Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps her Department is taking to help tackle the use of keyless theft equipment in vehicle-related crimes; if she will make an assessment of the effectiveness of existing legislation for tackling the use of that equipment; and whether she plans to bring forward new legislative proposals to tackle this issue.

Estimate from the Crime Survey of England and Wales (for the year ending March 2023) showed the two most common methods of entry in theft of vehicles in England and Wales are “Offender manipulated signal from remote locking device” (40%) and “Offender used a key/electric fob” (32%). This information is published by the Office for National Statistics.

The Government works closely with the National Police Chiefs’ Council lead for vehicle crime and the police-led National Vehicle Crime Working Group, which focuses on tackling vehicle crime through various workstreams. This includes training police officers on the methods used to steal vehicles, focusing on prevention and deterrence of theft of and from vehicles, encouraging vehicle owners to secure their vehicles, and working with industry to address vulnerabilities in vehicles.

The Government keeps all legislation under review. We will be introducing a Crime and Policing Bill and will consider what measures are needed to support efforts to tackle and prevent vehicle crime.