Theft of Mobile Telephones - Question

Part of the debate – in the House of Lords at 3:11 pm on 4 March 2025.

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Photo of Lord Hanson of Flint Lord Hanson of Flint The Minister of State, Home Department 3:11, 4 March 2025

One of the first things that anybody who is a victim of crime should do is report that crime, because we cannot act unless we know the level of crime and the impact of it in the first place. That is important. The noble Lord is also right that designing out the potential for this activity in the building of resilient phones that cannot be used post crime is the best way forward. There have been innovations by a number of phone companies on that, but certainly there is more that can be done.

We want to help to support CCTV, and to take measures such as the incident warrant and on neighbourhood policing. In the long term, we will work with companies to ensure that we design out crime, and we will look at the market for broken-up, exported or resold phones in the United Kingdom. That intelligence-led policing will help to have a great impact on the current 146,000 thefts from a person last year, up 22%, of which mobile phone thefts were approximately half that figure.