Downing Street Says » Knife crime

» Monday, December 15, 2008

Knife crime

Asked about the knife crime announcement and whether the Prime Minister would like to apologise as well, the Prime Minister s Spokesman (PMS) told the assembled press that clearly this incident was a matter of regret as the Permanent Secretary of No10 made clear in the letter he wrote to Sir Michael Scholar on Friday.

Jeremy Heywood accepted in that letter that insufficient attention was paid to the views of the chief statistician at the Department of Health. He also said in that letter that the concerns of the National Statistician were only brought to Number 10 s attention on Thursday morning, after the data had already been released. None of this of course removed from the fact that in terms of the data that the UK Statistical Authority were content with, we had seen a 17% reduction in serious teenage knife injuries and we had also seen 10,000 more stop and searches every month.

We had seen over 2020 weapons seized, 179 more offenders in prison for weapons possession and an increase in average prison sentences for perpetrators of knife crime. The figure that the authority had objected to was dealt with in the letter sent by Jeremy Heywood to Sir Michael Scholar on Friday. Asked if that was an apology, the PMS replied that Jacqui Smith had spoken about this, this afternoon.

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