Police Patrolling

Mr. Ruffley
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what estimate she has made of the average proportion of a police officer's day spent on patrol in each of the last 10 years.

Mr. McNulty
Data on time spent on patrol only offers a partial indication of policing activity. Information on time spent on front-line duties by police officers has only been collected since 2003-04. Year by year information is set out in the following table.

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|       |Percentage time spent on front-line duties|
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|2003-04|62.1                                      |
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|2004-05|62.6                                      |
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|2005-06|63.1                                      |
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|2006-07|64.2                                      |
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