We're beating crime, says Blunkett
David Blunkett today claimed that the Government's war on street crime was "beginning to work" as new figures showed muggings rocketing by 31 per cent.
Across Britain there were 108,178 street robberies last year while in London - the country's biggest crime hotspot - these were up by an average of 38 per cent with some boroughs seeing alarming increases of as much as 68 per cent.
Overall, the figures for the year up to the end of March showed crime in Britain rising by seven per cent, the biggest leap in a decade.
Officials claimed the rise was artificially inflated because of a new method of recording offences and they estimated the real underlying trend to be up by around two per cent.
The Home Secretary protested, however, that the Government's strategy was working. He said there would be "no backtracking" from Tony Blair's pledge to bring street crime "under control" by September.
"I am not pretending for a moment there isn't a problem," said Mr Blunkett. "It particularly rests on street crime and petty violence. We need to get a grip on it.
"The Prime Minister and I, with the backing of the Chancellor, put both resources and a new plan in place and it's beginning to work.
"We're not backtracking. In September, we will see whether we have or not."
Mr Blunkett admitted on Radio 4's Today programme that levels of street crime appeared from today's statistics to be going the wrong way for the Government to meet Mr Blair's pledge. But he said the figures only covered the period up until the end of March, just two weeks after the new anti-street-crime strategy was put in place.
Shadow home secretary Oliver Letwin claimed: "Street crime is on the increase and there's no sign of the Government doing anything to help that situation."
He said this week's planned relaxation of the laws on cannabis would only "make matters worse".
The picture was complicated by the simultaneous release by the Home Office of the British Crime Survey, which showed a two per cent fall in the number of offences.
