Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask His Majesty's Government how many prosecutions there have been under section 1 of the Terrorism Act 2006; and how many of those have resulted in conviction.

Answered by Lord Timpson - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)

The Ministry of Justice publishes data on prosecutions and convictions at criminal courts in England and Wales in the Outcomes by Offences data tool, including under section 1 of the Terrorism Act 2006. They can be downloaded from the Criminal Justice Statistics landing page here: Criminal Justice Statistics, using HO offence code 06653.

The following table provides the number of prosecutions and convictions from 2015 to 30 June 2024 (latest available data) for ‘Publishing or causing another to publish a statement intending or recklessly encouraging terrorism’:

Source: Court Proceeding Database

Notes:

1. Every effort is made to ensure that the figures presented are accurate and complete. However, it is important to note that these data have been extracted from large administrative data systems generated by the courts. As a consequence, care should be taken to ensure data collection processes and their inevitable limitations are taken into account when those data are used.

2. These figures are presented on a principal offence basis - i.e. reporting information relating to the most serious offence that a defendant was dealt with for. When a defendant has been found guilty of two or more offences it is the offence for which the heaviest penalty is imposed. Where the same disposal is imposed for two or more offences, the offence selected is the offence for which the statutory maximum penalty is the most severe.

3. Offences dealt with at magistrates’ court and subsequently committed to the Crown Court for trial or sentence are counted separately at each stage of the process, based on the year in which they receive an outcome at each respective court. For example, an offence committed from the magistrates’ court in 2022 may not receive a final outcome at the Crown Court until a subsequent year, meaning the prosecution and conviction are counted separately in different years. As a result, the number of convictions (or other outcomes) in a given year may exceed the number of prosecutions. Similarly, an offence convicted in one year may be sentenced the following year, meaning that the number of sentences issued may not match the number of convictions in any given year.

4. Additionally, more offences can be added to the indictment at the Crown Court after committal, meaning the number of outcomes at Crown Court for a given offence could exceed those at magistrates' court. A defendant may also be dealt with for a different offence at the Crown Court than for which they were originally proceeded against at magistrates’ court. For example, an individual initially prosecuted for murder may be convicted at Crown Court for manslaughter. This could also result in the total outcomes for a given offence exceeding the original number of prosecutions.

5. It is not advised to use this data to calculate conviction rate (the number of convictions as a proportion of the number of prosecutions). This is due to the Court Proceedings Database counting two separate records at two separate stages (one for prosecution, one for conviction). We cannot track the defendant throughout their court journey and an individual may appear at each court in separate years, or for a different principal offence at different stages. As a result, this rate is not an accurate measure of the proportion of prosecutions that result in a conviction.