Missing Persons: Children

(asked on 13th July 2020) - View Source

Question to the Home Office:

To ask Her Majesty's Government, what assessment they have made of reports that police in England and Wales deal with 23 missing children incidents per day.


Answered by
Baroness Williams of Trafford Portrait
Baroness Williams of Trafford
Captain of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen-at-Arms (HM Household) (Chief Whip, House of Lords)
This question was answered on 28th July 2020

Annual missing persons statistics, including how many children are reported missing, are published by the National Crime Agency’s Missing Person’s Unit:

http://missingpersons.police.uk/en-gb/resources/downloads/missing-persons-statistical-bulletins

The most recent data published by the NCA covers the period 2016-17. The NCA will publish missing persons data for 2017-18 and 2018-19 on Monday 20 July.

According to the 2016/17 data there were 179,953 missing children incidents recorded by the police in England and Wales.

Although the majority of missing children incidents are resolved within 48 hours (87% in the 2016/17 data) and no harm is reported in the majority of incidents (96% in the 2016/17 data), the Government recognises that children who go missing, even for a short period of time, are at significantly increased risk of harm, including from criminal and sexual exploitation.

We are determined that missing children and their families should receive the best possible protection and support. This includes driving a multi-agency, risk-based response to missing children incidents, with co-ordination across the police, local authorities, health sector and voluntary sector partners.

The Government is also working with the national policing lead for Missing Persons and the NCA’s UK Missing Persons Unit through the Home Office National Law Enforcement Data Programme (NLEDP) to deliver a National Register for Missing Persons (NRMP). The NRMP will allow all forces in England and Wales to manually record missing and associated found incidents, and to access data about missing people from other force areas. This will significantly improve our understanding of the scale of missing persons incidents across the UK.

Through our extensive programme of work to address criminal exploitation, county lines and child sexual exploitation and abuse, we are also tackling some of the key underlying reasons why children and young people go missing.

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