PARLIAMENTARY WRITTEN QUESTION
Offences against Children (23 October 2014)

To ask the Attorney General, if he will place in the Library a table of Crown Prosecution Service child-abuse flagged (a) pre-charge decisions, (b) prosecutions and (c) convictions for each financial year since 2006-07.

Asked by:
Emily Thornberry (Labour)

The information requested is contained in the attached table, a copy of which has been deposited in the Library of the House.

The CPS definition of child abuse covers any case where the victim was under 18 years of age at the time of the offence. This includes allegations or crimes perpetrated by both adults and persons under the age of 18. Child abuse includes physical, emotional and sexual criminal offences, as well as neglect of a child and historical child abuse where the victim is now an adult. The data provided is primarily used for monitoring performance on cases that involve allegations of child abuse. The data relies on the application of a monitoring flag and is accurate only to the extent that the flag is correctly applied.

The CPS has published a breakdown of both pre-charge decisions and prosecutions for child abuse flagged cases within the annual ‘Violence against Women and Girls Report 2013-14’.

Answered by:
Sir Robert Buckland (Conservative)
28 October 2014