Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment he has made of trends in the level of the use of encrypted messaging apps by people involved in county lines drugs dealing.

The National County Lines Working Group brings together a range of agencies including law enforcement to assess the trends in county lines and action that should be taken. This ensures that we are up to date on the latest developments involving county lines reported by the police and National Crime Agency.

In June this year, the Home Secretary announced funding of £1.38m to support a new national police capability to tackle gang related activity on social media which will be operational shortly. Representatives from Google and Facebook also attended a meeting of the Serious Violence Taskforce chaired by the Home Secretary in June to present the action they are taking to tackle gang related content online.