The title might seem a little harsh. Indeed, it may seem unfair to single out the Prime Minister, as most leading politicians are economical with the truth. However, Cameron is supposed to be the leader of this country, and for him to be so frequently untruthful is simply not acceptable.
In this previous blog entry I discussed how Cameron had been caught rolling out a statistic that had already been exposed as false after the Home Sectretary Theresa May said it. That didn't stop him from saying it again though. In this instance, he was attempting to mislead the public about the number of frontline police officers, saying that they were increasing when in fact they are provably decreasing.
I've spoken before about how statistics are misused, or to be more exact, used to mislead and create deliberately false impressions. That blog entry is here. Cameron was at it again in a 2006 speech, about police reform. It seems that Cameron likes to lie about the police, for reasons unknown. Certainly the recent "independent" review of the police service by Tom Winsor is shown to be anything but independent when you read the 2006 speech. You can read the full text on the Guardian website.
The biggest lie in the speech was this:
"This year, each police officer, on average, will make under 10 arrests. That's not even one a month. Think about it. Yet one police constable in Nottinghamshire, PC Coetzee, arrested over 300 suspects last year." [emphasis added]
Cameron's Conservative Party appears to have some agenda against the police service. It is hell bent on selling their opinion of the service as lazy. Winsor's report told several half-truths and this whopper: that 75% of male officers in the Metropolitan Police are overweight. In fact, the inconvenient truth for Winsor was that the Met ran a scheme for officers who were concerned about their weight. Of those that joined the scheme 75% were overweight.
I suspect that Cameron's speech writer simply took the total number of arrests and divided by the number of warranted officers. Leaving aside the arguments about the term "average" in my last blog, this is misleading because not all warranted (i.e sworn) officers are in positions where they are likely to arrest offenders. For example, firearms officers (ARV teams) will often arrive first at a scene, contain it, and detain anyone who needs to be arrested until the local beat officers arrive. This is done so that the ARV can resume patrol duties rather be tied up taking statements and filling in paperwork. Similarly, there may be warranted officers who work in areas such as the training department. You might say "Why have fully qualified officers wasting their time in the training department?". I can answer that. I've worked in the training department of a police force, training new Special Constables before they went to their respective stations. It is extremely difficult to convey the application of law and best practice without having the practical experience of having done it yourself. There is also the issue of credibility before your students.
Then we have situations where five or ten officers might arrive to deal with a particular situation, such as a pub fight, and only one or two arrests get made. Does that mean that the other officers were wasting their time? Of course not. Only an idiot would suggest that. However, an idiot did.
Can a police officer's performance be measured solely by the number of arrests made? Obviously it can't. It really would take someone who didn't understand policing to say that. That'd be like saying if an officer isn't arresting people then he's not working, or that while an MP isn't earning their public salary whilst carrying out Executive Directorships on the boards of private companies. Oh, hang on, that might not be the best comparison.
Cameron's lies aren't limited to slagging off the police though. We can find him lying about the number of people in work during PMQs on January 25th, debunked here.
We can also find him lying about the benefits to taxpayers of their economic policy. That lie is put to the sword here.
Let me be clear that politicians of all parties make false claims. Labour are equally guilty. I don't support any particular party. Voting for any of them is akin to choosing the burglar that's going to ransack your house. Just remember, though, Cameron is the man who said he was going to clean up politics and stop the "Punch and Judy" exchanges in the House of Commons. Perhaps that was his first recorded lie?
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