UK Statistics Chair tells MPs, “police figures can’t be trusted“
On 20th December last year I posted this:
‘Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe has told Radio Four’s Today programme that whistleblowers’ reports “are being investigated, but statistics are generally accurate”. Nothing like investigating stuff with an open mind, that’s what I say. However, six years ago a middle-ranking detective in the Devon & Cornwall force told me that, come the year end, “it’s routine for the senior ranks to grab your stats and start adding, subtracting, and moving things about…anything to hit the targets”.
Whistle Blower Tom Winsor, the chief inspector of constabulary, has written to Hogan-Howe asking for an explanation, after his inspectors found that more 12% of incidents had been wrongly closed without a crime being recorded.
Hogan-Howe has a career axe to grind here, whereas Winsor doesn’t. The latter told the Home Affairs select committee last Tuesday that – rather than asking whether fiddling crime statistics was happening at all, the question was – “where, how much, how severe?” His overall view was that it was almost certain that some manipulation is going on in the recording of crime figures by police officers.
The evidence in favour of that conclusion is overwhelming. Let’s leave it at that.’
Well, I did leave it at that. But then yesterday, this letter was sent by the Chairman of the UK Statistics Authority to MPs:
Put more succinctly, the letter says, “Your coppers lied”.
Since then, we’ve had the matter of Boris Johnson, and his re-election on the back of crime stats that now look, to say the least of it, questionable. I posted this piece six days ago on the subject.
There is a very important question behind all this, and it’s a pretty obvious one to ask: is this industrial scale stats fiddling nothing more than police careerism? Or is it the result of direct pressure from Home Office, Downing Street and London Mayoral Office personnel?
Sounds to me like a good opportunity for some Opposition back bencher to ask an embarrassing question at PMQs. Especially as the chances of Ed Miliband asking it are zero.
And in the meantime, Hogan-Howe, where now?
Massive hat-tips to the Indie, by the way, for their incredible work of late in this field: they’re miles ahead of the pack. Let’s hope the Russian sticks with it.
The Slog 