Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many (a) prosecutions and (b) convictions there were for dog fighting in 2014.

10 defendants were proceeded against at magistrates' courts, and five were found guilty at all courts of offences related to dog fighting in England and Wales, in 2014.

This information was obtained from a manual review of court case files that centrally held data indicated may be relevant, and as such has not been through the same quality assurance processes as for routinely published data.

These figures relate to persons for whom these offences were the principal offences for which they were dealt with. When a defendant has been found guilty of two or more offences it is the offence for which the heaviest penalty is imposed. Where the same disposal is imposed for two or more offences, the offence selected is the offence for which the statutory maximum penalty is the most severe.