Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many prosecutions have been made under Section 66 of the Serious Crime Act 2015.

Section 66 of the Serious Crime Act 2015 clarifies, updates and modernises some of the language in section 1 of the Children and Young Persons Act 1933, which provides for the offence of child cruelty.

Data on offence level prosecutions up to the year ending 31 December 2019, are available in the ‘Principal offence proceedings and outcomes by Home Office offence code data tool’, at the following link:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/888344/HO-code-tool-principal-offence-2019.xlsx

To identify prosecutions, convictions and sentences for the child cruelty offence, filter ‘Offence code’ to ‘01103’ for ‘Cruelty to or Neglect of Children’. The number of individuals prosecuted in each of the last seven years can be found in row 31.