Police and Justice Bill

I entirely agree with that. There is no question that the targets will be set by the Home Office; those targets will be set by conurbations that are big centres of population and big crime centres. The current efficient handling of crime matters and policing in areas such as that represented by the hon. Gentleman and myself will definitely be damaged. That is inevitable. I return to the professor, whose comments are extremely relevant. Time and again the Government come back to HMIC. They say, ““We are only following what HMIC says.”” It is one man’s opinion, which is trashed by Tony Lawrance, a professor of statistics, who has said:"““It is hard to believe that professional statisticians were heavily involved in planning, analysing and presenting the quantitative information used by the report, or suggesting conclusions to be drawn from it.””" His conclusion is damning. He says:"““The quality of the statistical information gathered for the HMIC report…is questionable. The statistical treatment of the data collected is largely unjustified and appears open to criticism in its combination of scores. The graphical presentation of the data is poor and trend lines could be misleading; The use of computer-produced statistical collaboration is unjustified…The conclusions drawn in respect of the 4,000 minimum force size almost totally ignores the variability of protected services performance at each force size, and no evidence is provided that this will be small at the 4,000 level.””" How can the Government base the largest change in policing in 100 years on a report that is utterly flawed in its basic statistics?