What you get when ministers do drugs

Just when Teresa May thought it was safe to go back onto the concourse, stories which accuse the government of ‘sexing up’ drug detection successes start to gather pace. An account in the Independent is one such example of an emerging theme:

Home Office ministers faced a fresh crisis last night after being rebuked for manipulating drug-seizure figures in an apparent attempt to generate good publicity for the embattled Border Agency. Sir Michael Scholar, the chairman of the UK Statistics Authority, condemned the department for a "highly selective" briefing to journalists which claimed that the amount of heroin and cocaine detected at ports and airports had soared – just days before properly audited figures showed seizures had fallen.

The row comes as Theresa May, the Home Secretary, faces a public battle with the former head of the border force, Brodie Clark, who has accused her of destroying his reputation.

The Cabinet Secretary, Sir Gus O'Donnell, has been asked to examine whether staff acting for Ms May briefed newspapers against Mr Clark. Sir Michael made his rare intervention after crime reporters were told that more cocaine and almost double the amount of heroin were detected between April and September of this year than in the whole of the previous 12 months. They held the briefing on 4 November for publication three days later.

But the department's official Statistical Bulletin showed the amount of heroin seized in England and Wales had actually halved in 2010-11 compared with 2009-10, while the amount of cocaine found was down by one-quarter.

Sir Michael warned that the publication of the figures broke Whitehall rules on the handling of statistics and ran counter to the ministerial code.

It is the last reference that has understandably put the press on alert. Civil servants do not make this kind of statements lightly. Editors and proprietors determined to show that they still have a pair, regardless of any attempted neutering by Lord Justice Leveson, will be closely examining the timelines of similar announcements.


Update: Boris Johnson, who has also been accused of excessive creativity by the UK Statistics Authority reckons that the chairman is a Labour stooge. As the Guardian points out, Sir Michael Scholar served as private secretary to former Tory premier Margaret Thatcher in the early 1980s.