HC Deb 21 July 1994 vol 247 c490W
Mr. Llew Smith

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the reply to the hon. Member for Ceredigion and Pembroke, North of 13 July,Official Report, column 659, if he will set out the reasons why the information requested on prosecutions pressed for vehicle exhaust emissions is not available centrally; and if he will make it his policy to establish arrangements for the central collection of such data.

Mr. Maclean

The information which is collected on court proceedings for summary motoring offences uses a classification system which does not currently distinguish exhaust emission offences from other offences of vehicles in defective condition. It would be possible to provide the information requested only by approaching individual! courts, and this would be disproportionately expensive. Decisions on exactly which information is collected on summary motoring court proceedings, of which there were about 2.5 million in 1992, take into account the need to provide statistics of most interest to Ministers, Members of Parliament and others, the need for the data collection to be cost-effective and the need to reduce the total burden of information gathering on the police, who currently have to provide this information. In any future review of the classification scheme used, account will be taken of all representations which have been made.

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