 2015.

Answered by James Cartlidge - Minister of State (Ministry of Defence)

The Ministry of Justice has published information on convictions for motor vehicle theft offences in England and Wales for the last 10 calendar years, available in the ‘Outcomes by Offence’ data tool, which can be found here:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/987715/outcomes-by-offence-2020.xlsx

Select the following in the ‘offence’ filter:

• 130 Theft of a motor vehicle – summary (MOT)
• 48 Theft of a motor vehicle (excl. aggravated vehicle taking) – triable either way (MOT)

The number of convictions will be found on row 24.

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps recent steps she has taken to work with manufacturers to reduce car thefts using exploits in keyless technology.

Answered by Kit Malthouse

The Home Office doesn’t hold data on the number of car thefts related to exploits in keyless technology.

The Office for National Statistics’ (ONS) Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) collects data on car theft incidents and method of entry, which has, since April 2018, included the method of ‘Offender manipulated signal from remote locking device’. Comparable data prior April 2018 are not available. Due to lower levels of responses to these CSEW questions, it is not possible to break the data down by region or city.

The most recently available data is available at Table_3 below:

Nature of crime: vehicle-related theft - Office for National Statistics (ons.gov.uk)

The Government is tackling vehicle crime as a priority. We continue to work closely with police and motor manufacturers through the National Vehicle Crime Working Group, established by the National Police Chiefs’ Council lead for vehicle crime and overseen by the Government’s Crime and Justice Taskforce. This includes consideration of how we can reduce the number of vehicles being stolen.

Found: vehicle Shoplifting • Theft by shoplifting Other theft • Theft not elsewhere classified (excl motor

Found: Shoplifting • Theft by s hoplifting Other theft Includes : • Theft not elsewhere classified (excl motor

Found: motor vehicle Shoplifting Theft by shoplifting Other theft Theft not elsewhere classified (excl motor