Asked by: Lewis Cocking (Conservative - Broxbourne)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, for what reasons will the renaming of civil injunctions as housing injunctions help housing associations tackle anti-social behaviour.
Answered by Diana Johnson - Minister of State (Home Office)
Tackling anti-social behaviour (ASB) is a top priority for this government and a key part of our Safer Streets Mission.
We will crack down on those making neighbourhoods feel unsafe and unwelcoming by bringing forward new Respect Orders, which will carry tough sanctions and penalties for persistent adult offenders. These were introduced as part of the Crime and Policing Bill on 25 February.
The Respect Order partially replaces the existing Civil Injunction power for the most persistent and serious adult ASB offenders, carrying with it a power of arrest and sentencing in the criminal courts for breach. It is a broad power for use in situations where behaviour had caused or is likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress.
Practitioners who use the Civil Injunction for housing-related ASB have told us the power works well for those purposes. The element of the Civil Injunction that pertains to housing related ASB will therefore be retained, and re-named the 'housing injunction' for clarity, to distinguish it from the Respect Order and the Youth Injunction. The legal test for this is behaviour causing, or capable of causing, housing-related nuisance or annoyance. If agencies consider that ASB committed in the context of neighbour disputes meets the legal test for a Respect Order (behaviour causing harassment, alarm or distress), they may determine a Respect Order is the most appropriate option instead.
Asked by: Lewis Cocking (Conservative - Broxbourne)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps her Department is taking to help tackle car theft in Broxbourne constituency.
Answered by Diana Johnson - Minister of State (Home Office)
This Government is determined to drive down vehicle crime and we are working with the automotive industry and police to ensure our response is as strong as it can be. I met the NPCC Vehicle Crime lead, ACC Jenny Sims, recently and discussed this matter.
We work closely with policing and industry, via the recently formed National Vehicle Crime Reduction Partnership and the National Vehicle Crime Working Group. Through the working group a network of vehicle crime specialists has been established, involving every police force in England and Wales, to ensure forces can share information about emerging trends in vehicle crime and better tackle regional issues.
We are also providing £250,000 funding this financial year to help support enforcement at ports to prevent stolen vehicles and vehicle parts being shipped abroad, including additional staff and specialist equipment.
PRC data shows there was a total of 375,048 vehicle related thefts in year ending September 2024. 188,517 of these offences were theft from a vehicle and 127,874 were theft of a motor vehicle. In the latest year, the CSEW estimates that vehicle related theft has remained relatively stable with a 1% increase against the previous year. The Home Office does not collect data at the parliamentary constituency level.
Asked by: Lewis Cocking (Conservative - Broxbourne)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps her Department is taking to tackle financial scams.
Answered by Dan Jarvis - Minister of State (Home Office)
We are committed to working with law enforcement, industry, civil society and international partners to tackle financial scams. This includes blocking fraud at its source, disrupting it before it reaches the public, and providing preventative advice and support such as our “Stop! Think Fraud” campaign.
Further industry action includes potential legislative action to ban “SIM farms”, technical devices that allow criminals to send scam texts to thousands of people at the same time, and the Online Safety Act codes of practice which will come into effect in March.
In due course we will publish an expanded Fraud Strategy as set out in our manifesto, which will cover the full range of threats that our society faces from this crime.
Asked by: Lewis Cocking (Conservative - Broxbourne)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what progress she has made on ending the use of hotels to accommodate asylum seekers.
Answered by Angela Eagle - Minister of State (Home Office)
This government inherited an asylum system under exceptional strain, with tens of thousands of people stuck in limbo without any prospect of having their claims processed. At their peak use under the previous government, in the autumn of 2023, more than 400 asylum hotels were being leased by the Home Office, at a cost of almost £9 million a day.
We took immediate action to resolve that chaos by restarting asylum processing, establishing the new Border Security Command to tackle the people-smuggling gangs, cracking down on illegal working across the country, and increasing the return and removal of people with no right to be here.
Inevitably, due to the size of the backlog we inherited, the Home Office has been forced to continue with the use of hotels for the time being. But this is not a permanent solution, and the small increase in the number in use at the end of last year was just a temporary but necessary step to manage pressures in the system, which is now in the process of being reversed.
It remains our absolute commitment to end the use of hotels over time, as part of our reduction in overall asylum accommodation costs. In the interim, we are also continuing to increase our operational activity against smuggling gangs and illegal working, and we have increased returns to their highest level since 2018, with 16,400 people removed in the first six months this government was in charge.