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Brown aide ‘forced officials to publish flawed knife figures’
Joe Murphy5 Feb 2009
An aide to Gordon Brown was today accused of forcing civil servants to put out “selective” figures on knife crime.
A committee of MPs was told that a political adviser working at No 10 overruled the objections of civil servants to the flawed figures being published.
The disclosure brought demands for Downing Street to name the anonymous special adviser and to say whether he or she was acting on Mr Brown's orders.
Two months ago there was a furore when unchecked raw data suggesting a steep fall in the number of youngsters being treated in hospital for stab wounds was put out by Home Secretary Jacqui Smith.
The figures were released amid great publicity to show the Government's crackdown on knife crime was a success.
Giving evidence to MPs this afternoon, statistics watchdog Sir Michael Scholar described how the Downing Street aide was “adamant” the figures should be issued ahead of schedule and without proper checking.
He described theevent to the Public Administration Committee as “political interference” and said: “A special adviser at No 10 had said that No 10 wished to publish these numbers. And then I saw what the chief statistician at the NHS said about that. And I saw No 10 were reported as being adamant that the figures should be published — and of course the figures were published.”
Sir Michael, who heads the UK Statistics Authority, has condemned the publication as “premature, irregular and selective”.
He told the MPs: “If you are going to have trust in statistics you can't have statisticians being leaned upon by politicians. They have to be allowed to produce the numbers in a professional, objective and impartial way.”
Committee chairman Tony Wright has asked the Cabinet Office to give him the name of the adviser and to list any disciplinary action taken against him.
National Statistician Karen Dunnell tried to stop the figures being released but they had been handed to the media. She has given her mobile phone number to senior statisticians in government so they can warn her of similar incidents.
Cabinet Secretary Sir Gus O'Donnell has called a meeting of top civil servants to remind them to abide by a code on handling statistics.
Reader views (1)
The dying throes of a band of liars and cheats. The end can't come too soon.
- Keith Price, Luton, 05/02/2009 17:21
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