§ Mr. Teddy Taylorasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he is now in a position to publish the provisional numbers of assaults on police in 1980; and if he will also publish a table showing the comparable number of such assaults in each of the previous 20 years.
§ Mr. Mayhew[pursuant to his reply, 8 June 1981, c. 14.]: The only data readily available, which are published annually in "Criminal Statistics, England and Wales", relate to the numbers of persons prosecuted for certain offences of assault, restriction, or obstruction of a constable—offence 104, table 1(a) of the volume for 1979, Cmnd. 8098; data for other classifications of assault may include cases where the victim was a police officer but the information collected centrally does not separately distinguish these cases. Statistics for 1980 will not be 370W available until later in the year. Figures comparable with those for 1979, which are on a new counting basis, are available only for 1977 and 1978 and are given in the following table:
Persons proceeded against for certain offences of assault etc. on a constable* England and Wales Numbers 1977 10,580 1978 10,965 1979 12,078 * Offences covered in classification 104. Excludes persons given a more severe sentence for an indictable offence at the same court proceedings.