Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment she has made of the implications for her policies of the increase in the number of convictions for sexual offences against minors in the last five years.

The total number of convictions for contact child sexual abuse offences and indecent images of children offences have fallen from a high of around 7,300 in 2016 to 5,200 in 2019, despite increases in recorded crime. We have a better understanding of child sexual abuse than ever before and, as a result, we have seen steep increases in reporting of child sexual abuse to the police. We want reporting of child sexual abuse to keep rising to continue to bring this heinous crime out of the shadows.

We know that child sexual abuse is evolving and that perpetrators are increasing utilising technology and the internet to offend. The NCA report that, in the year ending March 2020, arrests relating to online child sexual abuse increased by 50% compared to the previous year, reaching 7,212 arrests, and 8,329 children safeguarded.

In January 2021, we published the Tackling Child Sexual Abuse Strategy. The Strategy sets out our long-term ambition alongside the immediate steps we will take to drive collective action across government, frontline responders and society as a whole to tackle all forms of child sexual abuse and bring offenders to justice, whether it takes place online or in families, institutions or communities, here in this country or overseas.