Shadow Home Secretary, Dominic Grieve, has today announced two key reforms to the handling of crime statisics which would be introduced by a Conservative Government.
Firstly, based on the premise that the public do not currently trust crime statistics, he has said that under a Conservative Government, they would no longer be compiled by the Home Office.
Instead, responsibility for compiling and publishing both recorded crime statistics and the British Crime Survey would be placed with the Office for National Statistics, whose work is deemed more trustworthy by the general public.
But there's another reason for the change: to stop the Government from being able to manipulate and spin the figures, as was the case, for example, with the premature release of knife crime statistics last month. Sir Michael Scholar, the chairman of the UK Statistics Authority, criticised the Government for that, resulting in Jacqui Smith having to apologise to Parliament.
So, secondly, the Conservatives would abolish the pre-release access that ministers, civil servants and special advisers have to such crime statistics.
Mr Grieve said:
"Labour have proved themselves serial manipulators of official statistics. Their obsession with covering up, rather than facing up to, problems has meant serious violent crime has only got worse. A new approach is required [which is why] we propose two radical reforms of crime statistics."
"Labour have proved themselves serial manipulators of official statistics".
Yes, and one of the main perpetrators is one Gordon Brown, whose manipulation of figures is nothing short of scandalous. Can we, for instance, insist on the production of inflation figures that give a more realistic measure of changes in the real cost of living and ensure that all the nation's liabilities are on the balance sheet?
Posted by: David Belchamber | January 09, 2009 at 12:51
Good stuff from Grieve, I have to say I'm more impressed with him than I thought I would be.
I hope this story gets wide publicity but wonder if it's good politics to release this on a Friday which tends to be a light for political news.
Posted by: Malcolm Dunn | January 09, 2009 at 13:00
David Fraser's "A Land Fit for Criminals" gave the statistics a good going over and showed that the number of crimes committed are actually 4-5 times higher than the reported figures (the proper figures were based on an analysis by independent statisticians accepted by the Home Office). The BCS is unreliable as it excludes certain crimes and crimes committed by minors. In fact the BCS only covers about a third of all crimes.
So can we please have a crime measurement that doesn't exclude anybody or any crime and which takes into account as accurately as possible both reported and unreported crime.
Posted by: RichardJ | January 09, 2009 at 13:10
Good stuff yet again from the hard-working Grieve
Posted by: smallbluething | January 09, 2009 at 13:46
As a means to help restore public confidence in statistics, this is clearly a step in the right direction.
Labour can simply not be trusted with "official statistics". The lack of public trust in these statistics is understandable, due in part to the frequency with which they are manipulated by this Government.
Dominic Grieve's proposals are both pragmatic and much needed. Surely, even Labour "spin" could not give a different impression in this case?
Posted by: Julian L Hawksworth | January 09, 2009 at 14:10
Good work from Dominic Grieve. A bit of honesty in crime statistics might go some way to restoring confidence in the Police and the work they are doing. Grieve's started off the year with plenty of vigour.
Posted by: Adam | January 09, 2009 at 14:28
We're starting to motor now. Keep it up.
Posted by: Matt Wright | January 09, 2009 at 17:30
UKSA sets the standards and framework for ONS to operate in, so requests should go there otherwise the ONS may carry on as it has up to now.
"The UK Statistics Authority has three main functions:
1. oversight of the Office for National Statistics (ONS) - its executive office
2. monitoring and reporting on all UK official statistics, wherever produced, and
3. independent assessment of official statistics
"
Who do you think produced the last figures? But before ONS bashing, ONS remit is to produce (slant towards) what is asked for by requesting body.
Certainly (3) Independent Assessment must be used more if Grieve and others are to achieve the goal they want.
Posted by: snegchui | January 09, 2009 at 19:18
Yes, in a small article in today's Telegraph, by Tom Whitehead, in which he comments on Dominic Grieve's article further on in the paper, Mr. Whitehead starts his article:-
'The true scale of juvenile offending was being masked with "creative maths" by the Government, ITS OWN FORMER HEAD OF YOUTH OFFENDING SAID.' (my capitals)
'Rod Morgan, the former chairman of the Youth Justice Board, said that up to 20,000 fines handed to youngsters were excluded from official statistics.
'He accused ministers of a "smoke and mirrors" exercise to show that the number of children entering the justice system had fallen.'
It comes to something when one of the Governments own employees goes public with these kind of comments!
Posted by: Patsy Sergeant | January 09, 2009 at 22:42
It's a better idea as it will as he says promote greater public confidence in the statistics.
Surely this unveils a greater problem however as to the lacking of confidence per se in government itself, and that matter must also be attended ASAP before the whole country debarks from politics altogether for reason that it offers no point except to tax us, demoralise us, suppress us and to remove everything we once were readily able to identify as British in our democracy, our freedoms, our justices and our liberties.
Posted by: rugfish | January 10, 2009 at 14:23
There is a sense in which the question of how much crime there is, and whether it has gone up or down is unanswerable, somewhat like trying to work out how many people sneezed today rather than yesterday. My own experience is that there is plenty of crime, and I do not have much confidence in the figures, especially as related by government. A huge amount of anti-social behaviour goes unremarked on for example. I suspect that the true amount of bad conduct is at high as it ever was, give or take a few percent. True criminal intent is also masked by the increasing precautions taken by the public (lock all doors, keep away from dodgy areas etc.). I am yet to be entirely convinced by the BCS; I suspect that its usefulness is overrated. Can we perhaps concentrate a little more on mimicking crime policy in Singapore?
Posted by: Richard Nalty | May 11, 2009 at 19:19