Drugs: Organised Crime

(asked on 22nd October 2018) - View Source

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent meetings (a) he and (b) his officials have had with representatives of (i) Facebook/Instagram/WhatsApp, (ii) Kik Messenger, (iii) Snapchat, (iv) Telegram, (v) Viber, (vi) Wickr and (vii) other social media and messenger sites on the use of their encrypted messaging apps for county lines drugs dealing.


Answered by
Victoria Atkins Portrait
Victoria Atkins
Secretary of State for Health and Social Care
This question was answered on 25th October 2018

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.

Reticulating Splines