§ Lord Pattenasked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether they will set out, for each of the last 10 years for which figures are available, the percentage of total incidents of child abuse which were perpetrated on a child by a parent who was married to and cohabiting with the child's other parent; and, if these figures are not held centrally, why not; and [HL400]
Whether they will set out, for each of the last 10 years for which figures are available, the percentage of total incidents of abuse which were perpetrated on a child by a parent cohabiting with, but not married to, the child's other parent; and, if these figures are not held centrally, why not; and [HL401]
Whether they will set out, for each of the last 10 years for which figures are available, the percentage of total incidents of child abuse perpetrated on a child by one of a cohabiting but unmarried couple only one of whom is the child's parent; and, if these figures are not held centrally, why not; and [HL402]
Whether they will set out, for each of the last 10 years for which figures are available, the percentage of total incidents of child abuse which are perpetrated on a child living with a parent who is not cohabiting with any other person; and, if these figures are not held centrally, why not. [HL403]
§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Lord Hunt of Kings Heath)The information requested has never been held or collected centrally.
As part of this Government's Quality Protects Programme, we are introducing a new system of statistical collection whererby information will be collected on the number of referrals which have been made to local authority social services departments on all alleged cases of abuse, the assessment of those referrals and the number of referrals which lead to inquiries under Section 47 of the Children Act 1989. This system will begin in April of this year and the information received will be published in autumn 2002.