Question to the Attorney General:

To ask the Attorney General, pursuant to her Answer of 28 February 2022 to Question 128272, on Fraud: Criminal Investigation, how many prosecutions for fraud and forgery were dropped in each (a) region of the country and (b) local justice area in each of the last five years.

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) maintains a central record of the number of defendants whose prosecution was dropped where the Principal Offence Category allocated at finalisation was Fraud and Forgery. This information can be further disaggregated to show the number in each CPS Area and further into each Local Criminal Justice Area.

The tables below show the number of defendants allocated the Principal Offence of Fraud and Forgery whose prosecution was dropped during each of the last five years.

(a) Fraud and Forgery Prosecutions Dropped in each CPS Regional Area

The table above excludes prosecutions dealt with by the central specialist casework teams.

(b) Fraud and Forgery Prosecutions Dropped in each Criminal Justice Area

The table above excludes prosecutions originating from other investigatory authorities such as the Department of Work and Pensions or HM Revenue and Customs.

The Fraud and Forgery category includes offences created by the Fraud Act 2006, forgery or copying false instruments, bribery, money laundering, bankruptcy offences and cheating the public revenue. It is not possible to separately report prosecution outcomes by the individual offences allocated to this category.

During the last five years, the CPS has prosecuted 67,817 defendants for fraud and forgery offences and convictions have been obtained against 58,671 (86.5%) of these defendants.