Is Farage right about crime going up?published at 13:18 British Summer Time
13:18 BST
Lucy Gilder
BBC Verify journalist
Image source, PA Media
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has been setting out his party’s crime and justice plans.
He opened the conference by criticising successive home secretaries for claiming crime is falling.
“The crime survey for England and Wales is based on completely false data. If you look at police recorded crime… there are some significant rises in crimes of all kinds, particularly crimes against the person,” he said.
Crime in England and Wales is measured by a survey asking people about their experiences of crime, as well as police recorded offences.
Last year the survey recorded 9.6 million incidents, a 14% increase on the year before but against a backdrop of significant falls over the past three decades. This headline figure doesn’t include domestic abuse, sexual assault, stalking, and harassment.
The category called “violence against the person” in police recorded data is down slightly in the past year but up over the decade, as is overall recorded crime.
The survey is viewed as the better measure of long-term crime trends because it includes incidents that haven’t been reported to the police and is unaffected by police reporting or recording changes.
It’s considered a trusted or “accredited” source of official crime data by the statistics regulator so it’s unclear what Farage means about the survey containing “completely false data”.
Police recorded data does not have this status because of concerns about its quality and consistency.