Question to the Attorney General:

To ask the Attorney General, how many and what proportion of cases of downloaded indecent images of children the Crown Prosecution Service declined to prosecute on the grounds of (a) failure to pass the evidential threshold and (b) a prosecution was not considered in the public interest in the last financial year.

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.