Cut up about statistics
The New Year notion of putting the past behind you and moving on doesn't seem to apply to the UK Statistics Authority (UKSA) which has reignited a pre-Christmas row about knife crime figures.
You may recall that in December the Home Office released figures claiming that there had been a drop in knife crime - a claim which was quickly savaged by UKSA chairman Sir Michael Scholar.
Sir Michael complained that the figures had been released prematurely and were incomplete. He said that officials had asked the government not to release "unchecked" and "selective" figures and that doing so eroded public trust.
It was anxiety over a lack of trust in government statistics which led to the creation of the UKSA - an independent watchdog whose job it is to ensure that official figures aren't used for political spin.
Days later Home Secretary Jacqui Smith apologised for the incident, telling MPs the government had been "too quick off the mark" in releasing the figures, which suggested a sharp fall in the number of teenagers caught carrying knives and a 27% drop in hospital admissions with stab wounds.
Then at the end of 2008, knife statistics made the front pages of The Sun with the headline "Knife kills 6 a week".
Fast forward to 2009 and far from the row dying away, we find that it's actually more a case of "ding, ding, round two". The UKSA came out slugging this week by broadening its criticism of the Home Office press release and saying that it had flouted official guidelines.
The BBC's Home Affairs Editor Mark Easton says that the UKSA concluded that far from playing fast and loose with the regulations, the Home Office and Number Ten "drove a coach and horses through them". Marks also blogs that the numbers "were being mangled and manipulated to make the case that the government's knife crime campaign was having a rapid impact".
Next Monday, Panorama will be adding its weight to debate on knife crime. As a result of rare prison access provided by the Ministry of Justice and HM Prison Service, our reporter Raphael Rowe has been able to conduct a series of interviews with youngsters now locked up for killing and wounding with knives. You'll also be able to see the full results of our survey on the public's latest attitudes to knife crime online then too.
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