Boris Johnson refuses to sign up to stats rules

• Joanne McCartney, Labour's policing spokesperson on the London Assembly, criticises Boris Johnson for refusing to sign up to national rules governing the proper use of official statistics.
• Re-offending rate at mayor's Feltham programme double what he claimed before parliament

At a monthly question session at City Hall this morning the mayor said it was a "significant achievement" to have cut re-offending from 80 per cent to 20 per cent, despite the UK Statistics Authority last month warning that his claims "do not appear to stand up to scrutiny".

This was the second time his use of data has been officially censured by the statistics watchdog.

The information on which the mayor based his claim about re-offending at his Heron wing of Feltham Young Offenders Institute was described earlier this year by the London Criminal Justice Partnership as "not comparable in a way that would have any evidential merit."

The civil servant in charge of the Heron programme said the mayor's claims were "complete nonsense".

The re-offending rate at Heron - while still not comparable to the national rate - is currently running closer to 40 per cent: double that claimed by the mayor and higher than the national re-offending rate of 36.9 per cent.

But pressed today to sign up to the UK Statistics Authority code to prevent confusion in the future, the mayor refused, saying he was "not impressed by the conduct of that body or its chief".

He described the watchdog's chair, Sir Michael Scholar, as a "stooge". Scholar was private secretary to Margret Thatcher between 1981 and 1983.

Speaking at City Hall today, Labour Assembly member Joanne McCartney said: "We all want this to work and to tackle re-offending. But wilful misuse of stats in this way makes it impossible to know what's working and what isn't. Boris was told not to use these figures but did so, it appears, to claim a success without any evidence to back it up. It's no wonder he doesn't want to sign up to the rules adhered to by every other government department but he should do so immediately."

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