Downing Street Says » Population Statistics

Asked for a reaction to the Chief Constable of Cambridgeshire saying that the population statistics were extremely unreliable, the PMS replied that the Home Office had been responding to this, there was a statement from Liam Byrne. Specifically in relation to the issue of flexibility of police funding to changes in population, one of the changes that had been introduced recently to police funding in 2006-07 when multiyear settlements for the police were introduced, was to ensure that they incorporated projection for future population so that we were not just taking historical trends in population in setting the police funding formula, we were also taking into account projections of future trends.

Put that the Chief Constable sounded like she was saying that the whole underlying way that the statistics were compiled was wrong, and completely off the mark, the PMS replied that these were obviously matters for the Office of National Statistics (ONS) who were responsible for compiling these statistics and projections. They had a lot of expertise in these matters and they could probably give further information into how these are compiled. From the Government’s point of view we had to use the best information that was available to us from the ONS, and we had changed the funding system so that it was now forward looking and not simply backward looking.

Put that the Chief Constable presented the figures in such a way that people critical of immigration could use them to highlight the link between crime and immigration, and asked if this was a link the Prime Minister agreed existed, and if he had any reaction to the way the figures had been presented, the PMS replied that the Chief Constable had given her views this morning, and he would not be commenting directly on that. It was important that this was kept in context. Total crime in Cambridgeshire was on a clear downward trend – the total recorded crime figures were 85,029 in 2002-03, 79,960 in 2003-04, 73,659 in 2004-05, 66,804 in 2005-06, and 69,146 in 2006-07. This showed there had been a clear downward trend, and this also applied to violent crime and crime such as burglary as well. This was the overall context that had to be kept in mind.

No Comments »

No comments yet.

RSS feed for comments on this post.

Post a public comment

Name (required)
E-mail (required)
(You must give an email address, but it will not be displayed to the public.)
Website
(You may give your website, and it will be displayed to the public.)

Comments:

This is not a way of contacting the Prime Minister. If you would like to contact the Prime Minister, go to the 10 Downing Street official site.

Privacy note: Shortly after posting, your name and comment will be displayed on the site. This means that people searching for your name on the Internet will be able to find and read your comment.

Original PMOS briefings are © Crown Copyright. Crown Copyright material is reproduced with the permission of the Controller of HMSO and the Queen's Printer for Scotland. Click-use licence number C02W0004089. Material is reproduced from the original 10 Downing Street source, but may not be the most up-to-date version of the briefings, which might be revised at the original source. Users should check with the original source in case of revisions. Comments are © Copyright contributors. Everything else is © Copyright Downing Street Says.

» Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Population Statistics

No Comments »

Post a public comment

Search

Supported by

Recent Briefings

Archives

Links

Syndicate (RSS/XML)

Credits

Enquiries