Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what proportion of police work primarily on cybercrime cases; and if she will make a statement.

The Home Office collects and publishes data annually on the primary function of police officers, as part of the ‘Police workforce, England and Wales’ statistical bulletins. These data include officers whose primary function is ‘Cyber Crime’ and are available in the accompanying data tables on gov.uk: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/police-workforce-england-and-wales-31-march-2016

Officers with multiple responsibilities are recorded under their primary function.

The 'Cyber Crime' function was added to the Police Objective Analysis framework in 2015/16, and is used only by forces with a dedicated Cyber Crime Unit. As at 31 March 2016, there were 351 officers who worked primarily in a dedicated Cyber Crime Unit.

The Home Office is unable to separately identify officers who work primarily on cybercrime cases in forces where there is no dedicated Cyber Crime Unit. Such specialist roles are likely to be embedded across multiple units and therefore recorded against a number of different functions in the Police Objective Analysis framework. For this reason, the Home Office is unable to calculate a reliable estimate for the proportion of officers who work primarily on cyber crime cases.