Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps he is taking to help tackle cyber-related crime in (a) Enfield North constituency, (b) the London Borough of Enfield and (c) London.

Tackling cyber crime is at the heart of the Government’s National Cyber Strategy 2022-25, which is supported by £2.6 billion of investment through the National Cyber Fund.

Key to delivery is ensuring that local policing has the resources needed to deal with the cyber threats we face. In 2023/24, the Home Office is receiving £18 million from the National Cyber Fund to provide a range of capabilities and resource to tackle and respond to cyber crime. This funding is supplemented by a further £16 million of Home Office funding through the Police Settlement Programme.

This funding continues to build law enforcement capabilities at the national, regional, and local levels to ensure they have the capacity and expertise to deal with the perpetrators and victims of cyber crime.

There are a wide range of law enforcement and community outreach programmes addressing cyber crime in Greater London and Enfield, which include:

• The Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) take part in a Junior Citizens Scheme across various boroughs in London. This includes information and presentations to young people around cyber crime.

• The MPS have been delivering presentations at Designated Safeguarding Lead (DSL) forums across London to raise awareness of how to refer individuals into the Cyber Choices programme, which aims to deter them from committing cyber crime in the first place. The MPS aims to deliver these presentations to all 32 boroughs. The presentation in Enfield took place on the 23rd January 2024.

• In May 2023, officers from the MPS Protect Team attended Enfield School for Girls and carried out their Cyber Escape Room with 38 students.

• The MPS Cyber Crime Unit targets Organised Crime Networks (OCN) that utilise Dark Web marketplaces to supply large amounts of drugs. In the last 18 month period, three unconnected OCNs that were operating in the Enfield area were dismantled and convicted.

We continue to work with all of society to tackle cyber crime as we recognise it is an issue that requires collaboration from citizens, businesses and the public sector, keenly working with communities in Enfield to educate and inform as to the harms cyber crime can cause.