Question to the Home Office:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the most recent rises in reported crime and the underlying trends relating to reported crime.

Police recorded crime figures for England and Wales are published quarterly by the Office for National Statistics (ONS). Annual figures for the years ending June 2014 to June 2017 are included in Table 1 below.

Table 1: Police recorded crime, ONS, year ending June 2014 – year ending June 2017. Taken from ‘Crime in England and Wales: Bulletin Tables’, https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/datasets/crimeinenglandandwalesbulletintables

Overall police recorded crime (including fraud) increased by 13% in the year ending June 2017 compared with the previous year. The ONS points to improvements to recording practices by forces, expanded offence coverage, an increased willingness of victims to come forward and report certain crimes like sexual offences and domestic abuse to the police and genuine increases in some crime categories, especially in those that are well recorded, as important factors in explaining trends in police recorded crime.

Crimes traditionally measured by the independent Crime Survey for England and Wales are down by almost 40% since 2010 and by 70% since their peak in 1995.

The most recent national crime figures are published by the Office for National Statistic in ‘Crime in England and Wales: year ending June 2017’ (https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/bulletins/crimeinenglandandwales/june2017).