Stats authority rebukes Grayling as “misleading”
2:40 pm - February 4th 2010
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We revealed yesterday how Tory home secretary Chris Grayling was using misleading data to conjure up visions of a “Broken Society” when the data flatly contradicted him.
He was slammed even by colleague Iain Duncan Smith, who said that such comparisons were “profoundly misleading”. Thrown under the bus by his own colleague.
Now, the chairman of the UK Statistics Authority has slammed Grayling too.
Sir Michael Scholar, chairman of the UK Statistics Authority, wrote a letter to him today stating:
I do not wish to become involved in political controversy, but I must take issue with what you said yesterday about violent crime statistics, which seems to me likely to damage public trust in official statistics.
The Times called the letter “an astonishing public rebuke”
The letter starts by saying:
The UK Statistics Authority is concerned that recent political and media debate about trends in violent crime has misrepresented the data and is, therefore, damaging trust in official statistics. We have looked in particular at comparisons between recorded violent offences in the late 1990s and 2008/09 which have been the subject of recent controversy in the national media. We regard a comparison, without qualification, of police recorded statistics between the late 1990s and 2008/09 as likely to mislead the public.
Yesterday, Grayling was also criticised by police figures for his error.
Grayling has yet to apologise.
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Sunny Hundal is editor of LC. Also: on Twitter, at Pickled Politics and Guardian CIF.
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Reader comments
It’s sad to see comments all over the place, on the BBC website for instance, talking about how “statistics can’t be trusted anyway”.
The lesson is not that statistics mean nothing, it’s that they are useful if they’re clearly presented. Grayling taking two incomparable statistics and attempting to compare them being wrong doesn’t mean those statistics are useless when used appropriately.
@MikeSC
Hear hear… when the collection methods are representative and when used in context statistics are invaluable. The kind of shenanigans Grayling tried to pull, as pointed out by Michael Scholar, are the very reason we get comments like that.
Let’s not forget that Grayling’s immediate predecessor, Dominic Grieve, criticised the British Crime Survey in the Telegraph for failing to record homicides.
It would be a hell of a feat if it did record homicides, given that its a self-reporting victimisation survey and could record data on homicides only the if victim succeeded in completing the questionnaire.
Grayling is just using the same tactic as the US right-wing lie machine. He does not care if he is called out for the distortion. The intention is to get the lie out there and hope few pay any attention to the rebuttal.
It’s truly outrageous and deeply cynical that he continues to peddle the broken record on ‘rising violent crime’ when he knows the opposite is actually the case.
He knows that many British people strongly believe – despite all evidence to the contrary – that violent crime is still rising and thinks that the Tories (as usual) can capitalise on this. Sadly, he’s probably right.
Why is this myth such a pervasive one?
It’s the same as the thing about rising high street prices. I sat through an hours programme with some family a year or two ago all about how prices on most goods have actually fallen over the past few decades. At the end of the programme consesus in the room was basically, ‘I don’t care what it says I want to believe prices have gone up’. And a whole slagging session kicked of about this and that product that had gone up when the programme had categorically shown those same things had dropped in price. Some things people just seem to need to think have got worse.
Freedom of speech is one thing but flagrantly lying to the public is exactly the sort of thing that should have Grayling up on charges of electoral fraud of some description. It’s abundantly clear that he is lying through his back teeth, and the public should be protected from such words coming from an elected politician.
Reactions: Twitter, blogs
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sunny hundal
RT @libcon: Stats authority publicly rebukes Chris Grayling; says he is "misleading"! http://bit.ly/cKBbLQ
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Chris Paul
RT @pickledpolitics: RT @libcon: Stats authority publicly rebukes Chris Grayling; says he is "misleading"! http://bit.ly/cKBbLQ
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RupertRead
RT @pickledpolitics: RT @libcon: Stats authority publicly rebukes Chris Grayling; says he is "misleading"! http://bit.ly/cKBbLQ
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Liberal Conspiracy
Stats authority publicly rebukes Chris Grayling; says he is "misleading"! http://bit.ly/cKBbLQ
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unslugged
RT @dnotice: RT @libcon Stats authority publicly rebukes Chris Grayling; says he's “misleading”! http://bit.ly/a1FYsz <- Note to MPs: …
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Gareth Winchester
RT @libcon Stats authority publicly rebukes Chris Grayling; says he's “misleading”! http://bit.ly/a1FYsz <- Note to MPs: take a stats course
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This post was mentioned on Twitter by libcon: Stats authority publicly rebukes Chris Grayling; says he is “misleading”! http://bit.ly/cKBbLQ…
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Liberal Conspiracy » Economist trashes Tory ‘broken Britain’ narrative
[...] the UK Statistics Authority’s Sir Michael Scholar had to step in, and his own colleague Iain Duncan Smith said using the statistics in such a way was [...]
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Unity
RT @pickledpolitics: Hah! Chris Grayling is giving a sermon on abuse of statistics. Selective amnesia? http://bit.ly/cKBbLQ – No, thick Tory
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unslugged
Oh, the irony > RT @pickledpolitics: Hah! Chris Grayling is giving a sermon on abuse of statistics. Selective amnesia? http://bit.ly/cKBbLQ
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sunny hundal
Hah! Chris Grayling is giving a sermon on abuse of statistics. Selective amnesia? http://bit.ly/cKBbLQ
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