Home Office retracts alcohol crime claim
28 July 2010
Today the Home Office launched a consultation to review alcohol licensing laws, deeming the '24-hour drinking' reforms brought in by the last Government a failure.
Analysis The Licensing Act 2003, which allowed pubs, bars and nightclubs to apply for permission to serve alcohol round the clock, came into force in November 2005. However trends in related crime since then are difficult to quantify. As Rachel Seabrook, Research Manager at the Institute for Alcohol Studies explained to Full Fact: "If you really wanted to know the extent of alcohol-related crime, you'd have to send Freedom of Information requests to every police force in the country, and even they only hold data on notifiable offences," she said. The Home Office confirmed to us that it holds no data covering all alcohol-related crime in England and Wales. So to what exactly is the Home Secretary referring? When pushed, the Home Office identified their recent report 'Crime in England and Wales 2009/10' as the source of Ms May's claim. Using British Crime Survey data, this report does indeed calculate the number of violent incidents attributed to offenders perceived to have been under the influence of alcohol. However, contrary to the Home Secretary's claim, the number of alcohol related incidents recorded in this study has actually fallen since November 2005. In 2006, 1,023,000 violent crimes were attributed to alcohol, which compares less favourably to the 986,000 alcohol-related offences noted in 2009. There was a slight rise in a different measure of alcohol-related violent offences, with the proportion of such incidents compared to all reported crime rising from 46 per cent in 2006 to 50 per cent in 2009. However given that Ms May refers explicitly to the number of incidents, it is not fair to use this indicator to justify the claims. Speaking to Full Fact, a Home Office spokesperson acknowledged that Ms May's quote "should have referred to the proportion of crimes, rather than the number." Conclusion The link between changes in the licensing laws and alcohol-related crime rates is an extremely contentious issue, and we have looked at the available evidence in further detail on the Full Fact blog. It is inaccurate for the Home Secretary to claim that the number of alcohol-related crimes has risen since November 2005, when the Home Office's own data shows that this is not the case. Given the scarcity of evidence on this topic, it is inappropriate for a politician of Ms May's stature to be making such broad claims on such fragile grounds.
The relaxation of the law has been strongly criticised by some sections of the press for having been counter-productive in the effort to tackle alcohol-related problems in Britain.
Indeed this appears to be an interpretation shared by Home Secretary Theresa May, who this morning claimed that in the aftermath of the new law, there had been a rise in alcohol-related crime.
The Claim
In a press release issued by the Home Office, Ms May said: "'The benefits promised by the 24 hour drinking 'café culture' have failed to materialise and in its place we have seen an increase in the number of alcohol related incidents and drink-fuelled crime and disorder."
Analysis The Licensing Act 2003, which allowed pubs, bars and nightclubs to apply for permission to serve alcohol round the clock, came into force in November 2005. However trends in related crime since then are difficult to quantify. As Rachel Seabrook, Research Manager at the Institute for Alcohol Studies explained to Full Fact: "If you really wanted to know the extent of alcohol-related crime, you'd have to send Freedom of Information requests to every police force in the country, and even they only hold data on notifiable offences," she said. The Home Office confirmed to us that it holds no data covering all alcohol-related crime in England and Wales. So to what exactly is the Home Secretary referring? When pushed, the Home Office identified their recent report 'Crime in England and Wales 2009/10' as the source of Ms May's claim. Using British Crime Survey data, this report does indeed calculate the number of violent incidents attributed to offenders perceived to have been under the influence of alcohol. However, contrary to the Home Secretary's claim, the number of alcohol related incidents recorded in this study has actually fallen since November 2005. In 2006, 1,023,000 violent crimes were attributed to alcohol, which compares less favourably to the 986,000 alcohol-related offences noted in 2009. There was a slight rise in a different measure of alcohol-related violent offences, with the proportion of such incidents compared to all reported crime rising from 46 per cent in 2006 to 50 per cent in 2009. However given that Ms May refers explicitly to the number of incidents, it is not fair to use this indicator to justify the claims. Speaking to Full Fact, a Home Office spokesperson acknowledged that Ms May's quote "should have referred to the proportion of crimes, rather than the number." Conclusion The link between changes in the licensing laws and alcohol-related crime rates is an extremely contentious issue, and we have looked at the available evidence in further detail on the Full Fact blog. It is inaccurate for the Home Secretary to claim that the number of alcohol-related crimes has risen since November 2005, when the Home Office's own data shows that this is not the case. Given the scarcity of evidence on this topic, it is inappropriate for a politician of Ms May's stature to be making such broad claims on such fragile grounds.
By Owen Spottiswoode and Patrick Casey