For those who love email trails, the Public Administration Select Committee has served up a feast – the emails flying around when Brown released premature knife crime figures last December. You can read the full trail here, Email Trail PDF .
From my reading, it seems that the decision to use unready statistics came straight from Gordon Brown himself. The only No10 official named in the email trail is Dr Matt Cavanagh, who is the very opposite of a Campbell-style No10 praetorian spinner. He’s a former academic (and published author of a book which was well-received in The Spectator) and the emails kick off with him asking the ONS for permission to release data on knife crime
“Here is the statement that the PM would like us to publish tomorrow as part of the knife crime announcement”
Internal emails then fly between ONS officials saying they not be used, given they are “potentially inaccurate and may possibly give the wrong impression”.
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