Clause 1
12:00 pm
Vernon Coaker (Minister of State (Policing, Crime & Security), Home Office; Gedling, Labour)
To help me understand what the hon. Gentleman is saying about attitudinal surveys, does he envisage the survey being done at a fixed point or over a period of time? I ask that because a problem with fixed-point measures, which try to understand the fear of crime, is that someone only has to cite something that has happened recently in the local area—a terrible knife crime or something like that—and it completely skews the result of the survey. How one finds a true measure of crime that is not influenced by an abnormal act is a real problem, and it is something with which we are wrestling. Does the hon. Gentleman think that a fixed-point survey or something that takes place over a period of time is appropriate in respect of that problem?