Restore Trust In Crime Figures

The Home Office should be stripped of responsibility for publishing crime statistics because public trust in the figures has been eroded, partly by departmental manipulation of their timing and context, the government's official statistics watchdog has ruled.

The deeply embarrassing finding by the Statistics Commission follows a long debate between the commission, the Home Office and the government's official national statistician.

"We believe any such control is almost always counterproductive in terms of public confidence. It creates an environment in which the media and the public assume they are receiving a filtered, government-friendly version of the truth, even though the statistical message may not be either of these things."

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