Whitehall’s statistical watchdog has upbraided David Cameron over claims at prime minister’s question time that violent crime and gun crime had “nearly doubled” under Labour.

Sir Michael Scholar, the chair of the UK Statistics Authority, said the prime minister’s accusation was based on an “impossible” comparison of recorded crime data whose use was “likely to damage public trust” in the crime figures.

Scholar, in a letter to Alan Johnson, the shadow home secretary, said that his authority’s view remained that the annual British Crime Survey, which is to be published tomorrow, “provides a more reliable measure of the national trend in violent crime.

The evidence from the BCS is that there has not been an increase in respondents’ experience of violent crime between the late 1990s and 2008/09.”

…more at The Guardian

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