As new Labour Leader delivers his speech distancing himself from the Blair-Brown era, others have been using their conference cameos to pay tribute to the record of the last Government.

One of those indulging in the nostalgia was Shadow Home Secretary Alan Johnson, who used his speech to stress that New Labour’s fingerprints were very much all over recent falling crime statistics.

But do the facts back up the claims the Hull MP made?

The Claim

Mr Johnson argued that not only had the Labour Government brought down crime, but they had been the only Government to do so for a good many years.

He said: “We were the first Government since the end of the First World War to leave office with a lower level of crime than when we came to power.”

So did Blair and Brown succeed where Churchill, Attlee or even Lloyd George failed?

Analysis

Debates around crime statistics are usually coloured by questions over whether the British Crime Survey or recorded crime figures paint the best picture.

Given that the BCS only began in the early eighties, the only figures that would cover timeframe Mr Johnson uses would be recorded crime, which date back to the 19th century. However we are still awaiting confirmation from the Labour party as to which dataset was being reference.

Their response is crucial because the figures for recorded crime do not seem to back up the claim in the speech.

As the graph below shows, while the 2005 Labour Government saw recorded crime fall it also fell between 1945 and 1950, between 1951 and 1955, and again under the Major Government of 1992-7.

Defining government as a one party’s time in power gives a bit more credibility to the claim. For instance, the Conservatives won the 1955 and 1959 election, so by the time they were voted out in 1964 recorded crime was much higher than it had been when the Conservatives took power.

A similar story is true if John Major’s time as the head of a Government is folded into the Thatcher years, while during Labour’s entire time in office, recorded crime did come down.

While this looser definition of Government casts less doubt over Mr Johnson’s claim, there is another problem with the statement.

The pitfalls of using recorded crime statistics over time have been well documented.

Earlier this year, somewhat ironically, Alan Johnson criticised the then Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling for making claims about violent crime based on changes in recorded crime data.

However as the most recent Home Office bulletin on crime statistics makes clear, there are serious problems with using recorded crime in the way Alan Johnson seems to have done.

The accompanying notes to the statistics state: “While estimates for crime from the BCS go back to 1981, the Home Office have figures on crimes recorded by the police going back over more than 100 years. However, one problem in interpreting police figures over the long term is our limited knowledge of how public reporting and police recording practices have changed.”

So even allowing for differing definitions of what time period constitutes a Government, there would still be questions about the claim.

Conclusion

The problems with how a period of Government is categorised, as well as the inherent problems of looking at recorded crime over such a long period mean it is hard to rate Alan Johnson’s claim as accurate.

This is particularly true, given that the head of the UK Statistics Authority, Sir Michael Scholar, has previously said that the British Crime Survey is the best means of comparing trends in crime – at least as far as violent crime is concerned.

Looking at the BCS, it does suggest crime at low levels by the end of Labour’s time in office relative to the 1980s or 90s, but cannot tell us anything before then.

So while it is an eye-catching claim, it is not one that stands up to a closer look at the statistics.

Update:  Jack Straw also made a similar claim in his conference speech. He said: "We were the first - the only - Government since the war not just to get crime down, but by a significant amount."

Clearly, the above analysis would apply as much to this claim as it would to that from Alan Johnson.
 

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