Performance Committee of the Metropolitan Police Authority (MPA) where for the last few years I have slogged over the multitude of statistics that pour forth from the Metropolitan Police service as we hold them to account. Of course, the trick here is that the goalposts are always moving (the Met and the Government are always moving them to be more accurate) so we rarely find ourselves comparing like with like.

I have a long wrangle with a Met officer about violent crime. Violent crime stats are up. But the police say that they are recording them better so more are recorded – and the other defence is that the rise is the result of increased police activity.

It is clear – that nothing is clear. Why do I always get the feeling that performance stats are about protecting the Met and not about trying to deal with the real state of affairs – at least not publicly? Later in an informal session about how we can resolve these difficulties, there is an admission on the part of the Met that they cannot bear it when the media get hold of a poor performance stat and make mincemeat of them in say, the Evening Standard.

We (the committee members) basically feel that you have to get real. Continual defensiveness, spin and dumbing down leads to even worse situations where we (the public) lose trust in the police. And we need to trust our police. It’s not unlike Blair over Iraq – you start to doubt everything about the Blair government because you know they spin to avoid consequence and criticism. I think it better to hang out dirty washing. Show how complex policing is and how difficult. Have the debate, take the criticism and move on. Eventually the press will have to cover issues from a different perspective.