The UK’s shoddy national stats mean the government knows very little about the people it governs. From crime rates to the labour market, this has real consequences, writes James Snell

If you want to be brave in the capital these days, you use your phone while walking about on the street, or while waiting for a bus. You may not be robbed every time you do this. Indeed, you’d be unlucky if you were. But eventually, if you do it long enough, you’ll be robbed. Possibly, if your grip is strong, you’ll be dragged along the pavement a little by the people stealing from you, adding injury to insult.

For several years, official statistics completely failed to record the increase in thefts like this in London. Smug recyclers of the state’s numbers told people who saw things with their own eyes that they were wrong. It was misinformation to suggest that crime was surging, and if you said it was, you should be censored by the government, possibly imprisoned.

Official crime rate surveys have now started to show what everyone else has seen for most of this decade: that,........

© City A.M.