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Jubilation today in Yorkshire's Rhubarb Triangle with the news that the (PDO) status by the European Commission.

Yes, Yorkshire Forced Rhubarb, the inconceivably-pink vegetable, traditionally grown and harvested by candlelight in "forcing sheds", has joined the ranks of champagne and Parma ham on a list of Europe's specially-protected food and drink.

Janet Oldroyd of the Yorkshire Rhubarb Growers Association said:

"Awarding PDO status to Yorkshire Forced Rhubarb is fantastic news for British food. To the 12 growers left in the rhubarb triangle, a future is now certain. To the hundreds of farmers long since gone this is, in part, recognition of their hard work, dedication and steadfast belief in their product that has kept this industry alive since the early 1950s."

The word "rhubarb" derives from the Latin expression rheum barbarum, the barbarian from the banks of the river Rha (Volga), but the large-leaved Siberian native was a welcome immigrant to the Yorkshire Dales.

Local farmers developed secret methods to produce the tender and sweet version of rhubarb that has won a global fan base. It is thought the closely-guarded techniques involve an upturned bucket.

The exact location of the Rhubarb Triangle is a matter of some debate, :

"The location of the 'triangle' is sometimes described as the triangular area formed between the three cities of Leeds, Wakefield and Bradford, (the green triangle of the map), other sources of information give the points of the triangle as Leeds, Morley and Wakefield, (the blue triangle on the map). However, the largest area of rhubarb cultivation falls outside of both of these 'triangles. The rhubarb is more accurately the triangular area of land between Morley, Wakefield and Rothwell (the red triangle on the map)."

The village of Carlton is apparently the hub of Yorkshire growing, with suggestions recently that it change its name to Rhubarb. The capital city of the Rhubarb Triangles is Wakefield, where an annual rhubarb festival draws visitors from around the country.

West Yorkshire once produced 90% of the world's winter forced rhubarb from the forcing sheds that were common across the fields in the area. "Forcing" means encouraging the plant to shoot early by raising the local temperature - hence the bucket.

Environment Secretary Hilary Benn today praised the enthusiasm and commitment of the rhubarb producers of Yorkshire. "I want to see even more of the best of British produce being protected," he said.

Yorkshire Forced Rhubarb is the 41st British product to be added to the list of legally-protected names which includes Swaledale Cheese, West Country Farmhouse Cheddar and Cornish Sardines.

Protected designation means that all producers must not only be in the designated area, but will be extensively audited, ensuring, it must be hoped, that quality and traditional production methods are maintained. It makes one proud to be British.

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"It takes many good deeds to build a good reputation", Benjamin Franklin once wrote, "and only one bad one to lose it".

If the reputation of the prime minister is threatened by accusations of bullying, the reputation of the self-styled (NBH) charity is also in jeopardy today.

Perhaps there should be a warning posted a few months before every general election: do not enter the fray unless you are strong enough and clean enough to withstand the scrutiny and attacks that are bound to follow.

Yesterday the NBH was a small but vocal organisation which enjoyed some respect in the anti-bullying field. Its website includes an impressive list of organisations it has worked with, including government departments.

But then its founder, Christine Pratt, suggested that staff in Gordon Brown's office had contacted her helpline. How quickly the weather can change.

Today, NBH finds itself under scrutiny by the Charity Commission following more than 60 complaints, has seen one patron quit, another criticise the organisation and has had to deal with accusations of commercial, financial and political impropriety.

Of course, there will be those who see the attacks on the NBH as a classic spoiling operation by supporters of Gordon Brown. But Mrs Pratt's intervention in the row over the PM's temper appears to have backfired spectacularly.

Callers to the helpline are told "your call is confidential to us and you will be treated with dignity and respect at all times". However, since Ms Pratt's claims that her organisation received a number of calls from individual staff members inside No 10, the promise is said to ring a little hollow.

Professor Cary Cooper, an academic and work-place stress expert, resigned as a patron this morning saying that "it was wholly inappropriate" for Mrs Pratt to reveal that staff in Downing Street had contacted the service. "It breached confidentiality grossly" he said.

Conservative MP Ann Widdecombe, another NBH patron criticised the revelations. "It's like a priest in the confessional", she said. "You don't do it."

Another charity, Bullying UK, has called on Mrs Pratt to resign arguing that "it's hard to imagine a more serious breach of confidentiality" adding that "it's extremely concerning that we've had e-mails and tweets from people who think this charity is responsible".

But the criticism of Mrs Pratt and the NBH has spread beyond the ethics of confidentiality as the affair has seen political researchers and journalists powering up their search engines.

They will have discovered how the National Bullying Helpline was originally set up by a commercial company run by Mrs Pratt and her husband David. In 2002 HR & Diversity Management Ltd, (HRDM) began offering employers help in dealing with allegations of bullying. In 2007, NBH was granted charitable status.

However, the two organisations remain very close. Founded by the same people, they share the same address (a PO box in Swindon) and Mrs Pratt accepts that the charity does refer callers to her consultancy. This has led to accusations that the charity crosses the line into acting commercially although she insists the situation has been "approved by the Law Society".

This afternoon the Charity Commission confirmed that two years ago it looked into concerns about the National Bullying Helpline.

"We are reviewing this previous case, which was closed in 2008, in light of the issues raised over the weekend and the complaints received today."

The name "National Bullying Helpline" has a semi-statutory sound to it. However, what little we know about the organisation from its accounts suggest a relatively modest organisation.

A quick look at the reveals that it is 206 days overdue in submitting its accounts and has registered just Β£852 pounds in expenditure since it was established in 2007.

Mrs Pratt has said that the help-line employs 12 volunteers who receive 40 to 50 inquiries a day which suggests spending must now significantly exceed the Β£2.33 a day reported in its only financial records.

Mrs Pratt became involved in the world of bullying consultancy and support after she took BAE Systems to an industrial tribunal in 1995 claiming she had been bullied while working there as a senior secretary. The matter was settled out-of-court with the company agreeing to pay compensation.

However, in 2003 the affair flared up once again when Mrs Pratt accused BAE of breaching the confidentiality of the settlement and .

Some will find irony in the fact that a woman who sought a substantial sum from a company she claimed had breached confidentiality should now find herself accused of the same transgression.

Inevitably there are also accusations of political bias flying around Mrs Pratt and her organisation. Government sources point out that the charity is two-doors down from the Swindon Conservative Association, although this seems pretty thin as evidence of partiality.

The front page of the NBH website includes testimonials from Tory leader David Cameron and Ann Widdecombe.

Another of the patrons is a Conservative councillor Mary O'Connor and Mrs Pratt has said that she was contacted by Tory party officials about the allegations made against Gordon Brown, but insisted the conversations were "irrelevant" to her decision to speak out.

All of this is rather circumstantial stuff and ignores the fact that one of the people who helped her set up the helpline in the first place was Labour MP and Gordon Brown advisor Anne Snelgrove.

Ms Snelgrove severed links with the NBH in 2008 citing concerns over the way helpline calls were referred to Mrs Pratt's consultancy. However, her previous link does not suggest the charity is true blue.

The future of the National Bullying Helpline must be in the balance tonight. However much good work it has done to help people suffering in the work-place, its founder seems to have made a monumental miscalculation in allowing the organisation to become an easy target for those who wish to discredit her.

More troublingly, even those who have no axe to grind with Mrs Pratt and whom she may have regarded as allies, are also making critical noises.

PS: At the time of publication, Sarah Cawood, the TV presenter, has also stood down from the charity.

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If you took a photograph of John Bercow to Bromsgrove High Street, how many people would be able to say who he was?

It could equally be John Denham and Dunstable, John Hemming and Haverfordwest or pretty much any of those politician johnnies and your pick of Britain's pedestrian precincts.

It is a traditional journalistic stunt to demonstrate people's apparent ignorance of politics by asking random members of the British public about some currently prominent member of the House of Commons, as though only recognition of the latest Westminster obsession can demonstrate the electorate knows what is going on.

There is a serious point here, though. As we approach an election, how confident can we be that those individuals who bother to turn out will have the foggiest idea what is at stake?

In the USA, many states spell out the responsibilities of voters, as well as their rights.
In , and , for example, citizens are told that they have a duty to "be informed about the candidates and issues on the ballot".

A study of voters in the 1964 British election by Denis McQuail and Jay Blumler reported:

"It is not only voting, but also the attempt on their part to acquire information about some of the problems facing the country, that electors regard as a duty. Even if this sentiment tends to lie dormant between elections, an imminent campaign will draw the attention of voters to the roles they are supposed to fulfil as citizens and thus encourage a measure of 'obligator' information seeking."

It is down to the politicians to convince a consumerist electorate that it is worth parting with their valuable Xs.

This attitude wouldn't matter if electors were, nevertheless, informed of the key issues upon which the candidates stand. The evidence, though, is not encouraging.

This week, as part of their social trends release, the that fewer people read a newspaper these days.

With the help of the . I have assembled this graph showing 25 years of inexorable decline in the proportion of the adult population which reads a daily newspaper (free-sheet or otherwise).

That traditional newspapers are in decline is hardly a story to hold the front page. We know that people are increasingly getting their news from other sources, particularly from the internet.
confirms the theory in the US where the internet appears to have overtaken papers as a source of news.

British internet news sites, including this one, have seen rapid growth over the last few years, but there must still be a question as to whether people are consuming more or less news overall.

It has never been easier to be in touch with the latest headlines: huge news factories churn out breaking stories around the clock on television and the internet.

For those wanting to dig deeper, party policies, analysis and debate can all be found at the click of a mouse.

But if British citizens take their "duty to be informed" seriously one might expect to see a spike in newspaper sales, TV and radio news audiences during election campaigns.

In fact the evidence is the opposite. During the watershed 1997 election, the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ's Nine O'clock News lost nearly a third of its audience when it added an extra 15 minutes of special election coverage each weeknight.

Elections are not an audience winner. Internal Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ research has found: "very few people felt there was too little election news, whilst a significant minority felt there was too much".

It would seem that politics is a turn off. A quick glance at the general election turnout over the last 35 years reminds us how the even more basic "civic duty" of casting your vote has declined.

Partly, this may be a consequence of a more managerial and less ideological politics. Voters may feel less concerned about taking part if they believe, not unreasonably, that the policies on offer from the potential victors look remarkably similar.

It may reflect cynicism and distrust of the political elite. "They are all as bad as each other" is a common explanation for staying at home on polling day.

Perhaps the news media is at fault. An international expert on press and public policy, Professor Wolfgang Donsbach, .

"There can be no question that journalism itself has contributed to its declining reputation by succumbing to sensationalism, tabloidization, and public relations. The profession is not only a victim but an actor in this process. But the problem is that, in contrast to most other professions, challenges to journalism are challenges to democracy! When the public is less interested in civic news and when the quality of the news is on the decline, the basis for informed public discourse is undermined."

There is a third party which might want to do a little soul-searching: the electorate itself. I doubt there are many who would suggest every citizen should recognise a picture of John Hemming MP from 10 paces, but there is an argument for stressing that being a voter is both a right and a responsibility.

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Items you are likely to receive this Valentine's Day:
  • a scarlet heart-shaped balloon
  • a pink furry gonk which winks
  • an innuendo-laden card

Items you are unlikely to receive this Valentine's Day:
  • an engagement ring
  • the promise of life-long faithfulness
  • a wedding invitation

Love may be in the air, but commitment is out of fashion. show that marriage in England and Wales is at its lowest ebb since records began in 1862.

The point at which tying the knot became "so last year" can be identified from marriage-rate data. It was 1985. Up to then, going right back to the time of the American Civil War, the marriage rate for men had hovered between about 50 and 80 in every 1,000 single blokes. After 1985, the rate never peaked above 50 again - now having fallen to just 21.8. .

It is often assumed that this collapse in marriage has coincided with a high divorce rate. Actually, the reverse is true. .

Why? Well, a plausible explanation is that those that do get married these days - a dwindling proportion - are those most determined to make a go of it. The connubial ranks are an increasingly committed bunch.

If this is the case, it presents something of a paradox: encouraging more people to wed may actually push up the divorce rate. You might be able to use the tax system to promote marriage, but legislation is not particularly good at inspiring faithfulness.

When the balloon has sagged, the gonk has lost its wink and the genitalia gag has been dropped in the recycling, will those Valentine promises of love everlasting still survive?

Update 15 Feb: I thought it might be interesting to plot the male marriage-rate data going right back to the first statistics in 1862.

Quite a fascinating story is revealed, I think.

The first two peaks in 1915 and 1920 must reflect the fact that millions of unmarried young men were killed in World War I, pushing up the rate.

The next spike in the marriage rate comes just as World War II begins, perhaps reflecting young couples' desire to get hitched before servicemen headed off to fight.

It is interesting that the line then rises through the sixties to another peak in 1972. There was a more committed aspect to the sexual revolution than one might have assumed.

After that point it has been almost all downhill, as discussed above.

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to the shadow home secretary Chris Grayling. This time the data watchdog tells him that his "they are all it" defence for using misleading crime stats does not stand up.

Mr Grayling replied to the UKSA's rebuke in an unapologetic letter (see below) which simply argued that "a wide range of organisations" have used crime statistics "in the same way as the Conservative Party".

You may recall how this blog revealed that the Conservatives were claiming big rises in violent crime since Labour came to power by comparing two years in which the figures had been counted in very different ways. A warning on the statistics advises that the data are "not directly comparable".

Mr Grayling's letter attaches examples of what he claims are organisations including the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Office, the Liberal Democrats and the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ making exactly the same kind of comparisons.

However, Sir Michael simply says that "(w)ith regard to the examples cited in the attachment to your letter, these largely pre-date the creation of the Statistics Authority and/or they sufficiently, in our view, qualify the figures compared."

Mr Grayling's first example is from a Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Office document entitled .

This seems a curious example since the third sentence on the page reads:

Earlier, the document explains why Mr Grayling should look to the British Crime Survey for crime trends, rather than non-comparable recorded stats.

Mr Grayling's second example is from the :

A few pages earlier in this document there is, once again, a very clear warning as to why it is unwise to use police recorded figures to reveal trends in violent crime.

Mr Grayling's third example is from a .

The shadow home secretary draws Sir Michael's attention to the second bullet point which states that recorded violence fell 1% the previous year - the first such fall for eight years (ie since before the recording change).

However, Mr Grayling does not mention the warning on the previous page:

He also claims the .

However, the type below the graph seems to contradict Mr Grayling's assertion, spelling out that the "statistics appear to indicate a year-on-year increase" but adding that "this coincides with a comprehensive overhaul of the way the figures are counted".

Finally, Mr Grayling quotes .

He may have a point that the claim is not backed up by the data, but the Liberal Democrats were not suggesting - as he does - that the claim of a "significant rise" in violent crime is supported by statistical evidence.

Mr Grayling has told the media that he will "take account" of the UKSA's concerns over the 2002/3 recording change but will continue to make the comparisons - with a caveat where necessary.

The question is what this caveat might say. Since Sir Michael's point is that the comparisons the Conservatives have been using should not be made because they are potentially misleading, it will be interesting to see how the party words the warning.

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I can reveal that shadow Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Secretary Chris Grayling has just been sent a sharp letter from telling him that his use of figures in violent crime is "likely to damage public trust in official statistics".

Chairman of the UK Statistics Authority Sir Michael Scholar says he does "not wish to become involved in political controversy" but writes that he "must take issue" with what Mr Grayling "said yesterday about violent crime statistics", referring to .

Here is the letter in full:

The authority's concern follows this blog's observations (here and here) that the Conservative Party has been using non-comparable stats to suggest big rises in violent crime.

In notes attached to the letter from Sir Michael (see below), the authority says: "we regard a comparison, without qualification, of police recorded statistics between the late 1990s and 2008/09 as likely to mislead the public".

Instead, the UKSA advises the shadow Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Secretary that: "The British Crime Survey (BCS) provides a more reliable measure of the national trend in violent crime. This is because the BCS is not affected by changes in reporting, police recording and local policing activity, and has been measuring crime in a consistent way since the survey began in 1981."

Mr Grayling , however, that he regarded the BCS as "fundamentally flawed":

"There are certainly changes in the recording methods, but the point is that they are the only comparators available. They are published by the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Office... as an opposition party, we don't make the statistics. We can only use what the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Office publishes."

The BCS suggests there has been a 49% fall in violent crime since 1995 - an unhelpful conclusion for any politician keen to demonstrate that violence has "risen significantly" under Labour.

A spokesperson in Mr Grayling's office did not appear to know about the letter, but I will report the response as soon as I have it.

Update 1242: In the meantime, below are some links to related posts at this blog from the past couple of years.

The shadow home secretary was, in this case, defending his decision to issue violent crime figures to every Conservative candidate in England and Wales which were based on a comparison between figures for 1999-00 and 2008-09. The source statistics include a warning that a change in recording practice in April 2002 means that "figures before and after that date are not directly comparable".

The UK Statistics Authority has, in the past, issued criticism of comparable uses of statistics by the government. Sir Michael Scholar wrote to Downing Street in December 2008 to say that the use of potentially "misleading and inaccurate" statistics on knife crime was "corrosive of public trust in official statistics and incompatible with the high standards which we are all seeking to establish".

In June last year, Sir Michael wrote to Equalities Minister Harriet Harman saying that her use of statistics "may undermine public trust in official statistics" and "risks giving a misleading quantification of the gender pay gap".

The UKSA code on the use of national statistics is legally binding on Whitehall departments, but the authority is keen to emphasise its role in policing the use of official data by those operating outside government.

Update 1322: A Conservative "rebuttal note" issued by Mr Grayling's office this afternoon argues that "(n)ot only is it commonplace and totally acceptable to make these comparisons on the basis of published Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Office recorded crime figures, to do anything else would be irresponsible".

The note dismisses the British Crime Survey (BCS) as "essentially an opinion survey" and "highly flawed", arguing that "recorded crime statistics... demonstrate trends in violent crime because these are real crimes reported to real police stations".

Mr Grayling regards the recorded crime figures as "the best available measure of the amount of crime that occurs in society", although statisticians might point out that far more violent incidents are identified in the BCS. The survey reflects victim accounts of more than two million crimes of violence, as compared with around 900,000 incidents being recorded by police.

I have written before about the weaknesses within the British Crime Survey. As Mr Grayling points out, it did not until recently interview under-16-year-olds about crimes they may have suffered; nor does it include crimes such as murder and manslaughter. Its methodology means it does not cover the population living in group residences like care homes, and it does not include crime against commercial or public sector bodies.

But while it may be far from a complete picture of crime, it is a fuller picture than the recorded statistics offer. And the point about the survey is that it is designed to provide information about crime trends. With violent crime, the trend has been downwards or flat for 15 years. Only if you believe that there has been an equivalent - or rather, a greater - increase in crime suffered by people within the categories not covered by the survey could it be argued that the trend is the reverse.

The difficulty for Mr Grayling at this point is that his election strategy on crime is based on the use of figures which the independent watchdog on official statistics says he should not use.

Update 1556: Chris Grayling has now responded to the UKSA letter, saying that he "will take account of the request by the Statistics Authority, particularly with regard to the changes to recording practices made in 2002-3".

However, the shadow Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Secretary stresses that he will "continue to use recorded crime statistics, because they reflect an important reality; that the number of violent crimes reported to police stations, and particularly serious violent crimes, has increased substantially over the past decade, even taking into account any changes to data collection".

I have asked for further explanation of what this means.

Does it mean he will withdraw the figures he sent out to constituencies which the UKSA believes are "likely to damage public trust in official statistics"?

Does he still regard it as "irresponsible" to use anything other than the recorded statistics to look at trends?

And, given the UKSA's note saying the British Crime Survey is "a more reliable measure of the national trend in violent crime", does he still dismiss the BCS as "essentially an opinion survey" and "highly flawed"?

In response, his office simply said: "you have got the line".

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Following revelations on my blog last week, shadow home secretary Chris Grayling has defended the Conservative Party's use of figures suggesting "significant" rises in violent crime - even though the official source statistics warn they should not be used in that way.

In fact, the party has now used the data in a release sent to every constituency in England and Wales - statistics which one police force has described as "extremely misleading" and which appear to have been labelled "inaccurate" by some senior Conservatives.

Mr Grayling argues he has done nothing wrong and has accused the government of using statistics in exactly the same way to suit their purposes.

Official statisticians say it is not possible to compare violent crime stats before and after April 2002 because of a big change in the way such incidents were recorded.

Before 2002 the decision as to whether an incident was a violent crime had been taken by police. After 2002, officers were obliged to record all incidents as violent crimes if the alleged victim said that is what it was. The aim was to stop police fiddling the figures and to get a better picture of violence. The obvious consequence was to send the raw numbers shooting up.

A warning printed on recorded crime stats after April 2002 says that "figures before and after that date are not directly comparable".

Now former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith has written to me to say he agrees that such comparisons are profoundly misleading.

Mr Duncan Smith founded the policy think-tank "Centre for Social Justice" (CSJ) which includes on its board party heavyweights William Hague, Oliver Letwin and David Willetts.

He writes:

"(T)he CSJ has long understood the inaccuracy of directly comparing present crime levels with those published before the National Crime Recording Standard (NCRS) was introduced - which as you note changed recording methods significantly and has rendered direct numerical comparisons with pre 2002/03 levels inaccurate."

Despite such anxieties, Conservative HQ has done exactly that and produced a list of "direct numerical comparisons" which have been punted to every candidate in England and Wales. The full release goes on for pages, but this extract gives you an idea of how they compare 2008/09 figures with stats from 1999/00.

Some Tory constituencies have started using the dodgy data - with predictable results.

In Milton Keynes, local MP Mark Lancaster's office put out a statement last week claiming that there were 6,015 "violent attacks" in the town last year, reflecting a 236% increase over the past decade.

The figures were given to Mr Lancaster by Conservative Central Office:

Milton Keynes sounds like Dodge City. That's a "violent attack" every 90 minutes.

However, , the town's police says that the statistics are "extremely misleading".

Local commander Nikki Ross told the local paper that the figure includes "everything from public order offences, to harassment, to allowing a dog to be out of control in a public place".

"The actual number of people who were victims of serious violence was 81," she said.

The point here is that the phrase "violent attacks" does not equate directly with the crime category "violence against the person". For instance, if someone swears at you in the street and you complain to the police about it, that incident goes down as an act of "violence against the person".

There was a similar reaction from police in Colchester. whether "shock north Essex crime figures add up". The story reports how:

"research, released by the Conservative Party, compares the number of recorded violent crimes against the person for 1999-2000 with 2008-09. They reveal the figure has risen dramatically, from 789 a decade ago, to 2,578 last year, an increase of 227 per cent."

However, the report goes on, "the research has been disputed by the police, as they compare periods in which crime data was recorded differently".

The Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) explained to me how it was they who pushed through the 2002 change in recording violence "to better reflect demands made of the police". Acpo knew that "the move would result in more crime being recorded, regardless of underlying trends".

That is why the warning on not making comparisons is so important.

"This caveat is stressed within official crime statistics to ensure that the public have the chance to reach balanced and informed conclusions on matters which are important to individuals and communities."

The architect of the Conservative strategy on crime is the shadow home secretary Chris Grayling, so I asked him about the use of comparative data. Did he think it was reasonable to employ them in this way?

"What else do we use?" Mr Grayling asked me, arguing that the figures were still being used by the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Office and, therefore, it was legitimate for him to make comparisons across a decade.

He sent me three examples where, he argues, the government itself has compared violence statistics from before and after 2002.

Example 1:

Robberies peaked in 2001/02 at 121,359. The figure for 2007/08 is 30% lower than this peak.

Example 2: : "The number of most serious violence against the person offences increased by 21 per cent between 1998/99 to 2006/07, a much smaller rise than that of 111 per cent in other VAP (violence against the person) over the same period".

However, Mr Grayling did not send me the preceding paragraph which includes the warning: "Recorded VAP has more than doubled in the eight years between 1998/99 and 2006/07.

"Nearly one third of this increase occurred between 2001/02 and 2002/03, and much of this can be attributed to increases in recording of violent crime following the introduction of the National Crime Recording Standard (NCRS) in April 2002."

Example 3: although, again, Mr Grayling did not refer to the preceding paragraph which warns that "(t)rends in police figures are affected by changes in recording practices, coverage, public reporting and police activity".

At first sight, it would appear that the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Office have made comparisons across the change in recording systems when it has suited them to do so - albeit with warnings posted elsewhere in their documents.

They would also argue that figures for the most serious violence are far less affected by the recording change than minor incidents.

There is another argument that Mr Grayling makes. He echoes the view of Mr Duncan Smith who, in his email to me, points out that people in the most deprived neighbourhoods are more reluctant to report violence to pollsters or police.

"Due to a lack of confidence in our largely dysfunctional justice system, there is a lower probability of people reporting crime in very deprived areas, and that within these areas people are also less likely to respond to victimisation surveys - yet we know from research that these communities are most impacted by crime and its contribution to social breakdown."

However, this problem is not new and is, therefore, not going to have a significant effect on the trend data. The only way it can be used to argue that violent crime is rising when BCS data suggests it is falling is if one believes that violence is increasing massively in poor areas but victims in those areas are revealing it less.

That there is more crime out there than either the British Crime Survey or police records identify is to state the obvious.

There are roughly 4.6 million crimes recorded by police in England and Wales each year. The British Crime Survey identifies about 10 million crimes. The Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Office recently suggested the annual number of offences was closer to 60 million crimes. And research for Downing Street in 2000 estimated the number of individual crimes at around 130 million a year.

Lots of violence goes unreported or unidentified - domestic violence and child abuse are common-place but won't necessarily show up in police records or survey data. The question, though, is whether violence is getting better or worse. Many people feel it is getting worse, but the statistical evidence suggests it is getting better.

There are, perhaps, three reasons to regret that the Conservatives are publishing the violent crime comparisons in this way:
  • The comparisons are inaccurate
  • The misleading figures will unnecessarily alarm people
  • It makes it more difficult to identify solutions

Crime figures are notoriously misused by politicians of all flavours. Readers may recall my revelations on the shocking use of knife-crime figures by the government in a so-called "fact sheet" in December 2008 (numbers misrepresented to try and convince people that Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Office action on knives had been effective) despite the National Statistician pleading with ministers not to release the inaccurate data.

The selective use and spinning of crime statistics by politicians over decades helps explain why many people have lost complete faith in the data. Trust will not be restored by an election campaign in which official numbers are routinely abused.

Update 0900, 3 February 2010: .

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