Further to correspondence between Sir Michael Scholar, Chair of the UK Statistics Authority, and Jeremy Heywood, Permanent Secretary at 10 Downing Street on 12 December.

Sir Michael Scholar issued a statement today, welcoming Mr. Heywood’s letter. He said:

“I welcome the swift reply from the Prime Minister’s Office acknowledging that there were errors in the handling of the knife crime statistics released on Thursday.

“I’m pleased to see from the Number 10 letter that the Cabinet Secretary will now take steps to identify the lessons to be learned from this case, in order to protect the integrity and independence of official statistics. That is an absolute requirement in ensuring public trust in official statistics.”

The correspondence is available on the Authority’s website.

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