asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will provide a breakdown of the latest crime statistics according to the ethnic origins of the offenders.

For many offences recorded by the police the offender is not known. Neither is information on ethnic origin regularly collected centrally for known offenders, apart from those received into prison department establishments. Information available on the ethnic appearance of offenders in the Metropolitan police district between 1977 and 1983 was published in a Home Office statistical bulletin issue 22/84, a copy of which is in the Library of the House.