Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will make it the Government's policy to require local authorities to collect data on the number of children who have experienced abuse and neglect.

The Government collects and publishes ‘Characteristics of children in need’ statistics annually. This includes data on the number of children in need where the primary need identified at assessment is abuse or neglect, the number of assessments undertaken by children’s social care services where different types of abuse and neglect are a factor, and the number of children on child protection plans by different categories of abuse and neglect.

The statistics can be found at https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/statistics-children-in-need.