Question to the Attorney General:

To ask the Attorney General, on how many occasions in each region the Crown Prosecution Service has issued a charging authority denied decision against a police request to charge under sections 57, 58 and 59 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003 where the victim was under 18 years in the last five years.

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) maintains no central record of the offences, category of offences, or a breakdown of the age of victims, on cases referred to the CPS for a charging decision. This information could only be obtained by examining all of the files sent to the CPS for charging advice, which would incur disproportionate cost.