Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment she has made of trends in the level of smuggling prosecutions.

The Ministry of Justice publishes data on prosecutions by individual year for a wide range of offences at criminal courts in England and Wales in the Outcomes by Offences data tool, that can be downloaded from the Criminal Justice Statistics landing page here: Criminal Justice Statistics.

Smuggling offences together with their HO offence code can be identified using the Offence Group Classification which is available in the above link. The number of prosecutions together with annual trends for offences related to smuggling can then be accessed by navigating to the ‘Prosecutions and Convictions tab, using the “HO Offence code” filter and selecting the relevant HO offence code.