Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government how many rape allegations were made to the police in England and Wales in each of the last five years; and how many of those resulted in (1) prosecution, and (2) conviction.

The information requested falls under the remit of the UK Statistics Authority.

A response to the Hon gentlemen Parliamentary Question of 22.03 is attached.

The Rt Hon. the Lord Dobbs

House of Lords

London

SW1A 0PW

30 March 2023

Dear Lord Dobbs,

As National Statistician and Chief Executive of the UK Statistics Authority, I am responding to your Parliamentary Question asking for the number of rape allegations made to the police in England and Wales for the last five years and how many of those resulted in (a) prosecution, and (b) conviction (HL6736). The two main sources of crime statistics are police recorded crime and the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW). The CSEW only provides estimates of the prevalence of crime and different crime types as experienced by victims, which may not always be reported to the police.

The most up to date figures we have published on rape offences recorded by the police can be found in Appendix table A4 [1], published as part of the Crime in England and Wales; year ending September 2022 [2] . This table provides police recorded rape offences back to 2002. Table 1 shows a subset of table A4 providing the number of rape offences back to the year ending March 2017.

Our most recent Sexual offences in England and Wales overview: year ending March 2022 [3] publication provides data on the number of rape incidents recorded by the police. These data are provided in Table 12 for the year ending March 2021 and Table 13 for the year ending March 2022 in the associated Sexual offences prevalence and victim characteristics [4] tables.

Unfortunately, we do not hold data on how these offences are treated by the criminal justice system. The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) are primarily responsible for court statistics so will hold information on prosecutions and convictions. They publish statistics [5] each quarter which might be of help to you. You can contact MoJ via email at ESD@justice.gov.uk. It may also be beneficial to contact the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) as they collate information on prosecution by crime type. You can contact them via Enquiries@cps.gov.uk.

Yours sincerely,

Professor Sir Ian Diamond

Table 1: Police recorded rape offences, year ending March 2017 to year ending September 2022 England and Wales

Source: Police recorded crime from the Home Office

[1] https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/datasets/crimeinenglandandwalesappendixtables

[2] https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/bulletins/crimeinenglandandwales/yearendingseptember2022

[3] https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/bulletins/sexualoffencesinenglandandwalesoverview/march2022

[4] https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/datasets/sexualoffencesprevalenceandvictimcharacteristicsenglandandwales

[5] https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/criminal-justice-statistics-quarterly