Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many people were (a) proceeded against under and (b) convicted of dog fighting offences in each of the last two years.

There were 11 prosecutions and 2 convictions in 2016, and 2 prosecutions and 0 convictions in 2017 in England and Wales for dog fighting offences.

This information was obtained from a manual review of court case files that centrally held data indicated may be relevant, and as such has not been through the same quality assurance processes as for routinely published data.

These figures relate to persons for whom these offences were the principal offences for which they were dealt with. 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.