Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent steps he has taken to progress his Department’s review of the Computer Misuse Act following the Call for Information his Department concluded in June 2021.

The Government is delivering an ambitious programme of work through the £2.6 billion National Cyber Strategy, including comprehensive support to the cyber industry to foster the growth of a sustainable, innovative and internationally competitive cyber and information security sector in order to raise the level of cyber resilience across the economy. The need for increased cyber resilience is real. In 2021, the UK ranked third behind the US and Ukraine in terms of incoming malicious cyber-activity linked to nation states (between July 2020 to June 2021).

The Government is delivering programmes to improve the UK’s cyber resilience, such as investing in protecting public services, enforcing security standards to protect consumers, promoting best practice through Cyber Essentials certification, and raising awareness through the “Cyber Aware” campaign. The proportion of businesses suffering a cyber attack has decreased overall over the past five years, but 39% of businesses still suffered a breach within the past year.

In 2021, cyber sector revenue exceeded £10 billion for the first time and the sector attracted over £1 billion of investment. To support innovators and entrepreneurs the government funds Cyber Runway, which has already helped over 200 cyber security companies develop and grow. To commercialise academic cyber research, the government funds CyberASAP which has spun out 20 companies and attracted significant investment.

We work with local partners to drive the growth of the cyber sector across the UK and fund the UK Cyber Cluster Collaboration (UKC3), a network of regional cyber clusters across the UK who help drive local skills and cyber sector innovation programmes linking to local growth opportunities.

The UK has a number of geographic areas that host world class cyber capabilities, including Cheltenham where the government is supporting the development of the Golden Valley campus led by Cheltenham Borough Council dedicated to supporting the growth of cyber-related technology businesses and resulting wider growth potential.

We are still considering the proposals put forward to the Call for Information, and we will inform Parliament shortly of the way forward on the review of the Computer Misuse Act.