Question to the Attorney General:

To ask the Attorney General, how many requests for pre-charge decisions the Crown Prosecution Service received from the police with regard to cases of downloading indecent images of children in each of the last five years; and how many of those were prosecuted.

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) do not keep a central electronic record of the charges considered by prosecutors following a request for a pre-charge decision (PCD) by the police. To identify the number of PCDs in which a charge relating to the downloading of indecent images of children was considered would require a manual exercise to review individual PCD files which would attract a disproportionate cost. For the same reason, it is not possible to provide data related to the grounds for declining to prosecute PCD referrals involving allegations of downloaded indecent images.