§ Mr. Fordasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department (1) with reference to his written reply of 23 January 1980 of criminal statistics for England and Wales, since Government economic statistics are often based upon constant costs or prices, whether he will apply this policy to statistics of acts involving criminal damage;
(2) with reference to his written reply of 23 January 1980 on criminal statistics for England and Wales, for indictable offences of criminal damage recorded by the police in which firearms were reported to have been used where the damage was estimated at over £20, if he will arrange for this figure to be changed to £100, indexed with a base year of 1980.
§ Mr. BrittanInformation is not collected centrally on the value or nature of the damage involved in each offence of criminal damage and so it is not possible to revalue that damage to constant prices. Statistics on offences of criminal damage in which firearms were reported to have been used relate only to damage valued at over £20 because the police keep detailed records for only those offences. It is desirable that these statistics should be on as comparable a basis as possible to the statistics of all recorded offences of criminal damage and it would weaken the link between these two sets of statistics if the £20 limit were increased. Annual indexing of the lower limit would make the procedures for recording this information unduly complicated.
§ Mr. Fordasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department, with reference to his written reply of 23 January 1980 on criminal statistics for England and Wales concerning the fact that the data in table 9.3 were published for two years only, what statistical analyses had been carried out to justify the decision not to continue publication; and if these analyses and supporting evidence will be made available.
§ Mr. BrittanThe evidence which led us to decide not to continue publication of these tables may be seen from the tables themselves and the notes to them. In particular, the notes record that the age of the suspect was unknown for over 355W 40 per cent. of the cases in each of the years 1976–8, and in most of the categories of the table the number of instances in which the age of the offender is known is very small.