Question to the Home Office:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of (1) the safety and security of consumers, and (2) the prevalence of criminal activity, in the secondhand mobile phone market.

To help keep the public safe from crimes related to their phones, the Government works closely with the police, industry and other partners. As part of this work police forces issue advice to the public on keeping their property safe, including ensuring that the range of security features on devices are activated by consumers to prevent them being used if stolen.

The latest Crime Survey for England and Wales (year ending March 2019) shows that the proportion of mobile phone owners who experienced theft of their devices in the last year continued to follow a downward trend, falling to less than 1% compared with 2.1% in March 2009 https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/datasets/focusonpropertycrimeappendixtables