Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many (a) prosecutions and (b) convictions there were under section 14 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003 in 2014.

I have been asked to reply on behalf of the Ministry of Justice

The Government takes very seriously all matters relating to the sexual abuse of children and the protection of society’s most vulnerable. Our laws in this area are some of the most robust in the world and we have sought to strengthen them further by changing the offence of child sexual grooming (to reduce the number of prior contacts that an adult has to have with a child before the offence can be committed from two to one) and creating a new offence of sexual communication with a child amongst other reforms.

Court proceedings data for 2014, including statistics for defendants proceeded against at magistrates’ courts and found guilty at all courts of offences under Section 14 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003, are planned for publication in May 2015.