Question

To ask the right hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington, representing the House of Commons Commission, what estimate the Commission has made of the number of violent threats made against hon. members in each of the last five years.

The House of Commons Commission does not hold specific figures regarding the violent threats made against hon. Members or crimes as the information will be spread across the 45 UK police forces.

The police Parliamentary Liaison and Investigation Team (PLaIT) is a specialist unit based at Westminster that investigate crimes and incidents that take place on the Parliamentary Estate. Since April 2017 they have collated the following figures:

April 2017–March 2018: 152
April 2018–March 2019: 353
April 2019–May 2019: 43

The figures are reported crimes to PLaIT with relevance to threats, abuse or intimidation towards MPs and their offices only. It does not include other work that PLaIT investigates. The figures do not include ones held by other forces.