§ Mr. ButlerTo ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what is the average cost of electronic tagging per offender.
§ Mr. John PattenThe total cost of the electronic monitoring trials to date is £602,000 and the number of defendants monitored has been 50. But the former figure includes the cost of setting up three different schemes on an experimental basis and the special production of the different equipment needed. It would not be sensible to take the figure yielded by dividing the latter figure into the former as a realistic average cost for the use of electronic monitoring on a larger scale. The evaluation of the trials now being prepared will attempt to identify the factors which ought to be counted for longer-term cost purposes.