Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many applications were made under S41 of the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999 for (a) sexual assault and (b) rape in each of the last five years.

The information requested is not held centrally.

We asked the CPS to analyse a sample of rape cases finalised in 2016 to assess the frequency and outcome of applications to introduce evidence of a complainant’s sexual history under s 41 of the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999.

A section 41 application was made by the defence in 13% of the 309 sample cases looked at. In 8% of the 309 sample cases, an application to permit such evidence was granted by the court.

These are not official published statistics. For further details of this study, see our report published in December: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/limiting-the-use-of-complainants-sexual-history-in-sexual-offence-cases