§ Mr. Wallaceasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department if, pursuant to the answer given by the hon. Member for Grantham (Mr. Hogg) on 10 February, regarding the deployment of police officers on specialist traffic duties, he will state the estimated cost of providing the information covering the period prior to 1986 sought by the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland.
§ Mr. Douglas HoggThe estimate of the proportion of police resources devoted to road traffic duties which I gave in response to the hon. Member's previous questions on this subject (5 February 1987. c783 and 10 February 1987, c174) was derived from returns held on a computer. Returns for earlier years are stored manually and the records are not in a form which necessarily enables the information required to be extracted. The initial cost of examining the manual returns and extracting the immediately available information is estimated to be of the order of £300. Further costs are likely through follow-up inquiries to try to fill gaps or explain discrepancies.