Asked by: Jim Shannon (Democratic Unionist Party - Strangford)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether she has had recent discussions with the Secretary of State for Education on the forthcoming guidance to local authorities on statutory duties under Section 17 of the Children Act 1989; and what steps she is taking to ensure that safeguarding and the best interests of the child are explicitly embedded in that guidance.
Answered by Jess Phillips - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
This Government remains firmly committed to safeguarding children from a range of harms. This includes ensuring that statutory safeguarding partners, including the police, have the right resources, tools and training to identify and respond and work together effectively.
I have continued to discuss these important issues with cross-government Ministerial colleagues and will be writing a joint letter out to safeguarding partners on this important issue, alongside ensuring relevant guidance remains up to date.
The new Centre for VAWG and Public protection will also ensure that the response by police continues to be improved, including supporting best practice in working together to ensure a robust multiagency response in supporting children.
Asked by: Jim Shannon (Democratic Unionist Party - Strangford)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she is taking to improve night time safety in bars and clubs.
Answered by Sarah Jones - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Government works closely with local authorities and industry to ensure venues licensed to sell alcohol, such as bars and clubs, operate safely. Under the Licensing Act 2003, which applies to England and Wales, premises must promote the four statutory licensing objectives - public safety, the prevention of crime and disorder, the prevention of public nuisance and the protection of children from harm.
If a matter arises at a premises that undermines any of these objectives, the relevant licensing authority may review the licence and take appropriate action up to and including suspending or revoking the licence.
We also encourage licence holders to adopt recognised safeguarding initiatives which provide support for individuals who feel unsafe in the night-time economy.
Furthermore, from 1 December 2025 to 31 January 2026, we are running a Winter of Action to target night-time economy offences, retail crime and anti-social behaviour across England and Wales. Led by Police and Crime Commissioners and Deputy Mayors, local plans will be delivered in partnership with police forces and community safety organisations to address the issues that matter most in town centres.
Asked by: Jim Shannon (Democratic Unionist Party - Strangford)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many refusals there have been for firearms licenses in the last 12 months.
Answered by Sarah Jones - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Home Office publishes information annually on the number of firearm and shotgun certificate applications refused in England and Wales in the statistical publication on firearm and shotgun certificates. The latest available data is for the year ending 31 March 2025 and can be accessed at the following link:
https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/firearm-certificates-in-england-and-wales
The number of firearm and shotgun certificate applications that were refused in England and Wales for the year ending 31 March 2025, as well as previous years, can be found in data tables 1 and 3.
Asked by: Jim Shannon (Democratic Unionist Party - Strangford)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps are being taken to ensure police officers are trained to identify and help tackle instances of online abuse.
Answered by Sarah Jones - Minister of State (Home Office)
The College of Policing sets standards for police training and development, including the national policing curriculum and accreditations for those who work in high risk or specialist roles. It also works with police forces to support standards of ongoing training and development.
On 2 February 2025, we announced a step-change in approach to the way that policing responds to VAWG crimes, through a new National Policing Centre for VAWG and Public Protection. The new centre launched in April 2025, and we are investing £13.1 million pounds this financial year (25/26). This funding includes an uplift of nearly £2 million to enable policing to better target these crimes – including online VAWG - demonstrating the government’s steadfast commitment to halving violence against women and girls in a decade.
The new Centre provides coordinated, national leadership within policing to tackle VAWG and child sexual abuse. Centralising policing expertise to tackle these crimes will drive national coordination, with the development of strengthened specialist training for officers across the country ensuring they offer consistent protection for victims and relentlessly pursue of these vile crimes.
Under the Online Safety Act, platforms are required to take steps to remove content where it is illegal, including violent material, to protect users and our communities from online harms.
Ofcom have set out their expectations for platforms to adhere to: https://www.ofcom.org.uk/online-safety/illegal-and-harmful-content/open-letter-to-uk-online-service-providers/
The government funds an online hate crime reporting portal - True Vision - that was designed so that victims of all types of hate crime do not have to visit a police station to report.
The government also funds the National Online Hate Crime Hub which supports individual local police forces in dealing specifically with online hate crime – the Hub provides expert advice to police forces to support them in investigating these abhorrent offences.
Asked by: Jim Shannon (Democratic Unionist Party - Strangford)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps her Department has taken to help reduce instances of matricide.
Answered by Jess Phillips - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
The scale of violence against women and girls (VAWG) is intolerable, and this Government has set out a mission to halve these crimes over the next decade.The Home Office is working to develop the evidence base on domestic abuse related deaths by funding the Domestic Homicide Project, which captures information all domestic abuse related deaths, including matricides, from all 43 police forces in England and Wales. The objective of this project is to improve our understanding of these cases and identify how the response to them can be improved. Further information about this research can be found at the following link: https://www.vkpp.org.uk/vkpp-work/domestic-homicide-project/. In addition, Domestic Homicide Reviews (DHRs) offer a vital opportunity fornational and local agencies, local communities and society as a whole to learn lessons from domestic abuse related deaths, including cases of matricide. We are currently reforming the DHR process to ensure learning is effectively identified and implemented to improve systems and ultimately, prevent future deaths.
Asked by: Jim Shannon (Democratic Unionist Party - Strangford)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she is taking to increase the number of prosecutions for people arrested for upskirting.
Answered by Jess Phillips - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
We recognise the devastating impact of non-contact sexual offences, such as upskirting, have on victims and are committed to ensuring more perpetrators are bought to justice.
The Home Office has supported the development of new training for police on these crimes which was made available to all police forces in February. The training will help ensure officers use the principles from Operation Soteria when responding to or investigating these offences and understand how to identify risk factors to safeguard victims and disrupt offending.
Asked by: Jim Shannon (Democratic Unionist Party - Strangford)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps are being taken to ensure reports of domestic abuse are taken seriously and not missed by the system.
Answered by Jess Phillips - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
We expect police to take all reports of domestic abuse seriously, taking necessary steps to protect victims. Missed opportunities are costing lives and far too many have already been lost.
At present, we know many domestic abuse victims do not receive an adequate response when they phone the police. The government will not stand by while women are failed by systems charged with keeping them safe. That's why earlier this year we launched 'Raneem's Law' in the first five police forces. Under 'Raneem's Law', domestic abuse specialists are embedded in 999 control rooms to improve the police response to reports of domestic abuse. The specialists use their expertise to advise on risk assessments, review 999 calls and support officers responding to domestic abuse incidents.
Through an expert-led and cohesive police response, ‘Raneem’s Law’ helps ensure that when a victim has the courage to come forward it will be treated with the seriousness and urgency it deserves.
We are also committed to ensuring policing have the right skills and training to respond appropriately to reports of domestic abuse, and are working closely with the new National Centre for Violence Against Women and Girls and Public Protection to deliver this.
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.
Grounded in academic research and behaviour change science, new training programmes will prioritise trauma-informed learning to ensure that all officers are well equipped to investigate these crimes and provide support to victims.
The scale of violence against women and girls in our country is intolerable and this Government is treating it as the national emergency that it is. These steps are just some of many that we are taking towards tangible and impactful change.
Asked by: Jim Shannon (Democratic Unionist Party - Strangford)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she is taking to help reduce business crime.
Answered by Sarah Jones - Minister of State (Home Office)
We encourage retailers to join their local Business Crime Reduction Partnership (BCRP) or Business Improvement District (BID) to support local community efforts to reduce crimes, including business crime.
We are providing over £7 million over the next three years to support the police and retailers tackle retail crime, £2 million of which has been specifically allocated to the police-led National Business Crime Centre (NBCC). NBCC provide a valuable resource for both police and businesses to learn, share and support each other to prevent and combat crime. This funding will help tackle the crimes most affecting businesses today.
We also supported the recent Safer Business Action week (SaBA) organised by the NBCC. SaBA weeks are a joint initiative by police, business, private security, Business Crime Reduction Partnerships and Business Improvement Districts, who work in together and focus resources into a designated location, creating a significant impact to reduce crime.
The Neighbourhood Policing Guarantee will also ensure that every community in England and Wales will have named and contactable officers dealing with local issues, and that neighbourhood teams spend the majority of their time in their communities providing visible patrols and engaging with local communities and businesses. This will be supported by the delivery of up to an additional 3000 officers into neighbourhood teams by Spring next year, as part of our ambition to deliver 13,000 neighbourhood officers into police forces across England and Wales by the end of this parliament.
Additionally, the Home Secretary recently announced a “Winter of Action”, building on the success of our Safer Streets Summer campaign to tackle town centre crime including shop theft and anti-social behaviour.
Asked by: Jim Shannon (Democratic Unionist Party - Strangford)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment she has made of trends in the level of waiting times for firearms licensing.
Answered by Sarah Jones - Minister of State (Home Office)
The issuing of firearms certificates, resourcing of firearms licensing teams and the efficiency of police forces is a matter for individual Chief Officers of Police and Police and Crime Commissioners. In the interests of consistency and transparency, the National Policing Chiefs Council Lead for Firearms Licensing has published performance data for firearms licensing teams in all forces. This includes performance against a target for forces to complete applications for the grant or renewal of firearm and shotgun certificates within four months, unless there are concerns about the suitability of the applicant.
Working with the National Policing Chiefs Council Lead for Firearms Licensing, we continue to review the licensing performance of all forces and we will continue to engage with individual Chief Officers and Police and Crime Commissioners where there are specific concerns about any forces’ performance.
Asked by: Jim Shannon (Democratic Unionist Party - Strangford)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps her Department is taking to help tackle underage drug use.
Answered by Sarah Jones - Minister of State (Home Office)
This Government is committed to protecting young people from the harms of drug use through a range of universal and targeted prevention activity and are using the recent report from the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) ‘A Whole-System Response to Drug Prevention in the UK’ to inform our approach.
The Home Office is also working with The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) to deliver an Innovation Fund to Reduce Demand for Illicit Substances to help us build our longer term understanding of how to prevent and reduce drug use, prevent associated harms and facilitate behaviour change.
Ketamine use in young people is increasing, so we have commissioned the ACMD to update their harms assessment on the drug, and DHSC have launched a media campaign to raise awareness of the risks posed by new drug trends and products. The campaign focusses on the adulteration of counterfeit medicines with other drugs like synthetic opioids, ketamine harms and adulteration of ‘THC vapes’.