Friday 10th February 2006

Government uses statistical sleight of hand `prove' Licensing Act cuts crime.

The carefully selected crime statistics released by the Home Office on 8 February fail to justify the claims being made by the Government and sections of the alcohol industry that the Licensing Act 2003 succeeded in cutting violent crime during its first month of operation, beginning on 24 November 2005.

The introduction of the Act coincided with a £2.5 million Alcohol Misuse Enforcement Campaign designed to cut alcohol related crime including violent crime, and the new figures cover this period. However, Tony Blair and Home Office Minister Hazel Blears both claimed that the figures also vindicated the new Licensing Act.

The figures were presented so misleadingly that not surprisingly many in the media misunderstood them. The political news service de Havilland, for example, reported:

The Home Office figures for the last three months of 2005 have shown an 11% drop in overall levels of violent crime, and a 21% drop in serious violent crime, compared to the same period in 2004.

The BBC also reported: With more officers on the streets at night, violent crime went down by 11% overall compared with the same period in 2004, with a 21% fall in more serious types of offence, the figures show.

Both of these statements are incorrect. The new Home Office figures do not compare 2005 with 2004: rather, they show the variation between October 2005 and December 2005, and the reason they fail prove the Licensing Act cut crime is because there are normal seasonal variations and violent crime usually falls between October and December. For example, Metropolitan Police figures show an 8% fall in violent crime from October to December 2003 and a 7% fall from October to December 2004.

It is possible that the fall in violent crime during this period was marginally greater in 2005 than in previous years, but that is by no means certain. Given that most violent crime is not reported to police, and therefore not recorded, a better measure is probably attendances at Accident and Emergency Departments. Martin Shalley, President of the British Society of Emergency Medicine, speaking on BBC Radio (Five Live Drive, 8 February 2006), stated that the position was not clear but if anything there may have been an increase in attendances during the period in question.

If there was indeed a greater reduction in the amount of violent crime in December 2005 compared with previous years, the most likely explanation is the Alcohol Misuse Enforcement Campaign. Certainly, it would be disappointing to discover that a special £2.5 million campaign involving every police force in the country had no effect whatever. It is very likely that the unusually cold weather also played a part.

It should be noted that the Government gave repeated assurances that the impact of the Licensing Act 2003 would be thoroughly and objectively monitored and, if necessary, changes would be made to the legislation. A proper assessment of the impact of the Act would require a period of at least one to two years. If the politically motivated release of these highly misleading statistics relating to an exceptional period of a mere five weeks represents the Government's idea of thorough and objective monitoring, then these assurances were entirely bogus.