Question to the Attorney General:

To ask the Attorney General, how many referrals the CPS received from the National Crime Agency for charging decisions under the Money Laundering Regulations in each of the last three years.

The number of referrals the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), Specialist Fraud Division (SFD) has received from the National Crime Agency (NCA) for charging decisions under the Money Laundering Regulations for the last three years are as follows:

• 4 cases received in 2018-19
• 2 cases received in 2019-20
• 4 cases received in 2020-21

CPS data is available through its Case Management System (CMS) and associated Management Information System (MIS). The CPS collects data to assist in the effective management of its prosecution functions. The CPS does not break down figures that constitute official statistics as defined in the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007.

However, the CPS is not able through either CMS or MIS to breakdown referrals to differentiate whether they were made by the police or other investigative organisations in England and Wales. On this occasion we have been able to provide the data because of a recent manual review, so whilst we have endeavoured to produce figures that are as accurate as possible, this data is subject to human error.

The official statistics relating to crime and policing are maintained by the Home Office and the official statistics relating to sentencing, criminal court proceedings, offenders brought to justice, the courts and the judiciary are maintained by the Ministry of Justice.