Sarah Champion – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Sarah Champion on 2016-01-19.

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many child abduction warning notices were served by police forces in England in the last 12 months; and how many such notices related to children aged 16 and 17.

Mike Penning

Child Abduction Warning Notices are currently used by the police as a deterrent against those thought to be grooming children, where the child is under the age of 16 if living at home, or under the age of 18 if living in the care of a local authority. These notices are a useful tool for the police and complement the strong new powers to protect the vulnerable from sexual predators that we introduced in the Serious Crime Act 2015. For example, breach of an Abduction Notice can become grounds for the issuing of a Sexual Risk Order.

There is no statutory or other legislative provision dealing specifically with the issue of Child Abduction Warning Notices; the Notices are part of an administrative process. Breach of a Notice is not a criminal offence and as such the police do not regularly record the number of Child Abduction Warning Notices issued.