§ Mr. Meacherasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the replies I gave to questions by the Oldham, West on 17 March, if he will ascertain from the Commissioner of Police for the Metropolis why it would be disproportionately costly to provide the information on arrests under the "sus" laws.
§ Mr. WhitelawI am informed by the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis that information concerning arrests followed by no further action is not collected centrally in the Metropolitan police district and to obtain it would require an extensive manual examination of the entries in a large number of registers held at individual police stations. Such a procedure would be extremely costly, and as some entries may not be sufficiently detailed any resultant statistics could be unreliable.