Boris Johnson and Priti Patel have been reported to the statistics watchdog over allegations that they falsely claimed crime had fallen under their watch.
In his response to the Sue Gray report into Downing Street parties, the prime minister said in the Commons that the government had cut crime by 14 per cent since he entered No 10.
It followed a claim from Patel in a Home Office press release last week in which she said the government “continues to cut crime”.
However, both claims are contradicted by figures published by the Office for National Statistics.
The claimed 14 per cent fall in overall crime — from July 2019, when Johnson became prime minister to July last year — excluded fraud offences, which soared during the pandemic.
The latest statistics showed that fraud increased by 47 per cent between September 2020 and September last year.
Once fraud offences were added, overall crime increased by 14 per cent in the 12-month period.
Alistair Carmichael, the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman and former cabinet minister, has reported Johnson and Patel to the UK Statistics Authority for “falsely claiming a reduction in overall crime levels”.
He has written to Sir David Norgrove, chairman of the authority, calling on him to investigate the “gross misrepresentation”.
Carmichael wrote: “The prime minister and the government should not be disregarding a large, serious and growing area of crime – fraud and computer misuse – to claim a reduction in overall crime. Victims of fraud have been let down and ignored for too long, and writing them out of the story only makes that worse.”
Carmichael told The Times: “Given the prime minister is under investigation by the police, it’s little wonder he is deceiving the public about rising crime.
“It seems there is nothing Boris Johnson won’t lie about. Crime is up by 14 per cent – the exact opposite of what he said in parliament.
“Thousands of people across the country are victims of fraud every day, sometimes losing their entire life savings to callous criminal gangs. These victims are being failed by a government that is completely failing to tackle fraud. It is outrageous for the prime minister and the home secretary to pretend they simply don’t exist.
“Boris Johnson and Priti Patel have misled the public over rising crime. They must come clean and correct the record in parliament.”
The ONS said the 14 per cent decrease in non-fraud-related crime was largely driven by a 18 per cent fall in theft offences due to the coronavirus restrictions.
The Home Office insisted that the figures it had quoted in the press release made clear that they excluded fraud.
It said that between June 2019 and September 2021 — the latest statistics available — crime fell by 17 per cent, excluding fraud and computer misuse.
“By changing the definition of the word ‘crime’, we’ve reduced crime by 14%”.
It’s brilliant really. Next month they can redefine “crime” to exclude assault, and then crime will be cut by 38%.
By the next GE they will have eradicated crime entirely.
Just a reminder to everyone that the Tory party are a pro crime party, despite their wolf whistling.
The single proven causative variable in crime is poverty. Increase poverty = increase crime.
And any funds they give to the police, are lower than the cuts they made previously, so the police force is still diminished from their leadership.
You are not allowed to call Boris a liar in the House of Commons, but saying crime has fallen by 14% when it has infact RISEN by 14% is clearly a lie
Just because you mention youve excluded an area of crime, it doesn’t make that crime go away. Pitiful trying to defend that
Liars lie again. There’s genuinely at least one new lie a day at this point.
Crime has gone up. I’ve committed two crimes as a direct result of the fact I can clearly see I won’t be punished for it.
There’s a conversation in the sci-fi series Babylon 5 that’s eerily prescient. Captain Sheridan has had a political officer assigned to the station by the Earth government, which is moving towards fascism under President Clark.
> **MUSANTE:** We don’t have homeless.
> **SHERIDAN:** Excuse me?
> **MUSANTE:** We don’t have the problem. Yes, there are some displaced people here and there, but they’ve chosen to be in that position. They’re either lazy or they’re criminal or they’re mentally unstable.
> **SHERIDAN:** They can’t get a job.
> **MUSANTE:** EarthGov has promised a job to anyone who wants one. So if someone doesn’t have a job, they must not want one.
> **SHERIDAN:** Poverty?
> **MUSANTE:** It’s the same.
> **SHERIDAN:** Crime?
> **MUSANTE:** Yes, there is some, but it’s caused by the mentally unstable. We’ve instituted correctional centres to filter them out at a young age.
> **SHERIDAN:** Prejudice?
> **MUSANTE:** No, we’re just one happy planet. Well, there’s the Marsies, but that won’t change until they stop fighting Earth rule.
> **SHERIDAN:** And when exactly did all this happen?
> **MUSANTE:** When we rewrote the dictionary. Captain, you’re a good man. You’re a fine soldier. A leader. You understand that sometimes before you can deal with a problem you have to redefine it.
> **SHERIDAN:** But you can’t deal with the problems by pretending they don’t exist.
> **MUSANTE:** There’s no need to embarass our leaders by pointing out the flaws they’re aware of and dealing with in their own way. Some people just enjoy finding fault with our leaders. They’re anarchists, troublemakers or they’re simply just unpatriotic.
Anytime anyone uses the words “tough on crime” or “to protect children” look carefully at what they are actually suggesting, and if the results of what they are suggesting add up.
Slogans like these are just misdirection for authoritarians to introduce more authoritarianism. Making people stateless, banning protest, banning e2e encryption etc, do these things really achieve what their claimed reasoning is?
Crime has gone up noticeably round here in the past 5 years.
I imagine a lot of it is due to poverty caused by Brexit + Covid, however. But to say crime has dropped is laughable.
If a world-blind idiot like me can see crime has got worse, then it must have gotten *really* bad.
Right wing governments love talking about being “tough on crime” and play on people’s fears of criminals everywhere. In reality every right wing policy increases crime – it grows with income inequality, poverty, deprivation, loss of hope, reduced public services and mental health support. No amount of being “tough”, policing, arrests or incarcerations can change that – as we can clearly see in USA.
She’s literally the worst person. Plenty of evidence to.the fact she’s a narcissistic bully.
Crime is probably much higher than being reported. Cyber crime is probably the fastest growing and is going largely undetected.
I’m glad there’s a body to report politicians to if they give misleading statements, if it doesn’t get too busy then maybe they can open it up to complaints about false statements on internet forums.
If you just define all your own criminality as “Not Criminal” it’s true!
Patel’s “shush” and “listen” towards the opposite benches when Boris is speaking infuriates me idk why, maybe because she’s such a snide tory but it’s more than that because I don’t even care about politics that much. Something about her just enrages me so much so that I have to switch over whenever she appears.
If you exclude crimes committed by Tory ministers it may have done.
Im sure they are shaking. Terrified. Just totally shitting themselves about that….
This is one of the defining traits of the Johnson government.
This “fastest growth in the G7” is the current corker – countries that chronically underperform, for instance during a pandemic, do grow faster. The growth, of course, is due to previous failures rather than present success.
Johnson’s conservatives of the equivalent of a kid who scores 1% on a test in a class of people who score in the high 80s, who manages to bring his 1% up to 2% and then screams “I’VE INCREASED MY GRADE BY 100% – NOBODY ELSE HAS SEEN SUCH A BIG GRADE INCREASE!”.
It’s a shame that an entire parliament of politicians don’t have the nouse to point this out. He plays the exact same trick with funding – he’ll defund something to the tune of 20 billion, then give 10 billion in funds back, and say “we’ve increased funding by 10 billion – this is the largest increase *ever*”, ignoring the fact it’s a net negative.
That will always be this prime minister – integrity means nothing, bullshit means everything.
Virtually everything that comes out of his mouth is a lie. It’s unfathomable how there’s no mechanism for dealing with this.
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Article contents:
Boris Johnson and Priti Patel have been reported to the statistics watchdog over allegations that they falsely claimed crime had fallen under their watch.
In his response to the Sue Gray report into Downing Street parties, the prime minister said in the Commons that the government had cut crime by 14 per cent since he entered No 10.
It followed a claim from Patel in a Home Office press release last week in which she said the government “continues to cut crime”.
However, both claims are contradicted by figures published by the Office for National Statistics.
The claimed 14 per cent fall in overall crime — from July 2019, when Johnson became prime minister to July last year — excluded fraud offences, which soared during the pandemic.
The latest statistics showed that fraud increased by 47 per cent between September 2020 and September last year.
Once fraud offences were added, overall crime increased by 14 per cent in the 12-month period.
Alistair Carmichael, the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman and former cabinet minister, has reported Johnson and Patel to the UK Statistics Authority for “falsely claiming a reduction in overall crime levels”.
He has written to Sir David Norgrove, chairman of the authority, calling on him to investigate the “gross misrepresentation”.
Carmichael wrote: “The prime minister and the government should not be disregarding a large, serious and growing area of crime – fraud and computer misuse – to claim a reduction in overall crime. Victims of fraud have been let down and ignored for too long, and writing them out of the story only makes that worse.”
Carmichael told The Times: “Given the prime minister is under investigation by the police, it’s little wonder he is deceiving the public about rising crime.
“It seems there is nothing Boris Johnson won’t lie about. Crime is up by 14 per cent – the exact opposite of what he said in parliament.
“Thousands of people across the country are victims of fraud every day, sometimes losing their entire life savings to callous criminal gangs. These victims are being failed by a government that is completely failing to tackle fraud. It is outrageous for the prime minister and the home secretary to pretend they simply don’t exist.
“Boris Johnson and Priti Patel have misled the public over rising crime. They must come clean and correct the record in parliament.”
The ONS said the 14 per cent decrease in non-fraud-related crime was largely driven by a 18 per cent fall in theft offences due to the coronavirus restrictions.
The Home Office insisted that the figures it had quoted in the press release made clear that they excluded fraud.
It said that between June 2019 and September 2021 — the latest statistics available — crime fell by 17 per cent, excluding fraud and computer misuse.
“By changing the definition of the word ‘crime’, we’ve reduced crime by 14%”.
It’s brilliant really. Next month they can redefine “crime” to exclude assault, and then crime will be cut by 38%.
By the next GE they will have eradicated crime entirely.
Just a reminder to everyone that the Tory party are a pro crime party, despite their wolf whistling.
The single proven causative variable in crime is poverty. Increase poverty = increase crime.
And any funds they give to the police, are lower than the cuts they made previously, so the police force is still diminished from their leadership.
You are not allowed to call Boris a liar in the House of Commons, but saying crime has fallen by 14% when it has infact RISEN by 14% is clearly a lie
Just because you mention youve excluded an area of crime, it doesn’t make that crime go away. Pitiful trying to defend that
Liars lie again. There’s genuinely at least one new lie a day at this point.
Crime has gone up. I’ve committed two crimes as a direct result of the fact I can clearly see I won’t be punished for it.
There’s a conversation in the sci-fi series Babylon 5 that’s eerily prescient. Captain Sheridan has had a political officer assigned to the station by the Earth government, which is moving towards fascism under President Clark.
> **MUSANTE:** We don’t have homeless.
> **SHERIDAN:** Excuse me?
> **MUSANTE:** We don’t have the problem. Yes, there are some displaced people here and there, but they’ve chosen to be in that position. They’re either lazy or they’re criminal or they’re mentally unstable.
> **SHERIDAN:** They can’t get a job.
> **MUSANTE:** EarthGov has promised a job to anyone who wants one. So if someone doesn’t have a job, they must not want one.
> **SHERIDAN:** Poverty?
> **MUSANTE:** It’s the same.
> **SHERIDAN:** Crime?
> **MUSANTE:** Yes, there is some, but it’s caused by the mentally unstable. We’ve instituted correctional centres to filter them out at a young age.
> **SHERIDAN:** Prejudice?
> **MUSANTE:** No, we’re just one happy planet. Well, there’s the Marsies, but that won’t change until they stop fighting Earth rule.
> **SHERIDAN:** And when exactly did all this happen?
> **MUSANTE:** When we rewrote the dictionary. Captain, you’re a good man. You’re a fine soldier. A leader. You understand that sometimes before you can deal with a problem you have to redefine it.
> **SHERIDAN:** But you can’t deal with the problems by pretending they don’t exist.
> **MUSANTE:** There’s no need to embarass our leaders by pointing out the flaws they’re aware of and dealing with in their own way. Some people just enjoy finding fault with our leaders. They’re anarchists, troublemakers or they’re simply just unpatriotic.
Anytime anyone uses the words “tough on crime” or “to protect children” look carefully at what they are actually suggesting, and if the results of what they are suggesting add up.
Slogans like these are just misdirection for authoritarians to introduce more authoritarianism. Making people stateless, banning protest, banning e2e encryption etc, do these things really achieve what their claimed reasoning is?
Crime has gone up noticeably round here in the past 5 years.
I imagine a lot of it is due to poverty caused by Brexit + Covid, however. But to say crime has dropped is laughable.
If a world-blind idiot like me can see crime has got worse, then it must have gotten *really* bad.
Right wing governments love talking about being “tough on crime” and play on people’s fears of criminals everywhere. In reality every right wing policy increases crime – it grows with income inequality, poverty, deprivation, loss of hope, reduced public services and mental health support. No amount of being “tough”, policing, arrests or incarcerations can change that – as we can clearly see in USA.
She’s literally the worst person. Plenty of evidence to.the fact she’s a narcissistic bully.
Crime is probably much higher than being reported. Cyber crime is probably the fastest growing and is going largely undetected.
I’m glad there’s a body to report politicians to if they give misleading statements, if it doesn’t get too busy then maybe they can open it up to complaints about false statements on internet forums.
If you just define all your own criminality as “Not Criminal” it’s true!
Patel’s “shush” and “listen” towards the opposite benches when Boris is speaking infuriates me idk why, maybe because she’s such a snide tory but it’s more than that because I don’t even care about politics that much. Something about her just enrages me so much so that I have to switch over whenever she appears.
If you exclude crimes committed by Tory ministers it may have done.
Im sure they are shaking. Terrified. Just totally shitting themselves about that….
This is one of the defining traits of the Johnson government.
This “fastest growth in the G7” is the current corker – countries that chronically underperform, for instance during a pandemic, do grow faster. The growth, of course, is due to previous failures rather than present success.
Johnson’s conservatives of the equivalent of a kid who scores 1% on a test in a class of people who score in the high 80s, who manages to bring his 1% up to 2% and then screams “I’VE INCREASED MY GRADE BY 100% – NOBODY ELSE HAS SEEN SUCH A BIG GRADE INCREASE!”.
It’s a shame that an entire parliament of politicians don’t have the nouse to point this out. He plays the exact same trick with funding – he’ll defund something to the tune of 20 billion, then give 10 billion in funds back, and say “we’ve increased funding by 10 billion – this is the largest increase *ever*”, ignoring the fact it’s a net negative.
That will always be this prime minister – integrity means nothing, bullshit means everything.
Virtually everything that comes out of his mouth is a lie. It’s unfathomable how there’s no mechanism for dealing with this.