Asked by: Tracey Crouch (Conservative - Chatham and Aylesford)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many 16 to 25 year olds have been arrested for rough sleeping under the Vagrancy Act.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
The government does not collect figures on police usage of the Vagrancy Act where this does not result in prosecution. Policing is operationally independent of the Home Office, and we cannot comment on operational decisions.
Asked by: Tracey Crouch (Conservative - Chatham and Aylesford)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment he has made of the adequacy of regulations on the use of snares.
Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
An industry-owned code of practice for the use of snares to control foxes in England sets out clear principles for the legal use of snares, using evidence from snare-use research to improve snare deployment and design.
Anyone using snares has a responsibility under the Animal Welfare Act 2006 to ensure their activities do not harm protected species or cause any unnecessary suffering. Anyone committing an offence can face prosecution, an unlimited fine or even a custodial sentence.
We are looking at how snares are regulated as part of our continued drive to maintain the highest animal welfare standards in the world, and working to ensure the regulated use of the most appropriate trap and cull method which causes the least suffering whilst providing the greatest protection to crops, game birds or endangered species.
Asked by: Tracey Crouch (Conservative - Chatham and Aylesford)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, what funding his Department has allocated to tackle youth homelessness in each of the last five years.
Answered by Felicity Buchan - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities)
The Government is committed to tackling all forms of homelessness and rough sleeping, including youth homelessness.
Between 2018 and 2025, Government has provided £938 million through the Rough Sleeping Initiative, to support local authorities to tackle rough sleeping. We expect councils to commission services based on an assessment of the needs of their local community to make sure that all groups’ needs are considered, which will include young people. During this period, we have also committed £17.4 million to support local authorities to prevent homelessness and rough sleeping for care leavers.
Since 2021, we have invested £1.6 billion through the Homelessness Prevention Grant, giving councils the funding they need to prevent homelessness and help more people sooner, including young homeless people.
In 2022, we announced the £200 million Single Homelessness Accommodation Programme (SHAP) which is delivering over 2,000 homes and support services for people sleeping rough or at risk of sleeping rough, including young people. Of these, over 650 are specifically for young people sleeping rough or at risk of sleeping rough.
Asked by: Tracey Crouch (Conservative - Chatham and Aylesford)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether he has made an assessment of the potential impact of the further authorisation of the emergency use of neonicotinoids on global pesticide reduction targets.
Answered by Mark Spencer - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The decision to authorise the short-term emergency use of a pesticide is never taken lightly and is based on robust assessment of the risks and benefits. The emergency authorisation we have issued this year for the use of a neonicotinoid on sugar beet is subject to strict conditions to mitigate risks to the wider environment.
We remain absolutely committed to the targets agreed in the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. UK diplomatic leadership was critical to agreeing the framework and we will continue to champion the framework’s implementation.
We welcome the text in target 7, as Integrated Pest Management (IPM) lies at the heart of the UK's approach to minimise the environmental impact of pesticides.
In addition, the Government recently held a roundtable with members of the British sugar industry and environmental organisations to discuss the industry’s progress on implementing alternative pest control measures to neonicotinoids. I urge British Sugar and others in the sector to drive forward these plans, so that their outputs can be implemented in the field at pace.
Asked by: Tracey Crouch (Conservative - Chatham and Aylesford)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, how many electric vehicle charge-points have been installed as part of the Local Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Fund as of 5 February 2024.
Answered by Anthony Browne - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
The Local Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Pilot, launched in August 2022, and expanded further in February 2023, has provided funding to deliver 3,400 chargepoints and 1,000 gullies.
The full fund was launched in March 2023 and we announced five successful applications on February 5, 2024. Further successful applications will be announced in coming months.
Asked by: Tracey Crouch (Conservative - Chatham and Aylesford)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, how many electric vehicle charge-points have been installed as part of the Electric Vehicle Chargepoint Grant as of 5 February 2024.
Answered by Anthony Browne - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
The Electric Vehicle Chargepoint Grant (EVCG) scheme provides support for those who own and live in a flat or rent any residential property (including shared ownership). Grants of up to £350 per chargepoint are available for eligible applicants to help with the costs of purchase and installation.
As of 1st July 2023, the EVCG has funded the installation of 3,433 domestic sockets since the scheme was launched in April 2022.
Previous domestic grant schemes funded by the Office for Zero Emission Vehicles (Electric Vehicle Homecharge Scheme and Domestic Recharging Scheme) have delivered 380,555 domestic charging devices since 2013.
Asked by: Tracey Crouch (Conservative - Chatham and Aylesford)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if he will take steps to ensure that (a) technology and (b) telecommunications companies help to prevent fraud.
Answered by Tom Tugendhat - Minister of State (Home Office) (Security)
The Online Safety Act (OSA) received Royal Assent last year and will require the tech sector to tackle fraud on their platforms or face significant fines from Ofcom.
Alongside the OSA, on the 30th November, the Government announced the Online Fraud Charter. This is the first voluntary agreement of its kind, in which the largest tech companies in the world have committed to implementing new measures to combat fraud in the UK. The Charter’s commitments seek improvements to blocking fraud at source, making reporting fraud easier for users and decreasing the time it takes to remove content and ads found to be fraudulent. The Charter also seeks to improve data sharing across the sector and with law enforcement, and to increase the transparency of risks on platforms and services.
The Government and the telecommunications industry also signed the Telecommunications Fraud Sector Charter in 2021. Since then, the sector has introduced firewalls that detect and stop scam texts from reaching customers, as well as deploying measures to prevent scam calls. The firewalls have stopped 870 million scam text messages since January 2022.
The Government is also taking legislative action to ban “SIM farms”, devices that allow criminals to send scam texts to thousands of people at the same time.
Asked by: Tracey Crouch (Conservative - Chatham and Aylesford)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if he will appoint a Minister for Economic Crime.
Answered by Tom Tugendhat - Minister of State (Home Office) (Security)
The Home Office and HM Treasury lead the policy response to economic crime for government and are responsible for coordinating the public-private Economic Crime Plan 2, published in March 2023.
Fraud and economic crime are complex and multifaceted issues that touch upon much of the economy and manifest in many different ways. It is right that these two departments jointly lead the government’s response, to support system leadership that fully considers the long-term ramifications of decisions that impact both the UK’s prosperity and security.
A single departmental approach or single Economic Crime minister would, in the government’s view, undermine our efforts to tackle holistically the challenge that economic crime presents.
Asked by: Tracey Crouch (Conservative - Chatham and Aylesford)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if he will introduce legislation to mandate information sharing between (a) payment service providers, (b) technology companies and (c) telecommunications companies.
Answered by Tom Tugendhat - Minister of State (Home Office) (Security)
Under current regulations, victims of unauthorised bank fraud are automatically entitled to reimbursement in virtually all cases. This is not the case with victims of authorised push payment (APP) fraud – currently ten of the UK’s largest banks are signed up to the voluntary Contingent Reimbursement Model (CRM) Code.
The government have legislated through the Financial Services and Markets Act 2023 to require the Payments System Regulator (PSR) to introduce mandatory reimbursement for APP scams within the Faster Payment System, where 98% of APP fraud takes place.
The PSR have confirmed that mandatory reimbursement will come into force in October 2024.
Asked by: Tracey Crouch (Conservative - Chatham and Aylesford)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether he has made an assessment of the potential merits of a fair and proportional reimbursement framework for bank fraud.
Answered by Tom Tugendhat - Minister of State (Home Office) (Security)
Under current regulations, victims of unauthorised bank fraud are automatically entitled to reimbursement in virtually all cases. This is not the case with victims of authorised push payment (APP) fraud – currently ten of the UK’s largest banks are signed up to the voluntary Contingent Reimbursement Model (CRM) Code.
The government have legislated through the Financial Services and Markets Act 2023 to require the Payments System Regulator (PSR) to introduce mandatory reimbursement for APP scams within the Faster Payment System, where 98% of APP fraud takes place.
The PSR have confirmed that mandatory reimbursement will come into force in October 2024.