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 UK children are currently missing with active investigations to locate their whereabouts.
Answered by Sarah Jones - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Home Office does not hold this data centrally.
Information about current missing persons incidents is held by individual police forces. The National Crime Agency’s UK Missing Persons Unit holds the national database for all missing incidents that are unresolved after 72hours, allowing the police to have access to missing persons information across force boundaries.
In addition, annual missing persons statistics, broken down to police force level,are published by the National Crime Agency’s Missing Person’s Unit in its annual data report which can be found here: Downloads - National Crime Agency
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 early detection of human trafficking.
Answered by Jess Phillips - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
The Government is committed to tackling modern slavery and human trafficking in all its forms and to giving survivors the support they need to recover. The National Referral Mechanism (NRM) is the UK’s framework for identifying and supporting potential victims of modern slavery.
In July 2025, the Home Office launched a public Call for Evidence on how the Government can improve the process of identifying victims of modern slavery, human trafficking and exploitation. The Home Office is now analysing the responses received and will be engaging with survivors to explore the emerging themes further.
The Home Office has also made a number of improvements to the NRM referral form following consultation with a range of experts. These changes aim to improve the quality of referrals, support more informed decision-making, and ensure the form better reflects the experiences of potential victims in a trauma-informed way.
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 tackle human trafficking.
Answered by Jess Phillips - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
The Government remains firmly committed to ensuring that all victims of modern slavery and human trafficking are effectively identified and supported to rebuild their lives, while taking action to bring those who exploit vulnerable people to justice.
In March 2025 the Modern Slavery Action Plan was shared, this sets out the first steps in our ambitious vision to tackle modern slavery across the whole system.
In July 2025, the Home Office launched a public Call for Evidence on how the Government can further improve the process of identifying victims of modern slavery, human trafficking and exploitation. This closed on 8 October 2025, and officials are analysing the responses received.
In addition, as set out in the Restoring Order and Control policy statement, published in November 2025 we are committed to bring forward new legislation on modern slavery to clarify our obligations and enable us to address potential misuse while maintaining essential protections.
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 people have been charged with non fatal strangulation in the last 6 months.
Answered by Sarah Jones - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Home Office collects information on the number of investigative outcomes for offences recorded by the police in England and Wales, including for the subcodes ‘008/78 Racially or religiously aggravated non-fatal strangulation or suffocation’ and ‘008/77 non-fatal strangulation or suffocation’.
In the six months to 30th June 2025, there were 3,621 charge/summons outcomes recorded by the police in England and Wales (excluding Humberside police, who were unable to provide data to the Home Office Data Hub for this period) for these non-fatal strangulation 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 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, 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, 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.