Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment she has made of trends in the level of child exploitation by criminal gangs across Merseyside.

Intelligence and information on child criminal exploitation is collected at individual force level and Merseyside Police will hold the relevant information. At a national level, the National Crime Agency (NCA) is responsible for producing a national threat assessment on county lines based on information provided by individual forces and Regional Organised Crime Units and this includes child criminal exploitation. The next national threat assessment by the NCA is due to be published very shortly.

We are taking firm action to tackle the issue of child criminal exploitation and county lines this includes: publishing new guidance for practitioners on identifying county lines and helping those being exploited; funding a pilot service for exploited young people caught up in county lines drugs running; match-funding local reviews to build resilience in areas where there are concerns about county lines; and we will be shortly implementing new powers to enable the police to close down mobile phone numbers that are being used to deal drugs as part of the county lines model.