Home Office errors over London crime figures exposed

HOME OFFICE crime figures for London are at the centre of a major controversy today after the Evening Standard exposed extensive errors in government calculations.

The statistics appeared to show that Scotland Yard's efforts to bring muggers to justice had collapsed in the past 12 months as detection rates slumped from 21.2per cent to 5.6per cent. In reality, the fall was much less dramatic, going from sevenper cent to 5.6per cent.

But police performance in the highly contentious area of street robbery has been distorted by basic maths errors, the Home Office has been forced to admit.

Embarrassingly for new Home Secretary David Blunkett, it has now emerged that mistakes have tainted three quarters of the figures for robbery detection rates in the capital.

Overall, today's figures reveal that crime in London has dropped by 2.2 per cent in the 12 months to March 2001, but the street crime epidemic has soared with some parts of the capital recording increases of more than 40per cent last year. Lambeth has the most lawless streets in London, with more than 4,600 recorded robberies last year. But even Richmond and Kingston have seen startling rises in street robbery and there are now more than 110 muggings a day across London.

But it is the gaffe over detection rates that has caused panic at the Home Office, where senior staff, led by leading official David Povey, were working until the early hours trying to correct the mistakes.

Senior sources close to the Home Secretary admitted Mr Blunkett is "very unhappy". Senior civil servants say the Home Office's director of statistics, Paul Wiles, is expected to correct the mistakes today.

The error comes only days after Mr Blunkett called police chiefs from all 43 forces in England and Wales to a Whitehall summit, telling them they had three months to come up with plans to improve their performance significantly.

Late last night, sources close to Mr Blunkett said: "I know you alerted us to the problem. Mr Blunkett was alerted. He was not happy that there had been a mistake.

"Clearly the figures must be accurate. If there are any mistakes, they must be corrected as a matter of urgency. He wants much greater clarity and quality in the figures."

The Home Office error, which only came to light when the Standard compared today's national crime figures with those published in July last year, would have left the Met open to criticism that their efforts against muggers had all but collapsed in the past 12 months.

Senior Scotland Yard officers are aware of the mistake but are unwilling to comment.

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