Is Jenrick right about unsolved crime?published at 13:34 GMT
Tom Edgington
BBC Verify senior journalist
Away from Ukraine, the fact-checking team has been looking into claims made by Robert Jenrick in today’s Telegraph justifying his reasons for joining Reform UK.
In an op ed written by the MP, Jenrick says that “Britain has been in decline for decades and we’re now in peril,“ citing issues with high tax rates, A&E wait times, and that “93 per cent of crime is going unsolved”.
But is this crime figure correct? The answer is not quite.
The latest criminal outcome statistics for England and Wales published by the Home Office, external show there were 5.3 million police recorded offences in the year to June 2025. Of these, only 7.6% of offences resulted in a charge or court summons, which leaves 92.4% offences recorded by police with a different outcome.
But that doesn’t mean those offences went “unsolved”.
A charge or a summons is just one type of outcome recorded in this data, which means that a court case has been initiated.
However, there are multiple other factors recorded here too. For example, nearly 25% of cases were closed because a victim did not support further action. A total of 8.4% of the offences recorded had not yet been assigned an outcome and were ongoing while around 4% resulted in an out-of-court action, and a small number were assigned to a different agency or body.
