Professor John Robertson OBA

Not for the first time, BBC Scotland find another way to suggest that violent crime is a particular problem and to distract from the published, peer-reviewed facts that it is lower, often much lower.

I’ll be accused of ‘fake news’ by some numpty for my statirical modification above to BBC Scotland’s:

Police respond to domestic abuse call ‘every eight minutes’ – Domestic abuse crimes rose by 10% in the past 12 months and 66,000 incidents were reported to officers between October 2024 and September. The force also confirmed more than 30 “high harm” offenders had been jailed during the year.

BBC England, Wales and Northern Ireland have no reports on domestic abuse despite what follows below.

There were 30 227 cases of reported domestic abuse in Scotland in 2024-2025. This is a slight increase (0.4%) compared to the 2023-24 total of 30,100.¹

Where did BBC Scotland get their quite different data from? Mine as always official statistics put together by statisticians with high professional standards and theirs? Not declared, of course.

All things being equal, you might expect the figure for England & Wales to be around 11 times greater, reflecting a population around 11 times greater – 330 000?

In England & Wales in 2024-2025:

The police flagged 797,530 offences as domestic abuse-related in YE June 2025, including 623,430 violence against the person offences.²

Based on these official statistics, domestic abuse seems to be more than twice as common in England & Wales.

Northern Ireland? With only 2 million population compared to Scotland’s 5.5 million, you’d expect around two fifths of Scotland’s 30 000 – 12 000. It’s 32 763³, closer to three times!

Sources:

1. https://www.copfs.gov.uk/publications/domestic-abuse-and-stalking-charges-in-scotland-2024-2025/html/
2. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/bulletins/crimeinenglandandwales/latest#domestic-abuse
3. https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/domestic-abuse-incidents-and-crimes-in-northern-ireland-period-ending-30-june-2025

What about children?

4 times as many children in England & Wales face domestic abuse compared to Scotland

From Open Democracy on 25 June 2025:

An exclusive investigation by Open Democracy has found that 377,000 children in England and Wales have been identified by local authorities as being at risk of domestic abuse in the past five years. Perhaps even more shockingly, 396 of these children have died in the same period.

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/child-victims-domestic-abuse-national-crisis-family-courts-england-wales/

From March 2025:

The Scottish Government has today (26 March 2025) published the latest official annual Children’s Social Work Statistics for Scotland regarding child protection. This uses data collected from all 32 local authorities in Scotland on child protection processes from 1 August 2023 to 31 July 2024.

During the 2023-2024 year, 3,167 children were registered onto the child protection register, a decrease of 2% from 2022-23 (3,234). The figures show that a total of 2,129 children were on the Child Protection Register on 31 July 2024, an increase of 3% since 2023 (2,077).

The most common concerns identified at child protection planning meetings for children registered during the 2023-24 year were: domestic abuse (45% of children registered), neglect (42% of children registered), parental substance use (39% of children registered), parental mental ill health (37% of children registered), and emotional abuse (33% of children registered).

https://www.celcis.org/news/news-pages/latest-child-protection-statistics-scotland-published#:~:text=The%20Scottish%20Government%20has%20today%20%2826%20March%202025%29,from%201%20August%202023%20to%2031%20July%202024.

All things being equal, you’d expect the figure for England & Wales to be around 11 times larger than the roughly 1 500 (45% of 3 167) reported as being at risk of domestic abuse in Scotland, or 16 500 but it’s around 70 000 (377 000 over 5 years), more than 4 times higher.