Written questions by Obese-Jecty.

How many (a) arrests and (b) prosecutions have occurred as a result of Operation Beaconport.

The National Police Operation, launched in response to the Casey Independent Audit of Group-Based Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse, has been named Operation Beaconport. The Operation is being set up to, as Baroness Casey recommended, ensure that past failures are addressed, justice is delivered, best practice is shared, and that we equip the system to deal with complex cases effectively.The Operation is bringing together, for the first time, local and national policing partners and will be overseen by the NCA. Terms of Reference are being set and details of the Operation will be announced in due course. However, work is not standing still and phase one of the review of closed group-based child sexual exploitation cases is underway with over 1,200 cases identified, of which 216 have been prioritised. The Operation is in its early stages therefore no arrests and prosecutions have been made.

With reference to her Department's press release entitled 4.2% pay rise for police officers across England and Wales, published on 1 August 2025, what proportion of the £120 million was allocated to Cambridgeshire Constabulary.

This Government is committed to ensuring that policing has the resources it needs and the allocation of funding to police forces remains an important consideration.The method for distributing the additional funding will be communicated in due course.

What recent progress she has made in signing a new contract to (a) run, (b) maintenance and (c) support the Law Enforcement Cloud Platform.

The Law Enforcement Cloud Platform (LECP) is moving away from using an outside service provider and will start managing its own support through the in-house Shared Application Service (SAS) team.By the end of this financial year key roles will be taken over by civil servants and other Home Office Digital staff. During 2026, service management and security for LECP will be included in a unified support model, reducing reliance on external providers.

How many named neighbourhood officers are in place in England and Wales.

The Neighbourhood Policing Guarantee ensures that every neighbourhood has named, contactable officers, with details available via each local police force’s website.As part of the Guarantee, 3,000 additional officers and PCSOs will be deployed to neighbourhood policing teams across England and Wales by March 2026.

With reference to the news story entitled Live Facial Recognition technology to catch high-harm offenders, published on 13 August 2025, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of extending the use of this capability from Bedfordshire to the tri-force area that includes Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire.

The Home Office has funded the roll-out of ten live facial recognition (LFR) vans to seven host police forces, with Bedfordshire Police being one of those forces. Access to the LFR vans is available to all forces including Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire, subject to operational need and local decision-making.No formal assessment is therefore needed by the government as the capability is already available to those forces should they choose to deploy it.

Where can residents find the details of their named neighbourhood officer.

As part of the Neighbourhood Policing Guarantee, every neighbourhood across England and Wales now has named and contactable neighbourhood officers, dedicated to addressing the issues that matter most to their communities.The public can find the details of their neighbourhood officers and how to contact them via their force website by typing in their postcode.

What progress she has made in delivering the Law Enforcement Data Service programme.

The Law Enforcement Data Service (LEDS) is progressively replacing the legacy Police National Computer (PNC). The LEDS Property product is now the sole system for processing stolen and found items across UK police forces. Currently, 52 police forces, including Jersey and Guernsey, are connected to LEDS.So far in 2025, LEDS has handled over 12 million transactions, demonstrating strong growth and reliability. LEDS Vehicles and Drivers are live and widely used, while LEDS Person is rolling out in phases to support data on suspects, criminals, and missing or wanted individuals. The “Photographs at the Roadside” feature, showing driving licence images on police devices, has saved over 1 million hours of police time since its launch in January 2021.LEDS has achieved BS10008 Certification, confirming the legal admissibility of its electronic records. A Code of Practice has been developed with the College of Policing to guide appropriate use of LEDS and PNC.The programme remains technically complex and under close ministerial oversight. Final delivery and PNC decommissioning are planned for 2026, subject to assurance from policing stakeholders and the National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority.

To which (a) law enforcement, (b) military, (c) Sovereign Base Area police and (d) other arms Length Bodies her Department plans to provide access to Police National Database application programming interfaces.

At present there is no direct application programming interface (API) between PND and the organisations mentioned. Data feeds to PND allow a national search of intelligence. The PND gives a national view of 6.3 billion searchable records, 19.9m images and information from 198 systems/databases. It is used by 49 UK police forces and 56 Law enforcement agencies. A set of processes and security protocols govern access by suitably authorised and vetted individuals.

What biometric data is stored by her Department as part of the Immigration and Asylum Biometric System.

Biometrics, in the form of fingerprints and facial images, underpin the UK Immigration system to support identity assurance and suitability checks on foreign nationals who are subject to immigration control. This data is stored on the Immigration and Asylum Biometric System (IABS).

What progress she has made on delivering the Fraud and Cyber Crime Reporting and Analysis Service.

We are working with City of London Police to replace Action Fraud with a new andimproved national police reporting service for fraud and cyber crime. The new servicewill use the latest technology to improve reporting and support services for victims,providing far greater intelligence to policing for investigations, and allowing forgreater prevention and disruption at scale. This will support victims of fraud to comeforward, report instances of fraud, and know that their case will be dealt with properly.The first phase of this, a new crime and intelligence management system, wasintroduced in November 2024. This will improve the analysis of reports, the quality ofintelligence drawn from them, and how quickly they can be disseminated to policeforces for investigation.

With reference to page 25 of the National Security Strategy 2025, CP 1338, published on 24 June 2025, whether she plans to add other countries to the enhanced tier of the Foreign Influence Registration Scheme.

As set out in the National Security Act 2023, the Secretary of State may make a specification under the enhanced tier of the Foreign Influence Registration Scheme (FIRS) where they consider it is reasonably necessary to do so to protect the safety or interests of the United Kingdom.On China, no decision has been made in relation to specifying this country on the enhanced tier of FIRS.

With reference to page 25 of the National Security Strategy 2025, CP 1338, published on 24 June 2025, how many people have been denied visas on the grounds that they would spread discord in the last 12 months.

The information requested on visa data is not centrally held and could only be collected and verified for the purpose of answering this question at disproportionate cost.The Home Office is committed to countering extremism in all its forms where it divides communities and inflames tensions. Regardless of the worldview it draws from, if an ideology is causing harm by radicalising others into hatred, violence and extremism we will take action to prevent this and to safeguard susceptible individuals.It is a privilege to participate in and be a part of UK society. The Government is improving our range of powers to ensure those who abuse this privilege will be penalised. We have introduced a pilot to improve our ability to stop those intent on promoting extreme ideologies from traveling to the UK from overseas, and we are currently drafting proposed secondary legislation to further strengthen the Charity Commission’s powers around disqualification and discretionary powers.

How many life jackets given to people illegally crossing the English Channel by French authorities have been returned to those authorities since 5 July 2024.

The information requested is not held in a reportable format and could only be obtained at disproportionate cost as it would require a manual trawl of case records to retrieve.

With reference to page 25 of the National Security Strategy 2025, CP 1338, published on 24 June 2025, how much funding was provided to the Counter Terrorism Operations Centre in (a) 2024-25 and (b) 2025-26.

The Counter-Terrorism Operations Centre (CTOC) is the flagship of the UK's CT capability, bringing together expertise and resource across police, the intelligence agencies and the criminal justice system, enabling us to better identify and disrupt emerging threats from terrorism.We do not publish a breakdown of funding for national security reasons.

With reference to page 26 of the National Security Strategy 2025, CP 1338, published on 24 June 2025, what her planned timetable is for implementing the recommendations of the Independent Reviewer of State Threat Legislation.

As the previous Home Secretary set out in her oral statement on 19 May 2025, the Government is committed to taking forward legislation to implement all of the recommendations made by Jonathan Hall KC, Independent Reviewer of State Threats Legislation, in his review of legislation to address state-based security threats to the UK.One of the recommendations made by Jonathan Hall KC, was to create a State Threats Proscription-Style Tool which will more appropriately tackle threats from state-linked entities, and which will provide operational partners with enhanced capabilities to disrupt the activities of the most egregious organisations. We will bring forward legislation as soon as Parliamentary time allows.

With reference to the news story entitled Live Facial Recognition technology to catch high-harm offenders, published on 13 August 2025, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of using live facial recognition vans to identify people involved with hare-coursing.

The Government is committed to equipping police forces with the tools they need to tackle serious crimes, locate offenders and bring them to justice.As part of this commitment, the Home Office has funded the roll-out of ten live facial recognition (LFR) vans to seven host police forces, with access available to all forces across the country.Hare coursing is a serious criminal offence that causes harm to rural communities. Police forces across the UK have launched Operation Galileo, a national initiative aimed at tackling hare coursing through increased patrols, surveillance and tougher legal penalties. The Government takes this issue very seriously and will continue to support police efforts to tackle it.While LFR technology has proven effective in locating individuals wanted for high harm offences, the government has made no formal assessment regarding its potential use in addressing hare coursing. LFR deployment decisions rest with individual police forces, and any future consideration of its use must be intelligence-led and compliant with the legal framework.

With reference to page 25 of the National Security Strategy 2025, CP 1338, published on 24 June 2025, when she plans to introduce new powers to help tackle state threats.

As the previous Home Secretary set out in her oral statement on 19 May 2025, the Government is committed to taking forward legislation to implement all of the recommendations made by Jonathan Hall KC, Independent Reviewer of State Threats Legislation, in his review of legislation to address state-based security threats to the UK.One of the recommendations made by Jonathan Hall KC, was to create a State Threats Proscription-Style Tool which will more appropriately tackle threats from state-linked entities, and which will provide operational partners with enhanced capabilities to disrupt the activities of the most egregious organisations. We will bring forward legislation as soon as Parliamentary time allows.

With reference to page 39 of the National Security Strategy 2025, published in June 2025, CP 1338, whether she plans to place China on the enhanced tier of the Foreign Influence Registration Scheme.

As set out in the National Security Act 2023, the Secretary of State may make a specification under the enhanced tier of the Foreign Influence Registration Scheme (FIRS) where they consider it is reasonably necessary to do so to protect the safety or interests of the United Kingdom.On China, no decision has been made in relation to specifying this country on the enhanced tier of FIRS.

With reference to page 26 of the National Security Strategy 2025, CP 1338, published on 24 June 2025, what recent steps her Department has taken to remove (a) platforms and (b) privileges to people who do not follow those rules.

The information requested on visa data is not centrally held and could only be collected and verified for the purpose of answering this question at disproportionate cost.The Home Office is committed to countering extremism in all its forms where it divides communities and inflames tensions. Regardless of the worldview it draws from, if an ideology is causing harm by radicalising others into hatred, violence and extremism we will take action to prevent this and to safeguard susceptible individuals.It is a privilege to participate in and be a part of UK society. The Government is improving our range of powers to ensure those who abuse this privilege will be penalised. We have introduced a pilot to improve our ability to stop those intent on promoting extreme ideologies from traveling to the UK from overseas, and we are currently drafting proposed secondary legislation to further strengthen the Charity Commission’s powers around disqualification and discretionary powers.

With reference to the transparency data entitled 29 September 2024: Asylum Transformation Programme Accounting Officer Assessment summary, published on 5 June 2025, what her definition is of an outcome focussed customer journey.

Outcome focussed customer journey’ is terminology used within the Asylum Transformation Programme’s strategic objectives. The objective describes the programmes intent to streamline the end-to-end journey of claimants by delivering a number of interventions to enhance and improve the current system. Examples of these interventions have included AI tooling to assist decision makers with processing asylum claims, automation of the system for booking asylum interviews, and the introduction of a new online portal for Legal Representatives to share key case information with the Home Office.