Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many children have been accepted into the National Referral Mechanism as victims of criminal exploitation.

The National Crime Agency publishes statistics on referrals into the National Referral Mechanism on a quarterly basis, which includes the breakdown of referrals for children by exploitation type. Criminal exploitation is recorded as a sub category of labour exploitation and includes exploitation such as county lines and cannabis cultivation.

The latest published statistics can be found at: http://www.nationalcrimeagency.gov.uk/publications/national-referral-mechanism-statistics