Grayling publicly rebuked for 'stats misuse'
Grayling publicly rebuked for 'stats misuse'
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By Matt Hallam. |  |
Thursday, 04, Feb 2010 05:40
By Alex Steger.
The Conservative shadow home secretary Chris Grayling has been publicly rebuked for using statistics which he claimed suggested a big rise in violent crime under Labour.
The chairman of the UK Statistics Authority Sir Michael Scholar has said that the comparison of police information on violent attacks the between the late 1990s and 2008 -09 was likely to mislead the public if they were not informed that they were collected in different ways.
The rebuke comes after it emerged on Tuesday the Tories had sent out statistics suggesting that violent crime had soared under Labour through out England and Wales. They did however omit Home Office warnings that figures for before 2002 were not comparable with those since.
Before 2002 police decided whether an incident was recorded as violent. Under the new system police recorded any crime as violent if asked to by a victim. As a result the level of recorded violent crime rose by an estimated 35 per cent in the first year.
Mr Grayling has denied any wrongdoing and said he was simply using the figures available.
Sir Michael countered today, declaring: "It would not be appropriate for the authority to seek to intervene in political debate directly. However, where we see that official statistics have been presented or quoted in a way that seems likely to mislead the public, we will publicly draw this to the attention of those involved.
"The growth in violent crime recorded in the police statistics should be attributed, at least in the large part, to a change in recording practice."
He also highlighted that the Conservatives had used the statistics to back up their claims about 'broken Britain' and that the use of the figures and the ensuing public and political debate around them was "damaging trust in official statistics."
Home secretary Alan Johnson called the Conservatives information "dodgy statistics" used by the party "to talk Britain down."