Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many convictions there have been for child sexual abuse committed in the (a) 1970s and (b) 1980s since the police service began the national operation coordinating claims of non-recent child sexual abuse in 2014.

The question seeks statistics on convictions arising from Operation Hydrant, the National Police Chiefs Council (NPCC) co-ordination hub established in June 2014, to deliver the national policing response, oversight, and coordination of historic child sexual abuse cases. The hub covers investigations concerning persons of public prominence, or in relation to those offences which took place within institutional settings. Statistics produced by Operation Hydrant are not comparable with national crime statistics as some suspects could be charged with more than one offence.

The Ministry of Justice Court Proceedings database holds information on people who have been proceeded against, found guilty and sentenced for specific criminal offences in England and Wales. However, this system only captures information on the principal offence for which a person was convicted and does not specifically refer to cases that are part of Operation Hydrant.

A further breakdown of data held on the court proceedings database shows that there have been 3,318 convictions in total for historic child abuse offences (where the abuse occurred in the period 1 January 1970 to 31 December 1989). Specifically, this includes 1409 cases in the 1970s and 1909 in the 1980s. These cases cover convictions where:

• there was at least one count of child sexual abuse on the indictment;
• the offence fell within the Home Office sexual offences group;
• we know that the victim was under the age of 16 at the time of the offence; and
• the defendant pleaded guilty or was found guilty of at least one count of child sexual abuse on 1 July 2014 or later

Where a defendant has committed an offence in both the 1970s and the 1980s, these are accounted for separately. The data provided covers the period up to 30 September 2019.