Asked by: Alicia Kearns (Conservative - Rutland and Melton)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether Captogan has been found in the UK; and whether his Department is taking steps to prevent it becoming available.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
In December 2021, the Government launched its ten-year drugs strategy, to cut crime and save lives. As part of this, £300 million has been allocated to fund activity to break drug supply chains from end-to-end, This includes restricting upstream flow, securing the UK border, and ensuring we remain agile in the face of changing threats.
The National Crime Agency (NCA) regularly assess the threat posed to the UK by the trafficking of illicit drugs. At this time, we are not aware of any captagon on UK streets and to date, no instances of captagon being seized at a UK border have been recorded; however, shipments have been seized in Europe.
As such, the UK will continue to seek coordinated global action to address the effects of the captagon trade, in close cooperation with our regional partners.
Beyond this, the UK Government and its law enforcement partners are leveraging our extensive international networks to maximise cooperation with other governments to tackle drug trafficking upstream. This includes identifying and disrupting organised crime groups aiming to exploit the UK, and seizing drugs before and during their journey to the UK.
Additionally, we are also funding Border Force and the NCA to develop and deliver innovative intelligence-led approaches to securing our border which keeps pace with changes to routes and methods used by criminals.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent assessment his Department has made of the potential impact of cannabis use on violent crime.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
No recent assessment has been made. Cannabis is controlled as a Class B drug under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 as there is clear scientific and medical evidence that cannabis is a harmful drug which can damage people’s mental and physical health, and harms individuals and communities.
Cannabis continues to be the most commonly used drug and around 21% of adults starting treatment between 2021 and 2022 said they had a problem with cannabis. Cannabis poses a large number of serious health risks, including psychological disorders such as psychosis and respiratory illness, particularly given recent increases in potency.
We know from Dame Carol Black’s landmark review into drugs that there are clear links between the trade in illicit drugs and violence and exploitation.
Illicit drug use also makes our communities less safe, with links to anti-social behaviour in public spaces.
Asked by: Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Labour - Slough)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what steps his Department is taking with local authorities to help tackle the illicit tobacco trade.
Answered by Gareth Davies - Exchequer Secretary (HM Treasury)
In January 2021 HMRC and National Trading Standards launched Operation CeCe. This joint initiative builds on decades of partnership working with local Trading Standards Officers.
This supports them to undertake enforcement activity including the sharing of information and intelligence to target and seize illegal tobacco, disruption of the illicit tobacco market and prevention of fraud in their area. In its first two years of operation more than 28 million cigarettes and nearly 8 tonnes of illicit hand rolling-tobacco were seized.
In January this year, HMRC published a new Illicit Tobacco Strategy ‘Stubbing out the problem’. The Strategy sets out how HMRC intends to build on the success of Operation CeCe by increasing the level of funding available to Trading Standards so that it can have an even greater impact in tackling the illicit tobacco trade.
Asked by: Adam Afriyie (Conservative - Windsor)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how much funding will be allocated to each local authority trading standards for enforcing the (a) disposable vapes ban and (b) generational tobacco ban.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government has committed to increasing investment for enforcement agencies by £30 million per year. The additional funding in England will boost agencies such as local trading standards, to enforce the new age of sale and vaping measures. It will also scale up HM Revenue and Customs and Border Force activity, to stamp out opportunities for criminals in the illicit tobacco trade.
Of this funding, over £100 million over five years will support HM Revenue and Custom’s and Border Force’s new illicit tobacco strategy, published on 29 January 2024. We are working closely with Trading Standards to consider how the new funding can best support their programmes of local-level enforcement.
Asked by: Preet Kaur Gill (Labour (Co-op) - Birmingham, Edgbaston)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, how many full time equivalent staff are dedicated to the work of the Illicit Tobacco Taskforce; how often will the taskforce meet; has the taskforce met to date; whether illicit vaping products will be included as part of its remit; and what recent estimate has he made of losses in tax revenue from the illicit trade in (a) tobacco and (b) vaping products in each of the last 10 years.
Answered by Gareth Davies - Exchequer Secretary (HM Treasury)
We plan to establish the taskforce during 2024/25. We are not yet able to give details on meeting frequency or staff numbers.
Asked by: Rachael Maskell (Labour (Co-op) - York Central)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what steps he plans to take with Cabinet colleagues to help tackle the trade in illicit vapes, in the context of the introduction of duties on vapes at the Spring Budget 2024.
Answered by Gareth Davies - Exchequer Secretary (HM Treasury)
Proposals for a Vaping Products Duty which will come in force from October 2026 are set out in the consultation here: https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/vaping-products-duty-consultation
These include measures to tackle non-compliance, including:
HMRC will collaborate and share intelligence with agencies such as Border Force and Trading Standards, who will have enhanced their capabilities around vaping by the time the duty is introduced.
HMRC also intends to recruit operational staff to enforce the duty, integrating with existing tobacco compliance teams and building on HMRC’s recent success in driving down the tobacco tax gap. This success includes reducing the illicit trade for hand-rolling tobacco from 65.2% in 2005 to 33.5% in 2021/22 and for cigarettes from 16.9% to 11% over the same period.
Asked by: Baroness Cox (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the link between Boko Haram and Islamic State of West Africa Province in Nigeria's northern states, and perpetrators of violence in Nigeria's central states.
Answered by Lord Benyon - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
It is likely that some criminal networks engage in illicit trade, including trading of weapons, with terrorist groups in Nigeria, including in its northern states. This is distinct from intercommunal violence, which occurs particularly in Nigeria's Middle Belt and is driven by lack of economic opportunities, disruption to traditional ways of life created by environmental degradation and historical grievances. Through our UK-Nigeria Security and Defence Partnership, we are working with Nigeria to respond to shared threats and are supporting Nigeria to tackle insecurity and promote human rights.
Asked by: Virendra Sharma (Labour - Ealing, Southall)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, with reference to the policy paper entitled Stubbing out the problem: A new strategy to tackle illicit tobacco, published in January 2024, whether the £100 million to be allocated to HMRC and Border Force to tackle the illicit tobacco trade is in addition to the £30 million planned investment announced in the news story entitled Prime Minister to create smokefree generation by ending cigarette sales to those born on or after 1 January 2009, published on 4 October 2023.
Answered by Gareth Davies - Exchequer Secretary (HM Treasury)
The £100 million to be allocated to HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) and Border Force to tackle the illicit tobacco trade will be split over 5 years and represents a proportion of the aforementioned £30 million per year. It will support the delivery of the illicit tobacco strategy.
Asked by: Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Labour - Slough)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps he is taking with Cabinet colleagues to help prevent the risk of (a) fires, (b) floods, (c) structural damage to buildings and (d) other dangers potentially caused by illegal drug cultivation.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
Drugs devastate lives, ruin families and damage communities.
The Government's ten-year Drugs Strategy demonstrates our commitment to cut off the supply of drugs, reduce their recreational use and make the UK a significantly harder place for organised crime groups to operate in. Through our end-to-end plan to tackle drug supply, we are tackling the supply of drugs at every level from production overseas to cultivation in the UK. Our approach recognises that the organised criminals behind drug cultivation are often involved in a range of wider offences including firearms, money laundering, slavery and human trafficking.
Our immigration enforcement officers routinely work alongside police where there is evidence of immigration offences, to support prosecutions and to protect vulnerable persons who may face exploitation from criminal enterprises. Additionally, police work locally with a range of other agencies to mitigate the wider societal harms caused by the illicit drug trade.
Working with the National Crime Agency, the Regional Organised Crime Unit network and a range of agency partners, police in England and Wales coordinated Operation Mille - the most significant operation of its kind aimed at disrupting organised crime groups by dismantling large-scale cannabis farms – a key source of illicit income for organised crime gangs. Throughout June of 2023, police executed over 1,000 search warrants, arresting hundreds of individuals and seized 20 firearms, over £635,000 in cash and over 180,000 cannabis plants worth around £130 million. Of those arrested, more than 450 were later charged with a range of offences. The Home Office provided police with £1.5m funding in 2023/24 to support Operation Mille.
Through the Modern Slavery Act 2015, the government introduced a statutory defence against prosecution for victims of modern slavery who, for adults, were compelled to carry out criminal offences as a result of their exploitation and, for children, committed offences as a direct result of being a victim. The section 45 defence was designed to provide further encouragement to victims of slavery to come forward and give evidence without fear of being convicted for offences connected to their slavery or trafficking situation which can include drug cultivation.
Following the European Court of Human’s Rights judgment in the case of VCL and AN in July 2021, the positive obligation on the police to identify and investigate whether a suspect may be a potential victim of slavery or trafficking from the outset of an investigation was further strengthened through national guidance and training.
Asked by: Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Labour - Slough)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what guidance his Department issues to (a) police and (b) immigration authorities on working together to tackle the intersection of (i) drug cultivation and (ii) immigration offences.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
Drugs devastate lives, ruin families and damage communities.
The Government's ten-year Drugs Strategy demonstrates our commitment to cut off the supply of drugs, reduce their recreational use and make the UK a significantly harder place for organised crime groups to operate in. Through our end-to-end plan to tackle drug supply, we are tackling the supply of drugs at every level from production overseas to cultivation in the UK. Our approach recognises that the organised criminals behind drug cultivation are often involved in a range of wider offences including firearms, money laundering, slavery and human trafficking.
Our immigration enforcement officers routinely work alongside police where there is evidence of immigration offences, to support prosecutions and to protect vulnerable persons who may face exploitation from criminal enterprises. Additionally, police work locally with a range of other agencies to mitigate the wider societal harms caused by the illicit drug trade.
Working with the National Crime Agency, the Regional Organised Crime Unit network and a range of agency partners, police in England and Wales coordinated Operation Mille - the most significant operation of its kind aimed at disrupting organised crime groups by dismantling large-scale cannabis farms – a key source of illicit income for organised crime gangs. Throughout June of 2023, police executed over 1,000 search warrants, arresting hundreds of individuals and seized 20 firearms, over £635,000 in cash and over 180,000 cannabis plants worth around £130 million. Of those arrested, more than 450 were later charged with a range of offences. The Home Office provided police with £1.5m funding in 2023/24 to support Operation Mille.
Through the Modern Slavery Act 2015, the government introduced a statutory defence against prosecution for victims of modern slavery who, for adults, were compelled to carry out criminal offences as a result of their exploitation and, for children, committed offences as a direct result of being a victim. The section 45 defence was designed to provide further encouragement to victims of slavery to come forward and give evidence without fear of being convicted for offences connected to their slavery or trafficking situation which can include drug cultivation.
Following the European Court of Human’s Rights judgment in the case of VCL and AN in July 2021, the positive obligation on the police to identify and investigate whether a suspect may be a potential victim of slavery or trafficking from the outset of an investigation was further strengthened through national guidance and training.