Steve Reed
Main Page: Steve Reed (Labour (Co-op) - Streatham and Croydon North)Department Debates - View all Steve Reed's debates with the Home Office
(9 years, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lynne Featherstone
Given that this Government have actually banned and outlawed 500 legal highs, I do not think it is accurate to say that we have taken no action. We obviously want to move to a general ban on legal highs—lethal highs, as I call them—and that is on the shelf, ready for the new Government.
Mr Steve Reed (Croydon North) (Lab)
There is a glaring difference between the Government’s complacency and the City of London police commissioner’s view that online crime is growing exponentially. Does the Minister agree with the Office for National Statistics that if all bank and credit card fraud were included, the statistics would show that overall crime was up by 50%?
Lynne Featherstone
I am having a lot of disagreements with the Labour party today. The ONS is working to incorporate measures of cybercrime in the main crime survey. It looked at this issue specifically and said, when it published the latest crime figures, that it had found that although there may have been some movement by criminals into fraud and cybercrime, it certainly had not been enough to offset the substantial falls in traditional crimes, such as burglary and vehicle theft, over the past 20 years. Action Fraud’s reporting is up. That is a specialist reporting agency. We are acting on fraud.