asked the Attorney-General how many complaints against police officers alleging assault were referred to the Director of Public Prosecutions for each year since 1970; how many in each year led to prosecution; what per-

1		2	3	4	5	6
Year		Complaints against police alleging assault	Total number that were prosecuted	Percentage of 2 represented by 3	Total number of convictions	Percentage of 2 represented by 5
1970	…	1,093	19	1.74	7	0.64
1971	…	1,126	27	2.40	8	0.71
1972	…	1,638	35	2.14	12	0.73
1973	…	1,868	19	1.02	8	0.43
1974	…	1,982	30	1.51	15	0.76
1975	…	2,405	47	1.95	25	1.04
1976	…	2,645	33	1.25	19	0.72
1977	…	2,888	40	1.39	17	0.59
1978	…	2,820*	37	1.31	16	0.57
1979	…	2,572		Figures not yet available
* 34 complaints are outstanding.

The last two questions concern penalties, records of which the Director of Public Prosecutions does not keep. Most pre-1974 files will have been destroyed, so that this information cannot be obtained from them. Whilst the information could be obtained from files of 1974 and onwards, this would require examining more than 39,000 files and the cost of doing so would be disproportionate to the value of the information.