Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many children in each police force area have a county lines flag as at 22 February 2021.

The Home Office does not hold the information requested which is operational and owned by police forces.

Through our County Lines programme we are funding the National County Lines Coordination Centre (NCLCC) to improve the intelligence picture and to co-ordinate the national law enforcement response.

Since it was established, the NCLCC has coordinated five weeks of intensive action against county lines gangs and the most recent week, in September 2020, which included all forces, including Police Scotland resulted in over 1,000 arrests, drugs worth more than £1m seized and over 1,500 vulnerable individuals safeguarded.