Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether her Department holds data on the number of children that go missing by region every year.

The Home Office does not hold this data centrally.

Information about current missing persons incidents is held by individual police forces.

The National Crime Agency’s UK Missing Persons Unit holds the national database for all missing incidents that are unresolved after 72hours, allowing the police to have access to missing persons information across force boundaries. In addition, annual missing persons statistics, broken down to police force level, are published by the National Crime Agency’s Missing Person’s Unit in its annual data report which can be found here: Downloads - National Crime Agency