Jack Dromey
Main Page: Jack Dromey (Labour - Birmingham, Erdington)Department Debates - View all Jack Dromey's debates with the Home Office
(8 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Hayes
What is critical in tackling cybercrime is the partnership between the private and public sectors, which is why the Home Secretary launched a joint taskforce to look at how allies, comrades, friends and others can work together to tackle this issue. It is also important to emphasise that GCHQ states that 80% of such crimes can be prevented by the straightforward good practice that I identified earlier, which is precisely why I take the matter so seriously and why public information is at the heart of what we do.
Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)
For five years, the Government’s alibi has been, “We cut police, but we cut crime.” The Police Minister has told Sky that citizens are more likely to have a crime perpetrated against them online on their computers while they are asleep than in the street. With cybercrime statistics set nearly to double the national crime rate, will the Minister finally admit that, far from the alibi of the past five years being the case, crime is not falling? Crime is changing and the truth is that crime is rising.
Mr Hayes
It is always unfortunate when a shadow Minister prepares a question in advance and does not listen to what has been said immediately beforehand. I said in my first answer that crime is changing. It is falling, but it is also changing and because it is changing we need the additional skills, resources and approaches that I described to the hon. Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin).
Given that the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey) made a bit of a hash of his question, I want to help him as much as I can: I refer him to the two sets of guidance that we have just published, which I will happily furnish him with following questions.