Asked by: Phil Brickell (Labour - Bolton West)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, if she will make a comparative assessment of the effectiveness of allocating £22.5 million under the Enrichment Expansion Programme (a) across up to 400 schools and (b) via a single national delivery partner.
Answered by Stephanie Peacock - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Culture, Media and Sport)
The Enrichment Expansion Programme (EEP) will invest £22.5 million across 3 years to support up to 400 schools to provide a youth-voice led, tailored enrichment offer.
Through the EEP, DCMS is providing £16.8m grant funding to a delivery partner to enhance the coordination of enrichment provision and to support secondary schools to improve their offer.
£2.8 million will be allocated separately to school grants to cover staff costs associated with improving their enrichment offer.
The funding requirement has been benchmarked against related enrichment programmes.
Asked by: Phil Brickell (Labour - Bolton West)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, if she will publish the modelling that informed the funding split for the Enrichment Expansion Programme.
Answered by Stephanie Peacock - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Culture, Media and Sport)
The Enrichment Expansion Programme (EEP) will invest £22.5 million across 3 years to support up to 400 schools to provide a youth-voice led, tailored enrichment offer.
Through the EEP, DCMS is providing £16.8m grant funding to a delivery partner to enhance the coordination of enrichment provision and to support secondary schools to improve their offer.
£2.8 million will be allocated separately to school grants to cover staff costs associated with improving their enrichment offer.
The funding requirement has been benchmarked against related enrichment programmes.
Asked by: Phil Brickell (Labour - Bolton West)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether her Department will respond to the recommendations in both part one and part two of the Independent Review of Disclosure and Fraud Offences by Jonathan Fisher KC.
Answered by Dan Jarvis - Minister of State (Cabinet Office)
The Government has received the Independent Review of Disclosure and Fraud Offence’s second report, Fraud in the Digital Age, and will publish it in due course.
The Government plans to respond to the Independent Review of Disclosure and Fraud Offence’s first Report, Disclosure in the Digital Age, by publishing a formal Government Response in due course.
Asked by: Phil Brickell (Labour - Bolton West)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether her Department is still committed to publishing part two of the Independent Review of Disclosure and Fraud Offences by Jonathan Fisher KC.
Answered by Dan Jarvis - Minister of State (Cabinet Office)
The Government has received the Independent Review of Disclosure and Fraud Offence’s second report, Fraud in the Digital Age, and will publish it in due course.
The Government plans to respond to the Independent Review of Disclosure and Fraud Offence’s first Report, Disclosure in the Digital Age, by publishing a formal Government Response in due course.
Asked by: Phil Brickell (Labour - Bolton West)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, what progress her Department has made with Cabinet colleagues on resetting the UK's relationship with the European Union.
Answered by Stephen Doughty - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
Our long‑term national interest requires a closer EU partnership, anchored in the Common Understanding and strengthened by new security and defence cooperation.
Our Security and Defence Partnership has delivered a step change in engagement, supporting Ukraine through coordinated sanctions, military assistance, training, and resilience.
While providing a long‑term framework for practical cooperation that protects our citizens and strengthens Europe’s collective defence.
This sits alongside wider progress, including Erasmus+ and negotiations on energy, youth experience, and food and drink.
Asked by: Phil Brickell (Labour - Bolton West)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what the (a) annual budget and (b) number of staff was for HMRC's Fraud Investigation Service in each of the last five years.
Answered by Dan Tomlinson - Exchequer Secretary (HM Treasury)
HMRC does not routinely publish annual budget or staffing figures for the Fraud Investigation Service.
Asked by: Phil Brickell (Labour - Bolton West)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment her Department has made of the potential merits of establishing a multi-year ringfenced Economic Crime Fighting Fund to help ensure that assets recovered from the proceeds of crime and from related fines are reinvested into law enforcement agencies.
Answered by Dan Jarvis - Minister of State (Cabinet Office)
The Government recognises the significant harm caused by economic crime and remains fully committed to ensuring that law enforcement agencies have the resources they need to tackle this threat effectively.
The Home Office already provides substantial and sustained funding for economic crime enforcement through existing mechanisms, including the Asset Recovery Incentivisation Scheme (ARIS) and the Economic Crime (Anti-Money Laundering) Levy. ARIS enables a proportion of recovered assets to be reinvested directly into frontline asset recovery work, while the Levy provides multi‑year funding to strengthen anti‑money laundering capabilities across the system. The Levy provides a sustainable source of funding to tackle economic crime, and was raised at Budget 2025 to provide an additional c.£110m annually.
In December 2025, the Government published its Anti‑Corruption Strategy, which sets out a whole of government approach to tackling corruption, illicit finance and kleptocracy. The Strategy includes a clear commitment to explore options for strengthening economic crime funding, recognising the importance of sustainable resourcing to deliver these objectives. The Government will publish the new Economic Crime Plan 2026–29 in Summer 2026, bringing together the Government’s economic crime strategies in a single strategic framework and setting out its approach to sustainable funding.
Asked by: Phil Brickell (Labour - Bolton West)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if she will provide a list of the companies her Department had contracts with between January 2025 - January 2026 to develop AI-powered tools that assist law enforcement in the recovery of the proceeds of crime.
Answered by Sarah Jones - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Home Office provides funding, guidance and national support to encourage the responsible adoption of AI across policing, but procurement is undertaken directly by forces to meet local operational needs. This reflects the fact that operational decisions, including commercial arrangements for policing tools, are a matter for operationally independent Chief Constables and law enforcement agencies rather than Ministers.
As a result, the Home Office does not hold a central record of individual contracts or suppliers used by police forces or the National Crime Agency, including where AI services have been procured to support asset recovery or other law enforcement activity.
The Police Reform White Paper, published in January, set out the UK Government’s commitment to strengthen transparency around police use of AI. Through the establishment of the National Centre for AI in Policing and an investment of £115 million over the next 3 years, the UK Government will support the identification, testing and responsible scaling of AI technologies. As part of this the AI Centre will publish and maintain a public facing registry of the AI tools being deployed by police forces, alongside information on the steps taken to test and evaluate those tools prior to operational use, helping to build and maintain public confidence in policing’s use of AI.
Asked by: Phil Brickell (Labour - Bolton West)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if she will provide a breakdown of the value of assets recovered through confiscation, forfeiture and civil recovery orders between April 2025 - October 2025.
Answered by Sarah Jones - Minister of State (Home Office)
The annual publication covering the assets recovered through different types of powers including confiscation, forfeiture and civil recovery orders for the financial year 2025/2026, including April 2025 - October 2025, has been pre-announced and will be released in September 2026.
The official statistical announcement can be found here: Asset recovery statistics: financial years ending 2020 to 2026 - Official statistics announcement - GOV.UK.
Asked by: Phil Brickell (Labour - Bolton West)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if she will publish a list of companies which provided AI services to Police Forces and the National Crime Agency between January 2025 - January 2026.
Answered by Sarah Jones - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Home Office provides funding, guidance and national support to encourage the responsible adoption of AI across policing, but procurement is undertaken directly by forces to meet local operational needs. This reflects the fact that operational decisions, including commercial arrangements for policing tools, are a matter for operationally independent Chief Constables and law enforcement agencies rather than Ministers.
As a result, the Home Office does not hold a central record of individual contracts or suppliers used by police forces or the National Crime Agency, including where AI services have been procured to support asset recovery or other law enforcement activity.
The Police Reform White Paper, published in January, set out the UK Government’s commitment to strengthen transparency around police use of AI. Through the establishment of the National Centre for AI in Policing and an investment of £115 million over the next 3 years, the UK Government will support the identification, testing and responsible scaling of AI technologies. As part of this the AI Centre will publish and maintain a public facing registry of the AI tools being deployed by police forces, alongside information on the steps taken to test and evaluate those tools prior to operational use, helping to build and maintain public confidence in policing’s use of AI.