Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many girls under 18 years of age were reported missing in each year from 1998 to 2005; how many of those girls were subsequently found; and how many investigations into those girls' cases are ongoing.

The information in this request is held by individual police forces.

Between 1998 and 2005, the Metropolitan Police Service was responsible for the Missing Persons Bureau, but did not publish reports detailing the number of missing cases. In 2013, the function was transferred to the National Crime Agency to improve the service offered to policing in respect of the handling of missing person and unidentified investigations.

The National Crime Agency publishes annual statistics on Missing Persons which includes missing children http://missingpersons.police.uk.The last published report shows that in 2014/15 there were 112,252 missing persons incidents involving children. Of these, the report finds that 54% of these missing incidents involved female children under the age of 18.