§ Mr. BayleyTo ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will describe what action he proposes to take to combat crime in north Yorkshire.
§ Mr. Charles Wardle[pursuant to his reply, 14 May 1992 c. 730]: In answering the hon. Member's supplementary question to the above question, I passed on information which I now know to have been inaccurate. The average annual rate of increase in recorded crime in the North Yorkshire police area between 1974 and 1979 was 1.5 per cent. and between 1979 and 1991 7.8 per cent. I apologise to the hon. Member for any inconvenience caused by the earlier inaccurate information.