House of Commons Hansard Written Answers for 26 Jun 2007 (pt 0028)

26 Jun 2007 : Column 728W—continued

—continued

Sexual Offences: Internet

Margaret Moran: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what steps he plans to take to prevent registered sex offenders using social networking sites to access or groom children. [145035]

Mr. Coaker: We published the ‘Review of the Protection of Children from Sex Offenders’ on 13 June. The review lists a number of actions to be taken, including providing for registered sex offenders to be required to notify the police of their e-mail addresses. This information could then be used to help with the management of offenders. In the review, we also recognised the need to develop the capability to monitor the online activities of child sex offenders, and we will investigate the possibility of developing software to install on offenders’ computers to do this.

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Sexual Offences Preventions Orders (SOPOs), introduced by the Sexual Offences Act 2003, are intended to protect the public, including children, from the risks posed by sex offenders, by imposing prohibitions on them. For example, a prohibition could be imposed on an offender to stop him using social networking sites. Failure to comply with such a prohibition would be a criminal offence, punishable by up to five years’ imprisonment.

We have also set up a working group which includes representatives from social network providers, law enforcement and children's charities, to look at the safety issues for children caused by the development and growth of social networking sites and develop good practice guidelines.

Sexual Offences: Police Cautions

Mr. Ruffley: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many official cautions were
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issued for (a) rape and (b) other sexual offences in (i) Suffolk, (ii) Bedfordshire, (iii) Cambridgeshire, (iv) Essex, (v) Hertfordshire, (vi) Norfolk and (vii) England in each year since 1997. [143924]

Mr. Coaker: Decisions on cautioning are entirely an operational matter for local police forces. Serious sexual offences are very unlikely to be suitable for a caution. In a small number of cases local police and CPS may decide that it is not in the public interest to take a case to court (e.g. where a 16-year-old boy has consensual sex with his 15-year-old girlfriend).

Data from the court proceedings database held by the Office for Criminal Justice Reform on the number of defendants cautioned for rape and other sexual offences in the relevant police force areas in England between 1997 and 2005 can be viewed in the following table.

N umber of offenders cautioned for rape offences in the relevant police force areas and in England between 1997 and 2005^{( 1,2,3,,4)}
Rape offences
	Bedfordshire	Cambridgeshire	Essex	Hertfordshire	Norfolk	Suffolk	England
1997	0	3	3	3	0	0	26
1998	1	1	2	3	3	4	25
1999	0	3	3	1	1	1	32
2000	0	1	2	0	0	8	37
2001	0	2	1	0	2	2	39
2002	0	4	1	0	2	3	31
2003	0	1	1	1	2	5	39
2004	0	2	4	0	1	2	40
2005	0	0	0	0	0	2	22
⁽¹⁾ These data are on the principal offence basis. ⁽²⁾ Every effort is made to ensure that the figures presented are accurate and complete. However, it is important to note that these data have been extracted from large administrative data systems generated by the courts and police forces. As a consequence, care should be taken to ensure data collection processes and their inevitable limitations are taken into account when those data are used. ⁽³⁾ Includes data from the Sexual Offences Act 2003, which came into force on 1 May 2003. ⁽⁴⁾ Staffordshire police force were only able to submit sample data for persons proceeded against and convicted in the magistrates courts for the year 2000. Although sufficient to estimate higher orders of data, these data are not robust enough at a detailed level and have been excluded from the table. Source: Office for Criminal Justice Reform—Ministry of Justice

N umber of defendants cautioned for sexual offences not including rape in certain police force areas and England, 1997 to 2005^{( 1,2,3,4)}
Other sexual offences
	Bedfordshire	Cambridgeshire	Essex	Hertfordshire	Norfolk	Suffolk	England
1997	21	30	49	7	38	26	1,782
1998	25	24	51	16	36	26	1,596
1999	14	29	39	18	18	21	1,346
2000	12	16	36	22	18	26	1,175
2001	22	23	26	10	15	28	1,143
2002	37	16	30	6	13	20	1,091
2003	19	19	30	11	29	28	1,226
2004	27	22	30	27	38	41	1,424
2005	13	32	40	27	30	28	1,643
⁽¹⁾ These data are on the principal offence basis. ⁽²⁾ Every effort is made to ensure that the figures presented are accurate and complete. However, it is important to note that these data have been extracted from large administrative data systems generated by the courts and police forces. As a consequence, care should be taken to ensure data collection processes and their inevitable limitations are taken into account when those data are used. ⁽³⁾ Includes data from the Sexual Offences Act 2003, which came into force on 1 May 2003. ⁽⁴⁾ Staffordshire police force were only able to submit sample data for persons proceeded against and convicted in the magistrates' courts for the year 2000. Although sufficient to estimate higher orders of data, these data are not robust enough at a detailed level and have been excluded from the table. Source: Office for Criminal Justice Reform—Ministry of Justice

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Sexual Offences: Wales

David Simpson: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many cases of sexual assault were reported in Wales (a) in total and (b) in each parliamentary constituency in each of the last three years. [145460]

Mr. Coaker: The available information relates to offences recorded by the police in Wales and is given in the table. Statistics for parliamentary constituencies are not available centrally.

Serious assaults recorded by the police in Wales
Number of offences
	Rape	Sexual assault ^{( 1)}	Total
2003-04	514	1,308	1,822
2004-05	560	1,240	1,800
2005-06	595	1,166	1,761
⁽¹⁾ Includes recorded offences of indecent assault on a male or female and sexual assault on a male or female. Note: The Sexual Offences Act 2003, introduced in May 2004, altered the definition and coverage of sexual offences.

Speed Limits: Cameras

Mr. Paterson: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department pursuant to the answer of 12 June 2007, Official Report, column 977W, on speed limits: cameras, by what means his Department estimates the time spent by police on road policing in each year. [145658]

Mr. Coaker: No meaningful estimate would be possible. Officers whose main function is traffic may undertake other duties too, and all officers can undertake roads policing duties from time to time as appropriate in their normal course of work.

Stop and Search: Vehicles

Mr. Laws: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department pursuant to the answer of 18 June 2007, Official Report, columns 1518-20W, on stop and search: vehicles, when the figures on vehicle stop and searches for (a) 2005-06 and (b) 2006-07 will be available; whether these figures are available for the Metropolitan Police; and if he will make a statement. [145415]

Mr. McNulty: The 2005-06 annual statistical bulletin ‘Arrest for Recorded Crime (Notifiable Offences) and the Operation of Certain Police Powers under PACE’, which includes information on stop and searches, will be published later this year.

Once the bulletin is issued a breakdown of published data covering ‘vehicle only’ searches will be published; at this time figures will also be available by force area.

2006-07 data will be made available in 2008.

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