Asked by: Andrew Rosindell (Conservative - Romford)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many instances of violent crime have been committed by (a) foreign-born and (b) British-born perpetrators in every year since 2010.
Answered by Sarah Jones - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Home Office collects information on the number of notifiable offences recorded by the police in England and Wales, including violence and fraud.
However, this does not include information on the birthplace of offenders since this is not pertinent to the initial investigation of such crimes and is unlikely to be known by the victim reporting that crime.
Asked by: Andrew Rosindell (Conservative - Romford)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many instances of fraud have been committed by (a) foreign-born and (b) British-born perpetrators in every year since 2010.
Answered by Sarah Jones - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Home Office collects information on the number of notifiable offences recorded by the police in England and Wales, including violence and fraud.
However, this does not include information on the birthplace of offenders since this is not pertinent to the initial investigation of such crimes and is unlikely to be known by the victim reporting that crime.
Asked by: Andrew Rosindell (Conservative - Romford)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent steps she has taken to tackle the illegal (a) sale, (b) possession and (c) use of cocaine.
Answered by Sarah Jones - Minister of State (Home Office)
As part of our Plan for Change and mission to make our streets safer we will continue to work across health, policing and wider public services to drive down drug use and stop those who profit from its supply.
Cocaine is an extremely harmful drug which is controlled under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 as a Class A drug, with a penalty for possession of up to seven years in prison, an unlimited fine, or both. The maximum sentence for the supply of cocaine is life in prison, an unlimited fine, or both.
This year, we are investing more than £43m in the County Lines Programme to target exploitative drug dealing gangs, whilst breaking the organised crime groups behind this trade. Between July 2024 and June 2025, the Programme has resulted in more than 2,300 deal lines closed and 6,200 arrests, including the arrest and subsequent charge of over 1,100 deal line holders.
We are taking an end-to-end approach, including working with law enforcement partners upstream and at the UK border to tackle the gangs responsible for drug trafficking. UK Law Enforcement delivers a significant amount of operational activity overseas and at the UK border to detect and seize illicit drugs being sold and trafficked to the UK. In 2023/24 28.3 tonnes of powder cocaine was seized by police and Border Force in England and Wales. This was an increase from 18.6 tonnes the previous year and the largest recorded quantity of cocaine seized since the time series began in 1973.
We have also committed to driving down drug related harms through prevention and treatment, including by creating local drug partnerships with police forces and public health services.
We will also continue to draw on the advice of experts, including our independent advisers in the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD). The ACMD has committed to reviewing the drivers of powder cocaine use. In June my predecessor wrote to the Chair of the ACMD, noting that the Government wishes to receive actionable insights from this review as soon as possible.
Asked by: Andrew Rosindell (Conservative - Romford)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent steps she has taken to reduce instances of murder.
Answered by Sarah Jones - Minister of State (Home Office)
Halving knife crime remains a top priority for this Government. Since we have been in office knife homicides have fallen by 18% (to YE June 2025) and all knife crime down 5%. Knife assault has dropped by 6% and hospital admissions for assault with a sharp object among under 25s fell by 8%, and by 11% among over 25s.
Under this Government, nearly 60,000 knives have been removed from the streets of England and Wales through weapons surrender schemes, knives seized by Border Force and those recovered through County Lines Programme operations.
We have also introduced tougher knife control measures by banning zombie-style knives and machetes in September 2024 and ninja swords in August 2025. Ronan's Law tightens online knife sales with stricter age checks and penalties and we are introducing new powers to strengthen policing’s ability to seize, retain and destroy dangerous knives.
We know there is much more to do. Our approach to halving knife-crime is centred around smart enforcement, tough laws to remove dangerous weapons from our streets, and working to tackle the root causes of knife-crime through prevention through Violence Reduction Units and the new Young Futures Programme supporting those most at risk.
Asked by: Andrew Rosindell (Conservative - Romford)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent steps she has taken to work with relevant authorities to reduce instances of criminal child abuse.
Answered by Jess Phillips - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
Tackling child criminal exploitation is an important strand of our mission to halve knife crime by reducing the risk of children being drawn into criminality and violence.
Through the County Lines Programme, we are targeting exploitative drug dealing gangs to break the organised crime groups behind the trade. Between July 2024 and June 2025, law enforcement activity through the County Lines Programme taskforces has resulted in more than 2,300 deal lines closed, 6,200 arrests (including the arrest and subsequent charge of over 1,100 deal line holders), 3,200 safeguarding referrals Aof children and vulnerable people, and 600 knives seized.
In addition, we are introducing a new offence of criminal exploitation of children in the Crime and Policing Bill to go after the gangs who are luring young people into violence and crime. As part of this legislation, we are also delivering new civil preventative orders to disrupt and prevent child criminal exploitation from occurring or re-occurring.
We are also going further to confront the wider criminal exploitation of children and vulnerable adults by introducing a new offence of ‘cuckooing’ and an offence to tackle coerced internal concealment. These three new offences will all work to tackle the interconnected and exploitative practices often used by criminal gangs, especially in county lines.
Moreover, we are also working to ensure that multiagency safeguarding partners are able to identify and respond appropriately to cases and concerns of all forms of child exploitation and abuse. This includes funding the Prevention Programme, delivered by The Children’s Society, to respond to all forms of child exploitation.
Asked by: Andrew Rosindell (Conservative - Romford)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment she has made of the effectiveness of the National Police Chiefs Council guidance on releasing to the press the ethnicity and nationality of suspects for serious offences.
Answered by Sarah Jones - Minister of State (Home Office)
On Wednesday 5 November the College of Policing launched their public consultation of the Media and Communications Authorised Professional Practice (APP), formerly the Media Relations APP.This guidance advises police forces on the information that they provide to the media and the public, particularly with regards to high profile cases.
Earlier this year the College published interim guidance for police forces on the disclosure of suspects’ ethnicity and nationality in serious cases. This interim guidance is included in the new draft guidance for consultation. The public are invited to share their views on this updated guidance as part of this consultation.
Asked by: Andrew Rosindell (Conservative - Romford)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what (a) training and (b) support her Department provides to police to investigate (i) coercive control and (ii) other non-violent domestic offences.
Answered by Sarah Jones - Minister of State (Home Office)
In our manifesto, we committed to strengthening training on Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) for policing to ensure that all officers have the right skills to investigate all VAWG offences, including coercive or controlling behaviour (CCB) and other non-violent domestic offences.
The Home Office has already invested £13.1 million this year into the new National Centre for VAWG and Public Protection (NCVPP). This funding includes an uplift of nearly £2 million to deliver a robust package of training improvements across public protection, including on domestic abuse and CCB.
Through the NCVPP, we are working closely with the College of Policing to develop strengthened, specialist training for officers across all operational levels - frontline, specialist, and leadership. Grounded in academic research and behaviour change science, new training programmes will ensure that all officers are well equipped to investigate these crimes and provide support to victims.
CCB is also covered extensively in the Domestic Abuse Matters training for police which has now been delivered to over 80% of police forces in England and Wales. This specialist domestic abuse training was created by the College of Policing in partnership with domestic abuse charities, SafeLives, Welsh Women’s Aid and Women’s Aid.
Asked by: Andrew Rosindell (Conservative - Romford)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if she will implement safeguards to tackle crimes being reported online to open-source AI services.
Answered by Sarah Jones - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Government has already taken steps to tackle crimes linked to the misuse of artificial intelligence, including open-source models, through the illegal content duties in the Online Safety Act (2023) and criminal measures to target the creation of sexually explicit deepfake images in the Data (Use and Access) Act (2025).
The Home Department has also tabled an amendment to the Crime and Policing Bill to introduce a statutory defence for AI testers working to ensure that AI models do not create child sexual abuse material, non-consensual intimate imagery or extreme pornography when prompted. This defence will help the AI industry to test their models robustly and implement safeguards to ensure that their models cannot be used to create this appalling material.
Presently, there is no national online capability for online crime reporting to open-source AI models. Details of a crime submitted to an open-source AI model would not be submitted to the police. Members of the public who wish to report a crime online must access their local force website and submit details into an online form contained within. Some local forces use AI chatbots as an initial contact channel for the public, however, should details of a crime be submitted, the user will be directed to the local online crime reporting page.
Asked by: Andrew Rosindell (Conservative - Romford)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps her Department is taking to prevent people who overstay their visas from working illegally for companies within the UK.
Answered by Mike Tapp - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
Under UK legislation, access to work is reserved to those who are eligible and have lawful immigration status in the UK. All employers are required to undertake right to work checks on any prospective employee to confirm their legal status. Sanctions exist where these requirements are not complied with.
The Government is leading a UK-wide crackdown on illegal working as part of a whole system approach to tackle illegal migration and to ensure fairness, order and control within the immigration and asylum system. This includes measures in the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill to ensure companies which contract workers to provide services under their company name, such as agency workers or workers in the gig economy, check a person’s right to work, intensified Home Office Immigration Enforcement teams operational activity across the UK as well as the recently announced introduction of digital ID by the end of this Parliament.
Asked by: Andrew Rosindell (Conservative - Romford)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent steps she has taken to tackle the illegal (a) sale, (b) possession and (c) use of cannabis.
Answered by Sarah Jones - Minister of State (Home Office)
As part of our Plan for Change and mission to make our streets safer we will continue to work across health, policing and wider public services to drive down drug use and stop those who profit from its supply.
Cannabis is controlled as a Class B drug on the basis of clear medical and scientific evidence of its harms. The maximum penalty for possession of a Class B drug is up to 5 years in prison, an unlimited fine or both; and the maximum penalty for supply and production of a Class B drug is up to 14 years in prison, an unlimited fine or both.
This year, we are investing more than £43m in the County Lines Programme to target exploitative drug dealing gangs, whilst breaking the organised crime groups behind this trade. Between July 2024 and June 2025, the Programme has resulted in more than 2,300 deal lines closed and 6,200 arrests, including the arrest and subsequent charge of over 1,100 deal line holders.
We are taking an end-to-end approach, including working with law enforcement partners upstream and at the UK border to tackle the gangs responsible for drug trafficking. UK Law Enforcement delivers a significant amount of operational activity overseas and at the UK border to detect and seize illicit drugs being sold and trafficked to the UK. In 2023/24 police forces and Border Force seized the largest quantity of herbal cannabis since the time series began in 1973. This was a 53% increase from the previous year (55.59 to 85.01 tonnes).
We have also committed to driving down drug related harms through prevention and treatment, including by creating local drug partnerships with police forces and public health services.
We will continue to draw on the advice of experts, including our independent advisers in the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, and follow the evidence for what works in drug prevention and in building the resilience of people to avoid being drawn into drug use.