Nigel Farage on UK crime: how do his statements stack up?

The Guardian

6 days ago

Nigel Farage has launched a six-week campaign and policy blitz, pledging to halve overall crime in the first five years of a Reform UK government.
At a press conference on Monday, the Reform leader made a series of claims about crime levels in the UK and government efforts to lower them.
In an article teeing up his proposals for the Daily Mail, Farage wrote that 'over the past 20 years, crime has become commonplace across Britain' and that ministers seemed to be spending money on 'everything except keeping the people of this country safe'. Here are some of his main claims and how they stack up.
Crime has rocketed since the 1990s
Farage's central argument is that crime has risen so much that the UK is 'facing societal collapse', while politicians are in complete denial. He wrote on Monday that total crime is 50% higher than it was in the 1990s.
He told reporters that the crime survey for England and Wales was 'based on completely false data' and that 'if you look at police-recorded crime … there are some significant rises in crimes of all kinds, particularly crimes against the person'.
He went on to argue that the true figures were even higher than the records showed, because 'most of us now don't even bother to report crime'.
In fact, the Office for National Statistics regards the crime survey for England and Wales as the more accurate metric of long-term crime trends, because it includes incidents that haven't been reported to the police and is unaffected by changes in how crime is recorded. It is unclear what Farage's claim that it is based on 'completely false data' is founded on.
The ONS also says police-recorded crime 'does not tend to be a good indicator of general trends in crime' and should only be used in conjunction with other data.
ONS analysis of crime survey and police-recorded crime data concludes that crime against individuals and households has generally fallen over the last 10 years, with some important exceptions including sexual assault. There have been long-term decreases in violence with or without injury, theft offences and criminal damage since the mid-1990s.
There are, however, some increases in the short-term. The latest survey shows a 33% increase in fraud last year, and a 50% increase in theft from the person compared with 2023.
People in the UK no longer feel safe
Farage claimed that 'people are scared of going to the shops' or 'to let their kids out' and that 'witnessing and experiencing crime has become normalised'.
It's true that a significant proportion of British voters – 22% according to YouGov's poll tracker – regard crime as one of the biggest issues the country faces. Crime ranks behind the NHS, however, cited by 33% of people, and immigration and asylum, cited by 53%.
One concrete data point Farage mentioned was that 57% of women felt it was unsafe to walk on the streets of London, which came from a Survation poll carried out this spring.
Other parties don't care about crime
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Farage claimed to be 'astonished there's been so little debate in Westminster amongst all the political classes on this issue'.
In fact Labour and the Conservatives put pledges on crime at the centre of their manifestos in the run-up to the July 2024 election, and both parties are spending a considerable amount of time debating and legislating in this area.
One of the government's five driving 'missions' is to halve serious violent crime and raise confidence in the police and criminal justice system to its highest level.
London is lawless
Farage made a series of claims about crime in London, including that tourists were increasingly reluctant to visit the capital and that wealthy people such as the oil magnate John Fredriksen were leaving.
Fredriksen – a Norwegian-born Cypriot billionaire who is selling his £250m mansion in Chelsea – in fact cited Rachel Reeves' tax changes as the main reason behind his decision and said the UK was becoming too much like Norway. He has said nothing about crime.
Farage also said one in three people in London had been subject to phone theft. This appears to have come from a survey of 1,000 people by a UK fintech start-up called Nuke From Orbit, rather than the police-reported figures that Farage said he preferred. According to the Metropolitan police, 80,000 phones were reported stolen in London in 2024, which suggests the crime affected far fewer than one in three people.
The Reform UK leader did cite some official figures, including that shoplifting in London was up 54% last year compared with 2023, which came from the ONS.