Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many people have been (a) released under investigation and (b) released on police bail in cases of rape in each year since 2010.
The Home Office does not centrally hold the information requested.
From April 2017 the Home Office requested information on a voluntary basis from the police on the number of individuals released on pre-charge bail, broken down by bail length. Data, from a subset of 17 forces, were published as ‘Experimental statistics’ in the latest edition of the ‘Police powers and procedures’ statistical bulletin, available here: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/751215/police-powers-procedures-mar18-hosb2418.pdf
The data were collected on a mandatory basis from April 2018 and are intended for publication in the next edition of the release, scheduled for October 2019.
However, information on the specific offence are not collected, nor are data on cases which resulted in a person being released under investigation.