Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether she has had discussions with representatives of the mobile phone industry on (a) using technology to prevent stolen phones from being re-used and (b) the adequacy of security on banking phone apps.

On 6 February the Home Secretary brought together police, the National Crime Agency, the Mayor of London and leading tech companies to drive greater collaboration in breaking the business model of mobile phone thieves.

As a result of the summit, representatives from policing and tech agreed to significantly boost the sharing of data and intelligence on mobile phone theft to build a comprehensive picture of the organised criminal networks driving this problem and to instigate new work to tackle the problem.

To aid police investigations and recovery of stolen goods, our Crime and Policing Bill includes a measure to give police the power to enter and search premises for stolen property which has been electronically geolocation tracked to those premises and it is not reasonably practicable to obtain a warrant without seriously prejudicing the entry and search purpose. We are also committed to strengthening neighbourhood policing and through our Neighbourhood Policing Guarantee, there will be thousands of additional police officers and police community support officers.

The Crime Survey for England and Wales provides national estimates of the number of victims of mobile phone theft in England and Wales; this data is not broken down to sub-national geographies.