1. What assessment she has made of the effect of serious and organised crime on communities. (904643)

12. What assessment she has made of the effect of serious and organised crime on communities. (904654)

Serious and organised crime has a damaging and corrosive impact on communities across the United Kingdom. This includes violence, drugs trafficking, fraud, modern slavery and child sexual exploitation. Reducing the effects of these crimes and bringing the perpetrators to justice is why I launched a comprehensive new strategy and a powerful new crime-fighting organisation, the National Crime Agency, in October 2013.

I thank my right hon. Friend for her answer. Last month, the Minister for Policing, Criminal Justice and Victims visited Brierfield in my constituency to meet the local police and learn about their success in tackling organised crime in Pendle. Will my right hon. Friend offer assurances of her Department’s continued support for protecting communities such as Brierfield from serious and organised crime?

I thank my hon. Friend for his question. Protecting communities lies at the heart of how we want to deal with serious and organised crime. We work with a range of partners to ensure that we tailor our response to the needs of individual communities such as Brierfield. We are also ensuring that every possible avenue is taken to deal with serious and organised crime. Lancashire police’s Operation Genga is bringing together about 20 local organisations to address the issue, and it is a very good example of the benefits that can be achieved through such a partnership approach.

What actions is my right hon. Friend taking to seize more of the proceeds of organised crime?

My hon. Friend touches on an important issue. Criminals pursue criminal activities for profit, and by seizing their assets we can have a significant impact on them. We have set out in the serious and organised crime strategy our approach for attacking criminal finances. We want to make it harder for criminals to move, hide or access the proceeds of crime. The criminal finances board, overseen by the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Staffordshire Moorlands (Karen Bradley), oversees cross-departmental work to improve performance on accessing and recovering assets. We are also taking extra powers in the Serious Crime Bill, which has already started its passage in another place, to make it easier for us to get hold of criminals’ assets.

18. Will the Home Secretary say why the number of arrests based on Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre intelligence on serious, organised child abuse has gone down in the past year? (904660)

CEOP is an important part of our panoply of organisations that are dealing with various aspects of serious and organised crime. Bringing CEOP into the National Crime Agency was right because it now has access to the agency’s capabilities, but it is important that CEOP continues to have access to a range of capabilities. Sadly, one of the issues that has been raised is the extent to which it can continue to have access to things such as communications data. As that degrades, of course, it becomes harder for CEOP to investigate certain crimes.

The Home Secretary will also know that much serious and organised crime is related to fraud. Is she not worried that many people, both outside and inside this House, are saying that the Serious Fraud Office is not fit for purpose, is not resourced enough and depends on advice given by the big accountancy firms? Everyone is saying that we need a powerful Serious Fraud Office. Does she agree that it needs reforming?

I agree with the hon. Gentleman that we need to ensure that we have strong capability for dealing with fraud. That is precisely why I wanted the National Crime Agency to have an economic crime command, which it does. That economic crime command will be looking at a variety of economic and financial crimes. Fraud will, of course, be key within that. It will also look at other issues such as money laundering. That is also why we have changed our approach to the reporting of fraud such that we are now better able to capture incidents of fraud through Action Fraud. We have ensured that the capabilities of City of London police, given its expertise in that area, are fully available. Of course we need a strong Serious Fraud Office, but we also want that strength in the economic crime command within the National Crime Agency.