Johnson and Patel misled on crime stats, official watchdog rules

The Chair of the UK Statistics Authority, Sir David Norgrove, has ruled that Boris Johnson and Priti Patel “misrepresented” crime statistics and presented them in a “misleading way”.

It comes after Liberal Democrat MP Alistair Carmichael reported the prime minister and the home secretary to the watchdog for falsely claiming that crime had fallen by 14% between September 2019 and September 2021, when the exact opposite had happened.

During his statement on the Sue Gray investigation, Johnson claimed “we have been cutting crime by 14%”. In a press release on Thursday, Patel said “This government continues to cut crime through our Beating Crime Plan”.

The latest official crime figures, published by the Office for National Statistics on Thursday, show “a 14% increase in total crime”, and report that decreases in certain types of crime “were related to the coronavirus pandemic and government instructions to limit social contact”.

The prime minister’s claim of a 14% fall in crime also excluded fraud and computer misuse– which have increased by 47% in the last two years.

Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesperson, Alistair Carmichael MP, said:

“This is a damning verdict from the official watchdog. Yet more distortions from Boris Johnson and his Cabinet to play down the extent of crime.

“When the government’s record on crime is so bad that both the prime minister and home secretary feel the need to fiddle the figures, it is clear we need a new approach.

“The prime Minister must come before Parliament to apologise for his latest lie and set the record straight.”