Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent estimate he has made of the number of serious child abuse offences committed in the last 12 months.

The term child abuse covers a broad range of offences including, but not limited to, sexual offences, violence against the person and cruelty and neglect. It is not possible to identify all child abuse offences recorded in official data.

In January 2020, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) published experimental analysis which looked at a range of indicators from different data sources to enable understanding of child abuse. This report can be found here:

Child abuse in England and Wales - Office for National Statistics (ons.gov.uk).

As the Home Secretary stated in his written statement of 10 January 2024, we are working with the ONS to explore whether a new survey could more effectively measure the current scale and nature of child abuse and neglect, including child sexual abuse. The ONS is currently developing the questionnaire and safeguarding procedures for the proposed survey, which will then be piloted.