Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if she will set out an assessment of the feasibility of seizing frozen assets for community benefit.

Asset recovery is an effective tool to deprive criminals of their profits, disrupt criminal networks, deter criminality and return recovered assets to the public good. Assets recovered under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 are already used to deliver public benefit through the Government’s Asset Recovery Incentivisation Scheme (ARIS), under which a proportion of recovered funds are redistributed to agencies involved in the asset recovery.

ARIS funding supports further enforcement activity, tackles economic crime and, where appropriate, funds community and crime prevention initiatives. Examples of how ARIS funding is used are set in the recently published Asset Recovery Annual Statistical Bulletin: Asset Recovery Incentivisation Scheme - GOV.UK