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Stats watchdog rebukes Grayling for dodgy crime figures

Grayling Letter

By Alex Smith / @alexsmith1982

The BBC’s Mark Easton has been leading the story that Chris Grayling, the Tories’ shadow home secretary, used “profoundly misleading” statistics in order to promote the Tories’ so-called “Broken Britain” agenda.

With David Cameron reportedly thinking of removing Grayling from his shadow cabinet, Easton has now got hold of a letter to Mr Grayling in which Sir Michael Scholar of the UK Statistics Authority rebukes his actions as “likely to damage public trust in statistics.”

In an email to Mark Easton yesterday, Grayling had said:

Grab

But those figures compare statistics before 2002 to those after, despite a big change in the relevant measurementused since:

Stats

This final image was not from Sir Michael Scholar. Somewhere else:

Crime Stats

Alex is the founder and CEO of The Cares Family. He was editor and first director of LabourList in 2009-2010, during which time he established the site as the number one Labour blog, and later an aide to Ed Miliband.

View all articles by Alex Smith
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