§ Sir John WheelerTo ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what consideration he has given to making improvements to the information available about crime, including more frequent publication of the "British Crime Survey"; and if he will make a statement.
§ Mr. JackThe Government take seriously their responsibility to ensure that Parliament and the public are provided with the best available information about crime. We have considered how the collection, analysis and dissemination of this information can be improved.
At present, published recorded crime figures are based on the summaries sent to the Home Office of the number of offences recorded by the 43 police forces in England and Wales. Recorded offences include indictable/triable either way offences and certain summary offences.
That information is collated by Home Office statisticians and published in summary form each quarter in Home Office statistical bulletins, and only annually with supporting analysis in the series of Command Papers, "Criminal Statistics in England and Wales."
The statistics of offences recorded by the police provided a measure of the amount of crime with which they are faced. But many offences go unrecorded.
A more complete picture of crime is provided by the British crime survey, in which a large sample of the public is interviewed about their experience of crime in the previous year. We think it right that this valuable work be made available more regularly and we propose, therefore, that the British crime survey be published at two-yearly intervals in the future.
This will give better information about trends, against which to interpret figures of recorded crime. The results of a further sweep of the British crime survey now taking place, relating to the amount of crime experienced in 1991, will be published in the autumn.
We also believe that the recorded crime statistics should be accompanied by fuller analysis of their significance. To give time for this to be done, the present quarterly summary reporting cycle will be replaced by statistics accompanied by analysis on a six-monthly publication cycle.
689WThis will provide more, not less, information. It should go some way to reduce the considerable and untoward fear of crime among the public generated by the current quarterly publications which was highlighted by the working group on the fear of crime, chaired by Mr. Michael Grade, in December 1989.
We will publish the first bulletin on the six-monthly publication cycle, covering the statistics of notifiable offences recorded by the police in the period July 1991 to June 1992 to coincide with the publication of the British crime survey results in the autumn.
By these changes we seek to further the Government's aim of providing a better quality of information to the public. We believe that a more rounded picture will be provided. It should facilitate better analysis of trends and so help ensure that future action against crime is based on an improved shared understanding of the problems which face us.