RSSeNEWS to be determined...

Lord David Lipsey has warned politicians that the campaign he set up, Straight Statistics, will "punish them if they misuse statistics".

"Any politician who lies must expect to be up in lights on our website, in the newspapers, as having abused the statistics to mislead the public," the Labour peer said on BBC Radio 4's 'Westminster Hour' on 14 March.

Lipsey told presenter Carolyn Quinn that "there's an epidemic of statistics misuse at the moment … I'm afraid politicians are amongst the worst offenders." He singled out the "Prime Minister's disgraceful use ahead of time of some knife crime statistics", but said "the Tories have been just as bad; suggesting crime was going up when in fact crime was going down has required, well - shall we call it 'creative ingenuity' which has ignored the true facts."

The peer said that politicians wanted their researchers to "come in with a killer piece of statistical information … and probably doesn't check whether it's accurate, a fair representation of the facts … The important thing is there's someone to challenge these statistics when they are misused and to tell the poor old public where the truth lies."

Lipsey praised the impartiality of official statistics and commented that the UK Statistics Authority is "proving a very robust body in defending the integrity of our statistics … There's some things we can do that they can't because they're an official body," he explained.

He acknowledged that public confidence in statistics and their use "is very low and it's very worrying". Asked specifically about crime statistics, Lipsey said "the figures from the British Crime Survey can by and large be relied on, and the rest of the figures are generally junk, depending on what the police are giving priority to at any one time; they depend on what type of things people are reporting because they need to report it for the benefit of their insurance companies ...

"… Politicians are perfectly aware that one series is right and one is wrong, but when the wrong one suits them they're inclined to reach for it and use it for the own effect … What's important is that there's a referee who makes it bad business for the politician to lie or twist."

He acknowledged that "as a politician I may even have abused one or two myself in my time". But Lipsey declared himself a strong supporter of using statistics in political debate. He said that the parliamentary debate over the real gravity of national debt figures was "one of those cases where both [parties] have got a perfectly valid point that they're trying to make."

Lipsey said that Straight Statistics wasn't asking for guarantees from the political parties as they prepare their general election campaigns in the way they use statistics. But he went on: "I hope for better behaviour because we'll punish them if they misuse statistics".

listen to the Westminster Hour Lord Lipsey interview on bbc iplayer

Straight Statistics is a campaign established by journalists and statisticians to improve the understanding and use of statistics by government, politicians, companies, advertisers and the mass media. Former Times science correspondent Nigel Hawkes is the campaign director, RSS fellows Sheila Bird and David Spiegelhalter are on the board of directors, along with award winning journalists Simon Briscoe, Ben Goldacre and Helen Joyce.

To read more visit the Straight Statistics website.