§ Mr. Wheelerasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer on how many occasions during each of the last five years Her Majesty's Customs and Excise has collaborated with the police so as to enable a drugs courier to pass through control and proceed to a liaison with other persons; and under those circumstances how many persons have been arrested.
§ Mr. HayhoeI regret that the information is not readily available. On numerous occasions Her Majesty's Customs and Excise have successfully collaborated with police forces both in the United Kingdom and elsewhere to follow through an attempt to smuggle drugs, so that the principals involved were arrested.
§ Mr. Wheelerasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer, for the most convenient recent 12-month period, if he will show in table form the number of seizures by Customs and Excise officers of dangerous drugs, where possible distinguished by category and quantity, firearms, explosives and indecent and obscene articles.
§ Mr. HayhoeApart from small quantities of items such as fireworks, of which no central records are kept, there were no seizures of explosives for the year ended 31 March 1984. The number of seizures of controlled drugs and the quantity of firearms and indecent or obscene articles seized in that year are as follows:
Item Number of seizures Number of items seized Controlled drugs 3,841 Firearms 1,140 Indecent or obscene articles 170,921 The statistics given in this answer should not be taken as an indication of customs resources devoted to controlling the various classes of goods, the large number of indecent items seized suggesting an inordinate amount of effort spent pursuing them. Each detection of indecent material generally yields several items, sometimes running into hundreds or even thousands. This is not the case with firearms, where one detection normally produces only one or two.