Oral Answers to Questions

Kevin Brennan Excerpts

Monday 25th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[James Brokenshire]

My hon. Friend raises an important point about awareness and ensuring that we equip the public and business with the best advice and guidance on how to protect themselves from the threat from online criminals, which we do through Get Safe Online. We are focused equally on small businesses, however, which is the point he makes directly, and this spring the Government are looking to update the advice and guidance to business, focusing on those small businesses.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

Cybercrime is not just about fraud; it is also about online bullying, which can devastate people’s lives and constitute a criminal offence. How confident is the Minister that local police forces have the expertise and the resources to deal with complaints about such crime?

[James Brokenshire]

The hon. Gentleman makes a fair point about the expertise within police forces. We are establishing the national cybercrime unit, not simply to deal with the most sophisticated, high-end internet crimes, but to be a centre of expertise and to make that expertise available to police forces up and down the country. That will put in place a more end-to-end approach in dealing with these forms of criminality, which cause so much harm.