Following new figures which show crime has fallen a massive 23% in Hastings over the last five years Michael Foster has accused the Conservative Party of misleading the public in their use of crime statistics.

The Tories have said there has been a big rise in violent crime during Labour's time in government. Now the independent UK Statistics Authority has intervened to question the Tory statistics.  Sir Michael Scholar, chairman of the UK Statistics Authority, has written to Chris Grayling, Tory Home Affairs spokesman, saying: "I do not wish to become involved in political controversy, but I must take issue with what you said yesterday about violent crime statistics, which seems to me likely to damage public trust in official statistics."

New crime figures for Hastings show total recorded crimes falling from 11,543 in 2004/5 to 8,913 in 2008/9. A reduction of 23%. Statistics for violent crime are even more impressive, showing a reduction of nearly 31% over the same period.

The British Crime Survey which relies on public surveys rather than recorded crime is also deemed a reliable indicator of crime. The survey shows the same downward trend with overall crime down by nearly half since 1997.

Michael Foster MP said:

“These figures clearly show crime has fallen dramatically in Hastings thanks to new investment from the Government and the hard work of the local Police and Safer Hastings Partnership. It’s scare mongering on the part of the Tories to try and suggest otherwise.

“They have plenty of form on this. In order to justify talking Britain down they have quoted dodgy statistics about schools and hospitals. Now it has been confirmed officially that they have continually mislead the public about crime. They must stop doing this immediately and stop using misleading statistics to drum up fear of crime. That completely undermines all the hard work being done to tackle crime and the fear of crime.

"David Cameron and Chris Grayling should apologise for continually misleading the British people about crime.

“There always remains more to be done. If you are a victim of crime you are 100% the victim. But that is no excuse for trying to scare people as the Tories have done.”