Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many people were (a) charged, (b) prosecuted and (c) convicted of stalking under Section 4a of the Protection from Harassment Act in (i) 2012-13, (ii) 2013-14 and (iii) 2014-15; and what the average sentence was for such offences in each such year.

Stalking can have terrifying consequences, and the Government is determined to do everything it can to protect victims and stop perpetrators at the earliest opportunity.

Figures on the number of charges are not collated centrally. Figures on the number of prosecutions, convictions and sentence lengths are published by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) and the Ministry of Justice. The CPS Violence Against Women and Girls report published on 6 September 2016 shows that in 2012-13 there were 91 prosecutions following the introduction of the offence in November 2012, in 2013-14 1,489 prosecutions and in 2014-15 1,103.

Figures on average sentence length are available in the Ministry of Justice publication “Criminal Justice system statistics quarterly: December 2015.” This is available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/criminal-justice-system-statistics-quarterly-december-2015