Asked by: Andrew Rosindell (Conservative - Romford)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she has taken to help reduce violations of the Firearms Act 1968.
Answered by Sarah Jones - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Government’s priority is public safety, and we look to ensure our controls on firearms are as strong as possible and keep the legislation under active consideration. It is imperative that we do everything we can to stop firearms getting into hands of criminals and those who would misuse them with devastating consequences.
The Firearms Act 1968 provides the framework for action to be taken by police forces, and we have seen the number of firearms offences fall to 5,053 from 5,991 over the past 12 months - for the year ending June 2025. We work in partnership with the National Police Chiefs Council, police forces and the National Crime Agency to respond to emerging firearms risks, and for example, we have recently taken action against some types of blank firing firearms which have found to be readily convertible into lethal weapons so they can be removed from circulation.
We are also ensuring licensing of firearms, as set out in the Firearms Act 1968, is as effective and robust as possible. Recent measures to support this include the revised Statutory Guidance to Chief Officers issued in August this year, the rollout of new national training to firearms licensing police personnel, and the increase in licensing fees to support full cost recovery.
Asked by: Andrew Rosindell (Conservative - Romford)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if she has considered the merits of making it mandatory for DBS checks to be (a) single use and (b) job specific.
Answered by Jess Phillips - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
The Home Office does not place requirements on how DBS checks are used. It is for individual sectors to decide what, if anything, they want to mandate for their sectors
Asked by: Andrew Rosindell (Conservative - Romford)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she has taken to tackle illegal firearm possession.
Answered by Sarah Jones - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Government works closely with the police and the National Crime Agency (NCA) to ensure that we have the right laws, intelligence, detection and enforcement capabilities to tackle the threat posed by the unlawful possession and use of firearms. While incidents of gun crime, including where illegally held guns are involved, are relatively rare in this country, we recognise the significant and long-lasting impact of such incidents on victims and local communities when they do occur.
Our work with the police and the NCA includes recent and ongoing multi-agency action to target the importation and supply of imitation firearms that can be readily converted by criminals to fire live ammunition, which has seen significant numbers of these guns removed from circulation, helping to ensure the safety of our communities.
We have also included measures in the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill, currently before Parliament, to make it an offence to possess or supply templates for the 3D printing of firearms. This is part of a broader multi-agency response to the threat posed by the illegal possession of firearms manufactured unlawfully in part, or fully, using 3D printing technology.
There are significant penalties for those convicted of the unlawful possession of firearms, including the maximum penalty of life imprisonment for possession of a firearm with intent to endanger life or injure property.
Asked by: Andrew Rosindell (Conservative - Romford)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment the Government has made of the potential risk of hybrid threats, including migration pressures, at the EU–Belarus border and their potential impact on UK security.
Answered by Dan Jarvis - Minister of State (Cabinet Office)
National security is the first priority of any government and a foundation of our Plan for Change. We take any malicious activity that might pose a significant threat to our security and public safety extremely seriously and are committed to strengthening our defences against state threats. This includes continuing to implement measures contained in the National Security Act 2023, which make the UK a harder target for those states which seek to conduct hostile acts.
The Home Office and its partner agencies continue to work closely with their international counterparts, including those working at the EU external border, to understand the drivers behind migration patterns, assess risks, and develop our responses accordingly.
Asked by: Andrew Rosindell (Conservative - Romford)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she has taken to work with relevant authorities to tackle the illegal sale of cigarettes in (a) England and (b) the parliamentary constituency of Romford.
Answered by Sarah Jones - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Government is committed to reducing the number of illicit tobacco and vaping products on sale nationally.
In January 2024, HMRC and Border Force published their latest illicit tobacco strategy, ‘Stubbing Out the Problem’. This sets out the Governments’ continued commitment to restrict the trade in illicit tobacco with a focus on reducing demand, and to tackle and disrupt organised crime groups. This strategy is supported by £100 million of new smokefree funding allocated over 5 years to boost existing HMRC and Border Force enforcement capability.
HMRC are also working closely with both Trading Standards and Border Force to develop a robust compliance approach for the introduction of Vaping Products Duty (VPD) on 1 October 2026.
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 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 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, 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, 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.