Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many domestic abuse cases have been prosecuted as common assault under Section 39 of Criminal Justice Act 1998 in each year since 2015; and what that figure is as a proportion of all domestic abuse cases in each year since 2015.

Statistical information held centrally by the Ministry of Justice on the Court Proceedings Database does not include the circumstances behind each case beyond the description provided in the statute – in this case common assault or battery. It is not possible separately to identify from this centrally held information how many people were convicted for common assault in a domestic abuse context. This detailed information may be held on court records but is not reported centrally to the Ministry of Justice. As such, the information requested could only be obtained at disproportionate cost.