Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment she has made of trends in the number of incidence of arson in Copeland constituency in the last five years.

Police recorded crime data is available at Community Safety Partnership level for: violence against the person; burglary; criminal damage; and arson. Recorded crime data on domestic abuse cannot currently be disaggregated from figures for other crime types. However, the government has recently introduced a mandatory recording flag for domestic abuse crimes and incidents, and police forces started collecting data in April 2015.

The Home Office has made no specific assessment of the trends in recorded crime in Copeland Community Safety Partnership, but the table below provides the number of recorded violence, burglary, arson and criminal damage offences over the last five years.

The trends in those crime types are very much in line with the national trends: recorded burglary, arson and criminal damage have all fallen across the country since June 2010, whilst recorded violence has recently increased. The Office for National Statistics has said that the increase in recorded violence reflects both better crime recording by police forces and a greater willingness of victims of domestic abuse to come forward.

The independent Crime Survey for England and Wales, which is not affected by police crime recording practice, shows that overall crime is down by more than a quarter since June 2010, and that violence has fallen by 23% over the same period.