§ Lord DIGBYasked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether they will provide figures to show the number of murders known to the police and the number of offences reduced to manslaughter by reason of diminished responsibility since 1964 on the same basis as the information made available in the House of Commons Official Report for 17th June 1965, col. 103.
§ Lord BELSTEADThe basis requested for the information has been found to be 2147WA unsatisfactory as the police, when initially classifying the offences, sometimes do not have sufficient evidence to be able to distinguish between murder and other forms of homicide. The information is now on the basis of offences initially recorded as homicide; the numbers of offences initially recorded as homicide are available from 1957 and the numbers of such offences which are decided by the court to be offences of Section 2 manslaughter are available from 1967. Both series of figures are published annually in Criminal Statistics, England and Wales (Tables 9.1 and 9.3 of the volume for 1977, Cmnd. 7289).