Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment she has made of the effectiveness of the 2002 Proceeds of Crime Act in recovering criminal profits made from high-profile theft.

The Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 (POCA) is the primary framework for recovering the proceeds of crime. POCA is crime agnostic and can be applied for any crime type where the criminal has benefited from crime. If a defendant is convicted of a criminal offence, such as high-profile theft, an order can be placed on the individual to pay the equivalent value of their criminal benefit.

POCA also provides for the recovery of any assets that are suspected to be derived from criminality, regardless of a criminal conviction.

The Home Office publishes an annual statistical bulletin which outlines the high-level trends on the use of POCA powers and other relevant legislation. Within the bulletin a breakdown by offence group is provided of which Theft is a category. Over the past six years of collecting data, criminal confiscation receipts for theft are of a value of £40.1 million and a further £224.8 million was restrained to pay toward confiscation.

Further detail of these figures can be found in the published tables 6, 7 and 8 as part of the Annual Statistical Bulletin on Asset Recovery.