Crime statistics 'should be made independent'

The Statistics Commission said responsibility for compiling and issuing crime data should be put at "arm's length" from the Home Office. The British Crime Survey (BCS) - an indicator of crime trends based on thousands of interviews with members of the public - should be run by the Office for National Statistics instead, the report said.

The calls follow concern that official crime figures are not trusted by the public. There are currently two different sets of data - based on crimes recorded by police and on the BCS - which can often paint a very confusing and sometimes conflicting picture of crime in the UK.

Business leaders have also long complained that official crime figures ignore crimes committed against businesses, leading to such offences being given a lower priority by police forces. A study last year suggested that as many as 20 million crimes against firms go unrecorded each year.

Total crime

Today's 190-page Statistics Commission study pointed out that the government's "policy machine" of ministers and their press officers currently have responsibility for both publishing crime data and reacting to it.

"We do not believe trust can be built up whilst the same ministers, advisers and senior officials are directly involved both in publishing the figures and in setting out the Government's position," the report concluded.

"Responsibility for the compilation and publication of crime statistics should be located at arm's length from Home Office policy functions."

It called on the Home Office and the Treasury to draw up a plan to move responsibility for the BCS to the independent Office for National Statistics. It said the Home Office could retain its duty to compile the recorded crime figures from individual police forces, providing the work was done at arm's length from ministers and policy teams.

Statistics review

The Statistics Commission also called for work to be done on developing a new figure, which would give an idea of the total amount of crime in Britain.

This could be a weighted figure based on total penalties handed out by the courts for different types of offences, or an estimate of the cost of crime to society, it suggested.

Earlier this year the Home Office appointed a cross-party group to examine how crime statistics could be improved. It is due to hand its report to Home Secretary John Reid this month.

A Home Office spokeswoman said: "We welcome this report and in particular its recognition that the crime statistics are broadly fit for policy-making purposes.

"We will study its recommendations and consider them alongside the conclusions of the review into crime statistics, which we expect to report later this year, before deciding the best way to proceed with the future of production and dissemination of crime statistics."