Lord Ouseley – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Ouseley on 2014-06-04.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government how many football banning orders have been issued in each of the past of the five years for football supporters found guilty of racially or religiously aggravated public order offences.

Lord Taylor of Holbeach

A football banning order is a preventative measure which is not issued as part of a sentence, or solely on the basis of an individual’s conviction offence. For the purpose of deciding whether to make a banning order, a court may consider a range of prosecution evidence in support of a banning order application.

The Football Banning Orders Authority holds a range of data on extant football banning orders, including in some cases the relevant offences which initiated a banning order application. However, this is secondary to details of the banning order itself, and it is not possible in all cases to identify which banned individuals have been convicted of a racially or religiously aggravated public order offence. To do so would require a manual exercise to review individual files which would incur a disproportionate cost.