7.
asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department what are the most recent clear-up rates for each police force area in England and Wales for all recorded crimes.
As the answer is in the form of a table I will, with permission, circulate it in the Official Report. In 1986, the police cleared up:12 per cent. of all recorded notifiable offences in England and Wales.
| Ratio of notifiable offences1 recorded to notifiable offences cleared up by the police, 1986 | |||
| England and Wales | Percentages | ||
| Avon and Somerset | 29 | ||
| Bedfordshire | 29 | ||
| Cambridgeshire | 37 | ||
| Cheshire | 43 | ||
| Cleveland | 34 | ||
| Cumbria | 42 | ||
| Derbyshire | 48 | ||
| Devon and Cornwall | 40 | ||
| Dorset | 34 | ||
| Durham | 39 | ||
| Essex | 37 | ||
| Gloucestershire | 30 | ||
| Greater Manchester | 27 | ||
| Hampshire | 33 | ||
| Hertfordshire | 46 | ||
| Humberside | 30 | ||
| Kent | 34 | ||
| Lancashire | 45 | ||
| Leicestershire | 44 | ||
| Lincolnshire | 36 | ||
| London, City of | 13 | ||
| Merseyside | 37 | ||
| Metropolitan Police | 16 | ||
| Norfolk | 36 | ||
| Northamptonshire | 31 | ||
| Northumbria | 40 | ||
| North Yorkshire | 32 | ||
| Nottinghamshire | 33 | ||
| South Yorkshire | 43 | ||
| Staffordshire | 44 | ||
| Suffolk | 41 | ||
| Surrey | 34 | ||
| Sussex | 30 | ||
| Thames Valley | 35 | ||
| Warwickshire | 36 | ||
| West Mercia | 41 | ||
England and Wales
| Percentages
| ||
| West Midlands | 29 | ||
| West Yorkshire | 38 | ||
| Wiltshire | 36 | ||
| Dyfed-Powys | 51 | ||
| Gwent | 50 | ||
| North Wales | 32 | ||
| South Wales | 39 | ||
| England and Wales | 32 | ||
1 Excluding offences of "other criminal damage" value £20 or under. | |||
27.
asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department what steps he is taking to improve the clear-up rate of crime in England and Wales.
We have taken steps to increase the resources in money, equipment and manpower available to the police; but it is for chief officers to take operational decisions about what proportion of their available resources should be devoted to the investigation of crime in general or of particular crimes.