Question to the Attorney General:

To ask the Attorney General, how many people have been prosecuted under the (a) Communications Act 2003, (b) Malicious Communications Act 1988 and (c) Protection from Harassment Act 1997 in each of the last five years.

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) does not maintain a central record of the number of defendants prosecuted for offences brought by way of the Communications Act 2003, the Malicious Communications Act 1988 and the Protection from Harassment Act 1997. This information could only be obtained by examining CPS case files, which would incur disproportionate cost.

However, information is held identifying the number of offences during the past five years in which a prosecution commenced and reached a first hearing at magistrates’ courts, rather than the number of defendants prosecuted, this is detailed in the following table.

There is no indication of the final prosecution outcome, of if the charged offence was the substantive charge at the time of finalisation. It is also often the case that an individual defendant is charged with more than one offence.