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The below Parliamentary question was asked by Jack Dromey on 2016-05-04.

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the contribution of the Minister for Policing, Fire and Criminal Justice and Victims of 24 March 2016, Official Report, column 221, on the Policing and Crime Bill, in which types of situations her Department anticipates that police volunteers will have the need of CS spray for self-protection.

Mike Penning

Currently, volunteers already have all the powers of a police constable as a Special Constable and have done so for over a century.

Chapter 1 of Part 3 of the Bill will enable chief officers to designate police staff with a wider range of police powers. They will also be able to confer police powers – other than the core powers reserved for warranted officers set out in Schedule 9 to the Bill – on volunteers. The intention is that the powers that can be conferred on employed staff and designated volunteers are the same. This includes the power to carry and use defensive sprays, such as CS or PAVA, in situations where the chief officer considers there to be an operational case for this. It is already the case that chief officers can equip police community support officers with defensive sprays; accordingly, the Bill simply codifies the existing position for staff. Chief officers must ensure appropriate training before conferring a power.

Since opening the recruitment for Volunteer Police Community Support Officers (VPCSOs) in the autumn of 2013, Lincolnshire Police have recruited 80 volunteers, who have been trained to the same standard as paid PCSOs. The College of Policing guidance in respect of VPCSOs has not yet been written.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Jack Dromey on 2016-05-04.

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the Answer of 27 April 2016 to Question 34842, how much of the £3.95 million spent on Cyber Streetwise in 2014-15 was spent on (a) media spend and production, (b) PR, partnership and social, (c) research and (d) website; and how much of the £4.1 million spent on Cyber Streetwise in 2015-16 was spent on (i) media spend and production, (ii) PR, partnership and social, (iii) research and (iv) website.

Mr John Hayes

Cyber Streetwise is a cross Government campaign, developed by private and public stakeholder partners and coordinated by the Home Office’s Research, Information and Communications Unit. It is designed to measurably make the UK a safer place to interact and do business online by increasing individual and SME adoption of safe online behaviours.

Government experts estimate that a significant proportion of cyber security issues would be avoided by safer online behaviours. Cyber Streetwise supports this by increasing digital confidence by informing people about the key things that keep them safer online. It does this by:

• Delivering actionable and positive solution focussed advice on how to be secure.

• Creating arresting communications that highlight the consequences and cut through low interest.

• Reminding and reinforcing individuals and SMEs of the core protective behaviours at the point of risk/incidence.

Currently our prioritised protective behaviours are: using strong passwords made up of three random words; installing security software on all devices; and regularly downloading software updates. Government and Industry experts agree that adopting these 3 behaviours will provide SMEs and individuals with the best protection against cyber-crime.

The impact of Cyber Streetwise on behaviours is evaluated via regular quantitative tracking research. Since its launch in January 2014, it is estimated that 2 million adults have adopted safer online behaviours that will better protect them.

The spend for Cyber Streetwise in 2014/15 and 2015/16 is as follows:

• 2014/15 – £3.95m excl VAT

• 2015/16 – £4.1m excl VAT

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Jack Dromey on 2016-05-04.

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the oral contribution of the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Office of 26 April 2016, Official Report, column 1363, on the Policing and Crime Bill, what steps she is taking to ensure that cybercrime is included in the crime statistics produced by the Office for National Statistics.

Mike Penning

In April 2012, the Home Secretary transferred the responsibility for the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) and the publication of crime statistics to the independent Office for National Statistics (ONS) – to ensure the public had confidence in the statistics after years of poor data management.

A major strength of the CSEW has been its ability to compare crime types over time back to the 1980s. As ONS have acknowledged, over a period of time, new technologies such as the internet have expanded the scope of existing crime types and developed new ones, particularly in fraud and cybercrime. Therefore, following a period of extensive development work, ONS introduced new questions to the CSEW in October 2015. ONS have said that they will release estimates of fraud and cyber crime based on the first six months data (October 2015 to March 2016) alongside the main statistical bulletin in July 2016 and will label them as experimental statistics.

It is important to recognise that these data are not simply uncovering new crimes, but finding better ways of capturing existing crimes which were not measured as well in the past.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Jack Dromey on 2016-05-04.

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the oral contribution of the Minister for Policing, Fire and Criminal Justice and Victims of 24 March 2016, Official Report, column 221, on the Policing and Crime Bill, how many volunteer police community and support officers have been trained in Lincolnshire; what training those volunteers have received; and whether the training those volunteers have received is in line with the guidance to be issued by the College of Policing.

Mike Penning

Currently, volunteers already have all the powers of a police constable as a Special Constable and have done so for over a century.

Chapter 1 of Part 3 of the Bill will enable chief officers to designate police staff with a wider range of police powers. They will also be able to confer police powers – other than the core powers reserved for warranted officers set out in Schedule 9 to the Bill – on volunteers. The intention is that the powers that can be conferred on employed staff and designated volunteers are the same. This includes the power to carry and use defensive sprays, such as CS or PAVA, in situations where the chief officer considers there to be an operational case for this. It is already the case that chief officers can equip police community support officers with defensive sprays; accordingly, the Bill simply codifies the existing position for staff. Chief officers must ensure appropriate training before conferring a power.

Since opening the recruitment for Volunteer Police Community Support Officers (VPCSOs) in the autumn of 2013, Lincolnshire Police have recruited 80 volunteers, who have been trained to the same standard as paid PCSOs. The College of Policing guidance in respect of VPCSOs has not yet been written.