Asked by: Monica Harding (Liberal Democrat - Esher and Walton)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment she has made of the effectiveness of section 2 of the Football Offences Act 1991; and whether she plans to reduce the scope of that Act.
Answered by Diana Johnson - Minister of State (Home Office)
This Government is committed to preventing violence and disorder at football matches and works closely with stakeholders including the police and football authorities to ensure the police and courts are empowered to tackle football-related violence and disorder.
Section 2 of the Football (Offences) Act 1991 (‘the Act’) creates the offence of missile throwing at designated football matches in England and Wales.
Published data on prosecutions and convictions for offences under section 2 of the Act for the last five years are shown in the table below and can be found on GOV.UK here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/criminal-justice-system-statistics-quarterly-june-2024
Criminal Justice System statistics quarterly: June 2024 - GOV.UK
Year ending | Prosecutions | Convictions |
June 2020 | 37 | 32 |
June 2021 | 7 | 7 |
June 2022 | 81 | 75 |
June 2023 | 114 | 103 |
June 2024 | 118 | 113 |
We do not centrally collate data relating to the proportion of cases resulting in a conviction under section 2 of the Act that did not have a recorded (a) injury and (b) victim.
We keep all legislation under review, but do not have any plans to reduce the scope of this Act.
Asked by: Monica Harding (Liberal Democrat - Esher and Walton)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what discussions she has had with (a) Cabinet colleagues and (b) others on section 2 of the Football Offences Act 1991.
Answered by Diana Johnson - Minister of State (Home Office)
This Government is committed to preventing violence and disorder at football matches and works closely with stakeholders including the police and football authorities to ensure the police and courts are empowered to tackle football-related violence and disorder.
Section 2 of the Football (Offences) Act 1991 (‘the Act’) creates the offence of missile throwing at designated football matches in England and Wales.
Published data on prosecutions and convictions for offences under section 2 of the Act for the last five years are shown in the table below and can be found on GOV.UK here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/criminal-justice-system-statistics-quarterly-june-2024
Criminal Justice System statistics quarterly: June 2024 - GOV.UK
Year ending | Prosecutions | Convictions |
June 2020 | 37 | 32 |
June 2021 | 7 | 7 |
June 2022 | 81 | 75 |
June 2023 | 114 | 103 |
June 2024 | 118 | 113 |
We do not centrally collate data relating to the proportion of cases resulting in a conviction under section 2 of the Act that did not have a recorded (a) injury and (b) victim.
We keep all legislation under review, but do not have any plans to reduce the scope of this Act.
Asked by: Monica Harding (Liberal Democrat - Esher and Walton)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what proportion of cases brought under section 2 of the Football (Offences) Act 1991 have resulted in a conviction since 2020.
Answered by Diana Johnson - Minister of State (Home Office)
This Government is committed to preventing violence and disorder at football matches and works closely with stakeholders including the police and football authorities to ensure the police and courts are empowered to tackle football-related violence and disorder.
Section 2 of the Football (Offences) Act 1991 (‘the Act’) creates the offence of missile throwing at designated football matches in England and Wales.
Published data on prosecutions and convictions for offences under section 2 of the Act for the last five years are shown in the table below and can be found on GOV.UK here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/criminal-justice-system-statistics-quarterly-june-2024
Criminal Justice System statistics quarterly: June 2024 - GOV.UK
Year ending | Prosecutions | Convictions |
June 2020 | 37 | 32 |
June 2021 | 7 | 7 |
June 2022 | 81 | 75 |
June 2023 | 114 | 103 |
June 2024 | 118 | 113 |
We do not centrally collate data relating to the proportion of cases resulting in a conviction under section 2 of the Act that did not have a recorded (a) injury and (b) victim.
We keep all legislation under review, but do not have any plans to reduce the scope of this Act.
Asked by: Monica Harding (Liberal Democrat - Esher and Walton)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many people have been prosecuted under section 2 of the Football (Offences) Act 1991.
Answered by Diana Johnson - Minister of State (Home Office)
This Government is committed to preventing violence and disorder at football matches and works closely with stakeholders including the police and football authorities to ensure the police and courts are empowered to tackle football-related violence and disorder.
Section 2 of the Football (Offences) Act 1991 (‘the Act’) creates the offence of missile throwing at designated football matches in England and Wales.
Published data on prosecutions and convictions for offences under section 2 of the Act for the last five years are shown in the table below and can be found on GOV.UK here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/criminal-justice-system-statistics-quarterly-june-2024
Criminal Justice System statistics quarterly: June 2024 - GOV.UK
Year ending | Prosecutions | Convictions |
June 2020 | 37 | 32 |
June 2021 | 7 | 7 |
June 2022 | 81 | 75 |
June 2023 | 114 | 103 |
June 2024 | 118 | 113 |
We do not centrally collate data relating to the proportion of cases resulting in a conviction under section 2 of the Act that did not have a recorded (a) injury and (b) victim.
We keep all legislation under review, but do not have any plans to reduce the scope of this Act.
Asked by: Monica Harding (Liberal Democrat - Esher and Walton)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what proportion of cases resulting in a conviction under section 2 of the Football (Offences) Act 1991 did not have a recorded (a) injury and (b) victim for each year since 2020.
Answered by Diana Johnson - Minister of State (Home Office)
This Government is committed to preventing violence and disorder at football matches and works closely with stakeholders including the police and football authorities to ensure the police and courts are empowered to tackle football-related violence and disorder.
Section 2 of the Football (Offences) Act 1991 (‘the Act’) creates the offence of missile throwing at designated football matches in England and Wales.
Published data on prosecutions and convictions for offences under section 2 of the Act for the last five years are shown in the table below and can be found on GOV.UK here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/criminal-justice-system-statistics-quarterly-june-2024
Criminal Justice System statistics quarterly: June 2024 - GOV.UK
Year ending | Prosecutions | Convictions |
June 2020 | 37 | 32 |
June 2021 | 7 | 7 |
June 2022 | 81 | 75 |
June 2023 | 114 | 103 |
June 2024 | 118 | 113 |
We do not centrally collate data relating to the proportion of cases resulting in a conviction under section 2 of the Act that did not have a recorded (a) injury and (b) victim.
We keep all legislation under review, but do not have any plans to reduce the scope of this Act.
Asked by: Monica Harding (Liberal Democrat - Esher and Walton)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, whether he plans to retain his Department's role overseeing (a) in-country migration costs and (b) other official development assistance.
Answered by Stephen Doughty - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
The Home Secretary is committed to ensuring that asylum costs fall and has already acted. The Government has taken measures to reduce the asylum backlog, reform the asylum accommodation system to end the use of expensive accommodation in the next Spending Review period and increase detention capacity to facilitate more asylum removals. Whilst there will always be volatility in asylum forecasts, we expect these decisions to drive down overall in-donor refugee costs over the next Spending Review.
Detailed decisions on how the Official Development Assistance (ODA) budget will be used will be worked through as part of the ongoing Spending Review based on various factors including impact assessments. The ODA Board's first meeting in February 2025 focused on in-donor refugee costs. The co-chairs, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury and former Minister for Development, were joined by the Minister for Border Security and Asylum.