Asked by: Stuart Anderson (Conservative - South Shropshire)
Question to the Attorney General:
To ask the Solicitor General, what steps she is taking to help increase prosecution rates for rural crime.
Answered by Sarah Sackman - Solicitor General (Attorney General's Office)
This Government is committed to working with the police and other partners to address the blight of rural crime – broadly classified as any crime and anti-social behaviour occurring in rural areas. We are introducing tougher measures to clamp down on anti-social behaviour, stronger neighbourhood policing, and robust laws to prevent farm theft and fly-tippers.
We are recruiting 13,000 more neighbourhood police and police community support officers across England and Wales.
The National Police Chiefs’ Council Wildlife and Rural Crime Strategy 2022-2025 provides a framework through which policing, and its partners, can work together to tackle the most prevalent threats and emerging issues which predominantly affect rural communities.
Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) prosecutors work closely with local police officers to tackle farm equipment theft, fly-tipping and other rural crime, and officers from the National Wildlife Crime Unit to tackle wildlife offences.
The CPS provides specialist training to ensure that its prosecutors have the expert knowledge needed to prosecute rural crime.
Each CPS Area also has a crown prosecutor dedicated to act as a Wildlife, Rural and Heritage Crime Coordinator to ensure the specialist knowledge needed to prosecute such offending is readily available.
Asked by: Stuart Anderson (Conservative - South Shropshire)
Question to the Attorney General:
To ask the Attorney General, what steps she is taking with the CPS to improve prosecution rates for offences against retail and emergency workers.
Answered by Alex Chalk
The CPS treats assaults against retail and emergency workers extremely seriously. In accordance with the Code for Crown Prosecutors, charges are selected to reflect the seriousness and extent of the offending and give the court adequate powers to sentence.
The CPS is a signatory to a Joint Agreement on Offences against Emergency Workers which provides a framework to ensure the more effective investigation and prosecution of cases where emergency workers are the victim of a crime. It also sets the standards victims of these crimes can expect.
The CPS has issued legal guidance to prosecutors on the Assaults on Emergency Workers (Offences) Act 2018. This guidance highlights that the Act requires courts to consider an offence against an emergency worker as an aggravating factor in sentencing. The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 has extended the statutory aggravating factor cover to assaults on those providing a public service including those who provide goods or facilities to the public.
Asked by: Stuart Anderson (Conservative - South Shropshire)
Question to the Attorney General:
To ask the Attorney General, what steps she is taking to ensure that the Crown Prosecution Service is adequately resourced to prosecute hate crime against members of religious minority communities.
Answered by Alex Chalk
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) recognises the serious impact hate crimes have on peoples’ lives and will always seek to prosecute where there is sufficient evidence to do so, regardless of the offence, or how it is committed. In 2021/22, the proportion of successful outcomes in religiously aggravated hate crime with an announced and recorded sentence uplift was 79.8%.
Each CPS Area has a Deputy Chief Crown Prosecutor as a strategic hate crime lead and a network of dedicated Hate Crime Coordinators operates across all 14 CPS Areas, providing their expertise on matters relating to hate crime and acting as a local point of contact for all external partner agencies.
In addition, the CPS has created a hate crime External Consultation Group, which is responsible for providing a community perspective on CPS activity, providing an important check and balance in respect of CPS casework quality, and includes representatives from Tell MAMA and the Community Security Trust (CST).
The CPS also sits on the cross-government working groups on anti-Muslim Hatred and on Antisemitism.
Asked by: Stuart Anderson (Conservative - South Shropshire)
Question to the Attorney General:
To ask the Attorney General, what steps he is taking to strengthen young people's (a) engagement with and (b) understanding of (i) the work of the Crown Prosecution Service and (ii) other services provided by his Department.
Answered by Lucy Frazer
The CPS has a strong record of outreach programmes to engage young people in its work, and to promote career opportunities, including through apprenticeships.
The CPS has over 400 apprentices currently enrolled onto programme across England and Wales and has a strong record of consistently meeting the apprenticeship targets as set out by Cabinet Office. At the end of June 2021, CPS was at 4.9% apprenticeship starts against the 2.3% target. 49% of the apprentices are aged 16 to 24 years old and 4% are aged under 19 years old.