Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of reviewing guidance on the sentencing of people committing offences on social media.

Sentencing guidelines are developed by the independent Sentencing Council for England and Wales, in fulfilment of its statutory duty to do so.

The Council is independent of Parliament and Government. As an independent body, the Council decides on its own priorities and work plan for producing and reviewing guidelines. The Lord Chancellor or the Court of Appeal can ask the Council to consider reviewing or producing guidelines in a particular area, but the Council is not required to agree to any such requests.

The Council monitors and evaluates all definitive guidelines, as per its statutory duty to do so. The assessment covers the operation and effect of the guideline. A report on the evaluation findings is published online. A variety of different methods of data collection and analysis may be used, as necessary: analysis of existing data on sentencing trends over time, collections of data from sentencers on factors that influence their sentencing of different offences, interviews and focus groups, analysis of Crown Court sentencing transcripts and media reports.

Sentencing guidelines for child sexual offences were first published in 2013. Following consultation, revised guidelines were published and came into force in May 2022.