§ Dr. Marekasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to his answer of 20 February, Official Report, columns 870–1, what information his Department collects relating to the specific nature of offences as opposed to offenders, under the Road Traffic Acts in the metropolis.
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§ Mr. Douglas HoggThe details collected centrally on court proceedings are the same for all police force areas. Table 5 of "Offences Relating to Motor Vehicles, England and Wales, 1985, Supplementary Tables", shows the types of offence for which separate information was collected up to 31 December 1986 and for which the statistics are thought to be reliable. Details of the circumstances of offences are not collected centrally. More detailed information may be available locally, but the extent of local record keeping varies widely. As the result of a review in 1986 of the amount of detail on less serious motoring offences required to meet the needs of government, the costs of police forces and the details readily available to them, the number of types of motoring offences on which separate information is collected was reduced from 146 shown in table 5 to 64 from the beginning of 1987.