§ Mr. Dobsonasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what was the total cost of Her Majesty's Customs and Excise action which led to the prosecution of the Gay's the Word bookshop.
§ Mr. Brooke[pursuant to his reply, 7 July 1986, c. 80]: Information about costs is not kept in sufficient detail for Customs and Excise to be able to identify the costs attributable to the "Gay's the Word" action. To obtain them would require all the staff involved to estimate retrospectively the time spent on the case—in most cases intermittently over a period of more than two years. It would be subject to a considerable margin of error and could be obtained only at disproportionate cost.