´óÏó´«Ã½

"As far as we are concerned, the issue (of the ) is dead and buried."

An unfortunate phrase, perhaps, from a source in the home secretary's office, but the whole affair (which I have written about here, here, here and here) has not gone away as far as I am concerned.

Indeed, intriguing new detail exposes some questionable activity at the heart of government.

Jacqui Smith doesn't want another row with the head of the , , I am told. But she does want to make it clear that "the stat that went out before Christmas was not incorrect".

But how can she be so sure?

The figure she is talking about appeared in a controversial "" [pdf link] and claimed a 27% fall in numbers admitted to hospital with stab wounds in nine high crime areas the Home Office had targeted.

NHS officials said the statistic, published on 11 December last year, "had not been through the regular process of checking and quality assurance."

Sir Michael went further in a , describing how statisticians had "tried unsuccessfully to prevent their premature, irregular and selective release."

"I hope you will agree that the publication of prematurely released and unchecked statistics is corrosive of public trust in official statistics, and incompatible with the high standards which we are all seeking to establish", he continued.

The however, don't think they've done anything particularly wrong.

"We didn't go to Downing Street and say we were going to use the figure without being sure," an official close to the home secretary tells me.

"It might not have gone through all the hurdles Michael Scholar might have wanted. Michael saying it is not checked does not mean it is not true."

Well, how does that square with an e-mail of which I now have details?

It was sent by a senior NHS statistician to the Department of Health and forwarded to No 10's policy unit at precisely 13:56 GMT on 10 December (the day before the release) by the expert collating the hospital admissions data.

In it she explained that the figures must not be published because they were "provisional data".

"They are potentially inaccurate and may give the wrong impression," she states.

The reason, I understand, is that hospitals only submit data once a patient has been discharged.

So releasing the figures early meant they wouldn't include all those stab victims still on a ward and might paint a rosier picture than the official statistical release (due to be published next month).

Two hours after the warning from the statistician, a reply came back from a civil servant at the Department of Health:

"I have passed on your concerns to all concerned," it reads. "I have been informed that No 10 are adamant about the need to publish these statistics.

"As a result, I am informed that they are likely to publish the data irrespective of the concerns raised."

What makes No 10's position problematic is that the NHS Information Centre only agreed to put together the bespoke figures on the strict understanding that they would not be published.

There is an official and long-standing code which states that ministers may ask statisticians for pre-published raw data, but only for internal "management purposes".

My understanding is that officials knew the basis on which the stab wound numbers were being collected. Someone, it appears, went back on their word.

I am also now in possession of statistics prepared for the "fact sheet" which were sent to the Home Office but not used.

You can download the full document by clicking here [excel file].

These show that stabbings were falling in the high knife-crime areas before the government launched its action plan - down 11%.

Good news and likely to bolster public confidence one would imagine.

But the home secretary's staff chose not to include it in their release.

Instead, they focused on later and more unreliable data to claim that the apparent fall in stab wound cases coincided with their "Tackling Knives Action Programme".

The whole point of the release was to claim cause and effect - government action works. The earlier statistics undermine that assertion.

Jacqui Smith argues her staff's motivation in putting out the stats was to increase public confidence.

But there will be some who conclude that the omission of the previous statistics shows this to be so much humbug.

The bigger picture is becoming clear. There was no knife crime epidemic. Official (verified and checked) figures published on Wednesday showed that while the politicians were opining about soaring numbers of knife attacks,

English A&E departments were seeing a fall in the number of people brought in with stab wounds.

The says:

"Assault by sharp objects (including knives) resulted in 5,239 admissions in 2007-08", their statement reveals, "an 8.4% drop from 2006-07 (5,720)."

So, 481 fewer people were admitted with stab wounds in 07-08 and the average age of the victim was unchanged at 29.

The number of very young people wounded (0-14) has remained flat: 95 in 06-07 and 93 in 07-08. The suggestion that the age of victims was falling is also contradicted by the data.

I called the home secretary's office and asked for an answer to the question: "Why didn't you point out in your fact sheet that 'assault by sharp object' admissions were already falling before the government's action plan?"

I have informed Downing Street of this article and asked them for their response.

In both cases, I'll let you know what they say.

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• |
• |
• - What's this?

How would you feel about finding that strangers had been living in your house while you were away? Sleeping in your bed? Using your things?

I was delighted.

My family has been house swapping for many years now - arranging a deal through the internet with another family we have never met to exchange homes. Effectively, we walk into each other's lives.

So for half-term we were in the Lake District - taking care of ducks, rabbits, a tank of African land snails and a farmhouse north of Bassenthwaite Lake. They came to London and took responsibility for our guinea pigs, stick insects, goldfish, home and possessions.

It is an exercise in mutual trust.

Trust is a precious commodity. And not just because it can save the cost of accommodation.

It is the currency of successful societies. In Britain, inter-personal trust has been in long recession leaving us with one of the weakest trust economies in Europe.

The historical decline in trust leaves our resilience exposed to the cancer of cynicism.

Just read this weekend's papers and there are endless stories which play to the prejudice that those with power are inevitably on the make. On the flimsiest of evidence it is assumed that most of our elected representatives are motivated by personal greed rather than the common good. Our fascination is with politicians not politics.

It all plays to a dreary and destructive national narrative that everything is getting worse, that our society is heading for hell in a handcart. We refuse to believe the evidence of falling crime rates or improving lives. We are losing our faith in other people.

The Lake District was a breath of fresh air for a journalist exhausted by such urban suspicions. Walkers met your gaze and smiled. Shoppers offered a cheery word about the weather. Publicans trusted you to settle up at the end of the evening without a piece of plastic security. And our invisible hosts trusted us to put the ducks to bed at sundown.

A survey three years ago found that people who lived in villages and hamlets were generally more trusting than those in [pdf link]. The choice was whether, generally speaking "most people can be trusted" or "you can't be too careful in dealing with people" - the traditional measure. While just 36% of people in urban England (outside London) picked the first option, in rural villages it was 51%.

But this is more than a simple rural/urban comparison. How does one explain the [pdf link] which shows that "Londoners display a significantly higher level of social trust than those in urban parts of the north and west"?

The samples sizes are not huge and it seems unlikely that within four years of relative social calm there would be huge changes in trust (why should trust have fallen ten points in the non-urban south and east?) but the scores for busy, diverse, metropolitan London do not suggest I live in 'cynical city'. In fact, for 2002, London scores higher than any other part of the country.

The researchers scratched their heads and concluded: "This difference is likely to reflect the distinctive socio-demographic and economic profile of Londoners compared with those in urban parts of the north and west. We know, for instance, that levels of social trust are highest among graduates, those in professional and managerial occupations, and the affluent; all groups which are more common in London than elsewhere."

More suggests trust in strangers is causally linked with "outward exposure" to strangers. So, those with strong family ties - it is argued - are less likely to trust strangers because they are less likely to interact with people they don't know.

"Factors that limit exposure, of which strong family ties is one among others, limit subjects' experience as well as motivation to deal with strangers and learn from the interaction; by contrast, we find evidence that factors that promote exposure increase trust."

This might explain why London scores so well. It is a city in which it is hard to avoid exposure to strangers.

Knocking the Cumbrian mud off my walking boots back in the capital, I am not convinced trusting communities are defined by wealth, education or professional status.

Trust, it seems to me, is viral. If someone shows their trust in you, you become more trusting - and so it spreads. But cynicism is a virus too, incubated and cultured by social isolation. How we weather the recession will depend, as much as anything, on the battle between the two. We need to get out more.

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• |
• |
• - What's this?

The anti-globalisation movement may well be hoping the cracks in the capitalist edifice exposed by the downturn will prompt a renaissance for the philosophies which fuelled violent protests for a few years around the millennium ().

However, activity on websites does not necessarily translate into action on the streets. With the entire economy at grave risk, it is unclear whether anger at the failures of banks, other financial institutions and governments will translate into support for action designed to topple those same bodies.

Last year a meeting of "People's Global Action", the umbrella organisation which claims credit for the wave of international protest against the G8, the WTO, the World Bank and the IMF, said that "groups close to the PGA are now looking for new drives to challenge stagnation".

Certainly, a 'movement' with multiple and often contradictory aims saw its momentum fade after the ugly scenes of J18 in the City of London in 1999 and subsequent Mayday protests in Britain. The 'foot-soldiers' shifted their focus on to the anti-war demonstrations following the invasion of Iraq.

That police have identified attempts to exploit the current economic downturn is not a surprise and they will undoubtedly be arguing for greater resources to counter a potential threat to public order. The upcoming meeting of the G20 in London in April has been selected by some activists as a focus for anger. Whether economic anxiety translates into a real desire to destroy capitalism may become evident in the shadow of Canary Wharf this Spring.

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• |
• |
• - What's this?

I wonder whether the home secretary opened the PowerPoint presentation on the dangers of ecstasy that she was sent by the man the papers describe as the "UK's greatest expert" on the drug. If she did, was she impressed?

from Swansea University has emerged as the most powerful academic opponent to the view expressed by the that in their recent .

He tried to get the medical journal to publish his criticism of the ACMD's analysis, but says that they turned him down flat. Instead, he made his presentation to the committee and then sent to Jacqui Smith.

He argues that the Chair of the ACMD, Professor David Nutt, has made a number of "extremely serious errors" in papers on the relative dangers of ecstasy and seeks to demolish the committee's argument with his own "extensive knowledge".

Here is the key slide from his presentation in which he lists the dangers of ecstasy and his sources:

Page 7 of

This sounds pretty frightening. Ecstasy kills scores of people a year, damages their brains, makes them more likely to attack people and makes them monsters behind the wheel.

But a quick check of the sources suggests that Professor Parrott may be making some errors himself.

• Deaths: "40-70 per year in the UK"
• Source:
• ACMD estimate: 10-17 caused by ecstasy

The Schifano paper does provide a table which at first glance appears to support Parrott's claim that ecstasy kills many more people in Britain than the figure estimated by the ACMD.

Page 3 of

But death mentions are not the same thing as deaths by ecstasy, as Schifano himself makes clear:

"The number of cases identified here were actually 'mentions' of ecstasy on death certificates, ie no information was available in respect to ecstasy and concomitant other drugs' dosage, post mortem reports, toxicology results and setting characteristics.
Ecstasy inclusion on those documents submitted to General Mortality Registers did not necessarily mean that this drug directly 'caused' the death, but that ecstasy (MDMA, MDA, MDEA, MBDB) was found at post-mortem and/or was identified by toxicological screening. A number of methodological problems can contribute to make it difficult to interpret the role ecstasy plays in the so-called 'ecstasy related' deaths and especially so if accurate information is not available."

In a 2007 editorial written by Prof. Parrott himself (), he notes that the death data are pretty meaningless:

"In relation to annual deaths, Schifano et al. (2006) suggested an annual UK death rate of around 40-70/year, although they noted the many difficulties in arriving at these estimates, since most fatalities are in ecstasy polydrug users. Indeed all the functional and structural data on recreational ecstasy/MDMA is confounded by other drug and non-drug factors."

• Brain damage: "Most robust finding was a reduction in serotonin transporter density"
• Source:
• ACMD: "unsure" about ecstasy's long-term effects on the brain

Actually, Cowan concludes something rather different about his research on MDMA ecstasy's effect on the brain:

"The current state of neuroimaging in human MDMA users does not permit conclusions regarding the long-term effects of MDMA exposure."

• Aggression: "Increased mid-week"
• Source: /
• ACMD: no evidence that ecstasy causes "interpersonal violence"

The Hoshi work involved "participants processing sentences that could be interpreted as either aggressive or neutral and subsequently remember them in a recognition test. Ecstasy users show a bias toward interpretation of ambiguous material in an aggressive manner when compared to controls 4 days after ecstasy use".

I am not an expert on this kind of analysis, but I do wonder whether we need better evidence to conclude that ecstasy users are significantly more likely to beat someone up on Wednesday nights than their responses to sentence construction.

• Car driving: "Can be 'extremely dangerous'"
• Source:
• ACMD: did not find evidence that ecstasy causes road deaths

The Brookhuis paper Professor Parrott cites does not suggest ecstasy makes car driving extremely dangerous. In fact, it says:

"Driving performance in the sense of lateral and longitudinal vehicle control was not greatly affected after MDMA, but deteriorated after multiple drug use."

And the line about the dangers is in this sentence:

"Driving under the influence of MDMA alone is certainly not safe; however, driving back (home) after a dance party ("rave") where MDMA users regularly combine MDMA with a host of other drugs can be described as extremely dangerous."

• Cardiac: "MDMA has profound cardiovascular effects in humans and animals"
• Source:
• ACMD: poor evidence to suggest ecstasy causes heart damage

The paper cited actually says this:

"Acute exposure to MDMA has profound cardiovascular effects on blood pressure and heart rate in humans and animals."

Professor Parrott chose not to include those key words in his slide.

No-one disputes that taking ecstasy involves risk (see my previous post). Indeed, it seems that we are in urgent need of better research on the long-term effects of MDMA. And the Advisory Council made it clear that ecstasy is a harmful drug and deserves to be listed within Class B.

Its conclusions are based on the largest-ever systematic review of any drug in Britain. Everything is posted online for further academic review. The ACMD did not come to its conclusions alone; the work was .

Naturally, I've tried to contact Professor Parrott to discuss the points above with him, but he hasn't responded to my calls.

Professor Parrott wrote a personal letter to the home secretary urging her not to listen to the ACMD. Instead, he suggests an "independent review" of the committee's findings.

"As one of the leading international experts in this area, I would be willing to undertake such a review", he writes.

Update 26 Feb: Professor Parrot has sent me this document [30Kb PDF] with his response which I'm happy to include here.

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• |
• |
• - What's this?

Having read the latest instalment of the "ecstasy classification" row, I wonder whether anyone is tempted to "lash out at the home secretary" for "trivialising" the dangers of riding horses and showing "insensitivity to the families of victims" of horse-riding accidents.

I ask after the head of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs for suggesting that the risks from horse riding were significantly greater than the risks from taking ecstasy.

The Press Association describes how the home secretary "lashed out at the government's top drug adviser for suggesting taking ecstasy was no worse than riding a horse".

"For me, that makes light of a serious problem, trivialises the dangers of drugs, shows insensitivity to the families of victims of ecstasy and sends the wrong message to young people about the dangers of drugs," the home secretary told the Commons.

So what of the loved ones of the 10 people who die in horse-riding accidents each year in Britain and the many more who must live with the permanent neurological and physical damage from such incidents? Ms Smith told MPs that "there is absolutely no equivalence" between those who are killed or injured in "the legal activity of horse riding and the illegal activity of drug taking".

Some might argue, however, that the "equivalence" is very great between the parent of a young person who dies taking drugs or dies falling from a horse. The sense of loss and the grief may well be remarkably similar. If there is a significant difference, it is that people are much more likely to be harmed from riding a horse than taking ecstasy. It might be handy for people to know that.

And that was Professor David Nutt's point; once again, we are witness to the spectacle of a scientific point being obscured by a political one.

As head of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, Professor Nutt's job is to assess the harms and risks associated with illicit drugs. He has developed a nine-point "harm matrix" to bring the best science to the process.

However, there is obvious frustration that having asked him and his committee to use their scientific expertise to make rational judgements about the relative risks and harms associated with different illicit drugs, politicians then ignore their advice.

It is probable that, on Wednesday, the ACMD will advise ministers that ecstasy be downgraded from Class A to Class B, and that ministers will take no notice.

In his provocative article, Professor Nutt complains that "the drug debate takes place without reference to other causes of harm in society, which tends to give drugs a different, more worrying status".

So he invents an addiction called "equasy" to make his point. He reveals how the harmful consequences are well established - "about 10 people a year die of it and many more suffer neurological damage". He adds that "it is also associated with over 100 road traffic accidents per year - often with deaths".

Equasy, he then reveals, is Equine Addiction Syndrome, "a condition characterised by gaining pleasure from horses and being prepared to countenance the consequences, especially the harms from falling off / under the horse".

Using the same nine-point scale that his committee employs for drugs, he compares 'Equasy" and "Ecstasy". In terms of "acute harm", riding a horse is proportionately 28 times more dangerous than taking ecstasy.

Now, this is clearly an absurd comparison, but Professor Nutt is employing satire. "Making riding illegal would completely prevent all these harms and would be, in practice, very easy to do", he writes. He acknowledges that there would be "little public or government support for such an option".

"This attitude", he continues, "raises the critical question of why society tolerates - indeed encourages - certain forms of potentially harmful behaviour but not others, such as drug abuse."

"Is there a lesson from these relative comparisons of harms and risk that regulatory authorities could use to make better drug harm assessments and thus better laws?", he asks. "The use of rational evidence for the assessment of the harms of drugs will be one step forward to the development of a credible drugs strategy."

There will be a few people, perhaps, reading this post who will have been directly affected by the damage that ecstasy can do. There are, however, likely to be many more directly affected by the harm from pain killers.

A study in Scotland in 2001 titled reviewed 10 years of media reporting of drug deaths.

It found that the likelihood of a newspaper reporting a death from paracetamol (unclassified) was one in 250 deaths. For diazepam (Class C), it was one in 50. For amphetamine (Class B), it was one in three.

For ecstasy (Class A), every associated death was reported. And I very rarely read reports in the national press about those deaths from horse-riding accidents.

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• |
• |
• - What's this?

Sharon Shoesmith, the former director of Haringey council executive who was sacked over the Baby P case, spoke to Jenni Murray on Radio 4's Woman's Hour this weekend. During the interview, she denied "handing out" or "waving" any graphs showing how well her department was doing at the press briefing following the tragedy on 11 November last year.

I was there (see above) and I was struck by the refusal of Haringey social services to apologise and by the fact that I and other journalists were given graphs and information with the following bullet points:
Ìý•ÌýHaringey Children's Social Care achieves high performance
Ìý•ÌýSignificant improvement over 5 years
Ìý•ÌýGraphs below illustrate this

Whoever did hand them out, the graphs were not a media invention; nor was the "Background Information" paper [83Kb PDF] which begins with the claim that Ofsted had "judged that a good service was being delivered to children and young people".

When Ms Shoesmith says that "the press briefing was an absolute disaster", she is quite right. The impression left on the journalists present that grim afternoon was of a council that was there to defend its record, rather than to make a public apology for its failings.

This is a stark warning to all officials: that you may receive training and rehearsals in a crisis, but end up creating a far worse impression if you are seen to have lost sight of your humanity.

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• |
• |
• - What's this?

How much do you love yourself today?

If you are a British woman, the chances are that the answer is: a lot less than most British men.

My Map of the Week comes, once again, from the fascinating site. This time, I thought we might consider "self-esteem" across Europe. And what a curious tale it tells.

Self-esteem in Europe; source:

Broadly, the UK is slightly less self-confident than other parts of Europe, with the Spanish and Germans the most self-assured of our continental neighbours. Out of 22 nations, we come fifteenth overall.

What is clear, however, is the gender gap in Britain. While the blokes are pretty much average in European terms, women have a much lower score. A score of five is average; men are 5.02 and women are just 4.35.

Male self-esteem in Europe; source:

Female self-esteem in Europe; source:

This could be dismissed as : men tend to be cocksure and boastful while women are more humble and reserved. But the difference between the genders varies quite a bit.

While French women are a giant eight points below their male counterparts in terms of self-esteem, in Ireland the difference is just two. And intriguingly, Ukrainian women outscore their men, if only just: 4.54 to 4.53.

Could this be a language issue? The results are extrapolated from the in which pollsters ask how much people agree with statements such as:
Ìý•ÌýI generally feel that what I do in my life is valuable and worthwhile
Ìý•ÌýIn general I feel very positive about myself
Ìý•ÌýAt times I feel as if I am a failure
Ìý•ÌýOn the whole my life is close to how I would like it to be

I don't know whether such phrases have different connotations in different cultures. Does the word "failure" evoke something more or less dramatic in Spanish, Finnish or Flemish? It does seem surprising, to me at least, that the happiest European nations on so many measures do so badly on self-esteem.

The Nordic and the Scandinavians score particularly poorly, with Finland, Norway and Sweden appearing in the bottom four or five and well below the European average. Are happiness and humility linked?

Looking at the self-esteem of different generations is instructive too.

Self-esteem in Europe among those aged 25-34; source:

Self-esteem in Europe among those aged 75+; source:

In Britain, the 25-to-34-year-olds scored just 4.44 (below average), while our senior citizens over the age of 75 got 5.45 (well above).

There is something going on here, but I can't work out what it is and would be grateful for your help.

One thing we do know is that self-belief, self-confidence and self-esteem are vital qualities for people in a crisis. So how we think of ourselves is going to be an important factor in how we find our way through the economic gloom.

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• |
• |
• - What's this?

The row over the release of unchecked knife crime stats by the Home office last December (see earlier posts and here) has taken an extraordinary new twist today with the government's account of what happened looking increasingly shaky.

This afternoon, cabinet office Minister Kevin Brennan told that "the statistics produced within the Home Office on that fact sheet were approved by statisticians in the Home Office before publication".

Startled by a suggestion made by the committee chair (and revealed on this blog a few weeks ago) that the stats guys had done no such thing, a flustered Mr Brennan replied: "That is the information I have, but if that is incorrect, Chair, I'll correct the record".

A few hours later and my phone rings. It is a man from the Home Office. Did the statisticians know? "The answer is no", he replied.

"They were aware that statistics were being assembled, but saw nothing of the final product", he told me. "They did not see that fact sheet before it was published."

And that wasn't all he wanted to convey. The press office didn't sign off the fact sheet either. "The Home Office press office quite emphatically did not push for the publication of the fact sheet," the official stressed.

So who did? He says it wasn't the stats people and it wasn't the press people. Could it, I ask, have been someone in the private office of the Home Secretary? "That is all I can say. It was a Home Office publication. I cannot go further than that."

The fact that the statisticians apparently didn't know what was in the "fact sheet" raises new questions about by the head of the civil service, Sir Gus O'Donnell, to the head of the UK Statistics Authority, which had raised concerns about the release.

In the letter, Sir Gus writes that "one of the contributing factors to the decision" to put out dodgy figures on hospital admissions for stab wounds was that, while health service statisticians had demanded the figures be withheld, "the same objections were not being raised inside the HO".

Well, if the Home Office number-crunchers had no idea what was in the fact sheet, that might explain why.

Given the confused story emerging from different parts of Whitehall of exactly what happened last December, you can understand why today's Public Accounts Committee demanded a "comprehensive letter" from the Cabinet Office.

"We would like to know exactly what sequence of events, with what species of individuals taking actions, produced this result," said Tony Wright.

And now MPs are turning the spotlight on what was described in the committee today as the "special advisor network inside government".

In particular, the MPs wanted to know which of Gordon Brown's close aides inside Number Ten had overruled the objections of government statisticians to force the premature publication of knife crime figures in December.

We heard about an "e-mail trail" which reveals how a close advisor to the prime minister was "adamant" the data should be published - even though he or she knew the statistics had not been properly checked.

Regular readers will know of my close interest in this case having expressed my own disquiet over the statistics when they were released. And it was gratifying to hear the committee repeatedly refer to this blog as they questioned their witnesses.

First up were Sir Michael Scholar, chair of the UK Statistics Authority, and Karen Dunnell, the UK's National Statistician.

Sir Michael - appointed by the prime minister to restore trust in official figures - today accused one of Gordon Brown's closest advisers of "political interference" in the release of data. He confirmed that he'd seen a series of emails which, he made clear, had confirmed a senior NHS statistician had "forcibly" expressed "very considerable concern" about the use of figures on hospital admissions for stab wounds but had been overruled by one of Mr Brown's staff.

"I saw what [the chief NHS statistician] had said about that. I knew Number Ten were reported as being 'adamant' that the figures should be published and of course the figures were published."

The press release, published through the Home Office in December, had been designed to demonstrate the success of the government's knife crime initiatives. But the figures used were described by Sir Michael as "premature, irregular and selective". Their release was a "clear breach" of the official code, he said.

"I think if you are going to have trust in official statistics, you can't have statisticians being leaned upon by politicians, by ministers or advisers or policy civil servants who are working for them," he said.

So did ministers know anything? Did they lean on anyone? The committee seems determined to find out.

Tony Wright: "My understanding is that the special advisor at the Department of Health was told by the NHS statisticians that this could not be published under the code. The special adviser went to the Number Ten special advisor to take advice on this."

Michael Scholar: "That's consistent with what I know."

TW: "Was it a proper decision for a special advisor to take?"

MS: "The code of practice specifically bans political influence in the production of statistics. It is quite unequivocal under the code which was already in force."

TW: "Do you think it is plausible that a special advisor would have taken the decision to overrule statisticians and release information without taking political advice?"

MS: "I really couldn't comment on that."

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• |
• |
• - What's this?

Standing next to a teenager who is holding a large kitchen knife, and knowing that she had previously stabbed her sister, is as good a place as any to consider Britain's relationship with children who commit crime.

I was in Finland, a country travelling down a very different philosophical road from Britain. While the UK locks up around three thousand juvenile offenders, Finland's criminal justice system incarcerates just three. And the girl with the kitchen knife is not one of them.

"We do not think the proper way to take care of a child is by punishing the child", says Kurt Kylloinen, director of the 'reform school' I was visiting outside Helsinki.

Set in thick woodland, the institution was once a girl's boarding school and its rules, even now, have changed little. The girl with the knife was cutting onions in a cookery class.

The youngsters cannot wander off but there are no keys, no bars, no guards. If they do disappear, they will be brought back again.

"You must believe in childhood and not let the child's misbehaviour deceive you", Kurt tells me. "You must believe in the child and that's what we try to do in Finland, whatever the child does."

The age of criminal responsibility in Finland is 15, although in practice very few youngsters under the age of 21 are dealt with by criminal justice system. Children who break the law are seen primarily as welfare cases.

Over 60% of children locked up by the state in the UK are known to have mental health problems. In Finland such youngsters are more likely to be patients in well-funded psychiatric units.

When I explained that in England and Wales children as young as 10 are dealt with under the penal code - and in Scotland as young as eight - the reform school's psychologist Merja Ikalainen looked aghast.

MI: I don't have words for that. It sounds so horrible.

ME: You think it's immoral?

MI: It is.

ME: Why? If a young person knowingly commits a crime?

MI: That's not a young person. That's a child. They need care.

ME: But shouldn't a child have to suffer the consequences of their actions?

MI: Suffer! You use words that sound really horrible. A child shouldn't be suffering. The word suffer sounds really sad.

Back in central Helsinki, I thought about Merja's remarks sitting in a prison cell. The simple design, the angry scratch marks of previous occupants on the walls, the high window and thick bars, all looked familiar enough. But walk out of the door and you find not a jail l.

Such a contrast. While we are busy building prisons, the Finns are closing them. They used to lock up four times as many people as their Nordic neighbours but made a deliberate decision to turn away from their Russian past and adopt a liberal Scandinavian approach to criminal justice - particularly in relation to juveniles.

It is now a society that sees delinquency and youth crime as welfare issues. Even involving teenagers opening fire in Finnish schools have not hardened attitudes.

"I think people understand that the individuals who committed these crimes had some problems earlier that were not identified or noticed by family members or society", says Helsinki's deputy police commissioner, Jari Liukku. "I think (the incidents) are more underlining the fact that we have to find out the reasons for this."

When I went to Helsinki's main mall, I could not find a single shopper who thought the state was "too soft" on juvenile offenders. One man, unshaven and heavily tattooed, gave this response to the idea that badly behaved teenagers need punishment: "That would be useless", he said, shrugging.

The tabloid papers cover youth crime, but you will never see the culprits described as "thugs" or "yobs".

"It's a question of our culture and our ethics", explained Mika Molsa, crime reporter for . "We don't think that those young people are evil. They have some problems in the homes when they are growing. So we have to solve those problems first."

It is a less adversarial society than Britain. Proportional representation has created a political culture based on consensus and compromise. Public discourse tends to be less polarised and reactionary.

Many people in the UK will find the Finnish model extraordinary. The feeling is mutual. Finland is a low crime society and, although police report a slight rise in youth offending, the Finns regard Britain's "obsession" with prison as barbaric and ineffective.

Back at the reform school, I pressed Kurt on the results of their approach:

KK: After they leave this institution the amount of crime these children do diminishes remarkably. Very few of these children that leave us at about 17-18 years commit any crimes any more.

ME: It costs 240 euros a day to keep a child here, which is equivalent to a luxury hotel. Is that really money well spent?

KK: It is, certainly. Every euro is very well spent at this time when we can influence the child's future behaviour, because the money spent later may be much, much more.

The "prison works" philosophy is not only being challenged by liberal Scandinavian countries. Even in , officials are beginning to wonder whether incarceration is effective. And there are debates in the UK as to whether our age of criminal responsibility should be raised to 14, especially given Britain's recent signing of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• |
• |
• - What's this?

Imagine being nine years old and having no-one who cares about you.

I don't mean cares for you: making sure you do your teeth and your homework. I mean someone who devotes themself to nurturing you to adulthood: advising you, encouraging you, loving you.

I recently met a nine-year-old in an English care home who told me of his experience of being looked after by the state.

ÌýQ: You've been in care for a little while, haven't you?
ÌýA: Yeah, four years.
ÌýQ: How many places have you been in?
ÌýA: About six.
ÌýQ: Six different places in four years?
ÌýA: Yeah.

It is not an unusual story. Most of the children I spoke to had moved from foster family to residential care to another foster family - an institutional merry-go-round that's far from merry.

In a week when we are reflecting on the relationship between British society and children, the plight of the 60,000 youngsters "looked after" by the state tells us something about our priorities.

Yesterday, the government sent me figures for England which they hoped would convince me how things are improving.

"Between 2004 and 2008 the proportion of care leavers in education, employment and training rose from 55.4% to 64.9%." So 35% of children leaving care are at the age of 19. But that compares with a national average of just over 6%.

The Department for Children admits that children in the care system are five times less likely to achieve five good GCSEs and eight times more likely to be excluded from school. They are less likely to go to university and more likely to end up in prison.

These are thoroughly depressing statistics, all the more so when one realises how some of our European neighbours do.

In Britain, six out of a hundred care leavers will go on to higher education; in Denmark, it is six out of ten. Wow.

I recently went to Copenhagen to try and understand how they achieve such different results. Yes, it is a smaller country. Yes, they take, proportionately, twice as many kids into care. But the short answer to the question is a philosophy called "social pedagogy".

I met Ahmed, who has just turned seven years old. The sixth son of an Iraqi refugee family, he was taken into care along with his siblings. But today, he is out on the streets of the Danish capital - all alone. With his anorak hood pulled tightly around his face, the small boy negotiates busy roads to get to the corner store.

Gitte Nielsen is the social worker with personal responsibility for his educational and emotional growth - his social pedagogue. For her, nurturing Ahmed to adulthood means taking risks.

"I think it's very important for children to feel that the adult who is close to them trusts them," she tells me. "Each time I let him out on his own I can see that he grows."

Gitte, like almost all social workers looking after children in Denmark, has a professional degree, is well paid and enjoys a job with high status.

"The first time he went, I was very scared and I was looking at the clock the whole time, like with my own children, but he proved that he could do it."

While we are closing children's homes in favour of foster care, in Denmark they are opening new ones. In the basement of the care home I visited, Ahmed and his brother Faisal were furiously bashing each other with giant plastic cushions as their pedagogues looked on.

I suggest to Gitte that in Britain, her counterpart might be anxious about the risk of the children hurting themselves and the possibility of being sued.

"Yes", she replies with a shrug. "And sometimes they hurt themselves, but of course I give them a hug or whatever you need to. And then they are ready to do it again."

The British state as parent has become reluctant to take risks, to show affection. A system corrupted by abuse and cruelty now tends to adopt a safety first approach.

But the outcomes for children in care are so poor that one local authority, Essex County Council, is introducing social pedagogy right across its services.

I watched as two trainers from Germany introduced care staff to the new philosophy. They asked them for their reaction to a picture of a little boy standing on a plank straddling a stream. He is holding a large saw and is happily cutting the plank between his legs.

"Get him off there," says one. "It looks really dangerous," says another.

"What is the worst that could happen if you let him continue?" asked the pedagogues. "And what advantages might there be in letting him continue?"

Pedagogy challenges traditional attitudes, and the care workers I met in Essex seemed genuinely liberated. Bridget Mellor told me she thought the system had become overly protective.

"You know, somebody has to love them. They need love so badly. I think people have been stuck in - 'I'm the carer, you're the child, you'll do as I say, this is the system.' But actually, they are children. They need a cuddle, they need a hug."

The paedophile scandals that contributed to the closure of many children's homes in Britain still damage young people. Staff are nervous about showing affection. They fear that an allegation of inappropriate behaviour, however unfounded, might wreck their career.

In Denmark, a self-confident and respected profession has no qualms about physical contact and displays of affection. In a Copenhagen cafe, I met a group of young people in their early twenties who maintain links with the care system.

Alex, an attractive 23-year-old woman, introduced me to "uncle" Bruno - her pedagogue. She described an intense relationship of mutual trust and respect. "I love him and I know he loves me. I could tell him anything. I think I could talk with him better than with my best friend."

Such intimacy made me feel uncomfortable - the pretty young girl and the older man. Does Bruno have concerns?

"She can call me her uncle. That sounds good but, in real life, it's not that way. I get money to deal with Alex and she knows that. We come very close to young people we are working with. But there's still the distance."

The children in Essex have been experiencing pedagogy for a few months now and have already noticed a difference.

"Before they started to mention all this 'pegagogy' thing, they didn't do as much involving us," one ten-year-old explains. "Normally, the adults make the decisions but, instead, they let us help the adults to make the decisions."

ÌýQ: Do you feel there's always somebody who can give you a cuddle?
ÌýA: Yeah.
ÌýQ: Do you like cuddles?
ÌýA: Yeah, I do actually. Definitely when I'm tired and don't know what to do with myself.

Pedagogy is not cheap. But the Danish welfare ministry says that taxpayers are willing to stump up. In fact, they say that the pressure is on the state to do more to protect children at risk.

Here in the UK, the government is piloting social pedagogy in 30 sites in England. The philosophy is gaining ground in Scotland too.

While there are many talented, committed and caring social workers doing their best to nurture vulnerable children to adulthood in Britain, it seems to me that we still need to do far more to shift from a system that cares for children to one that has the confidence to care about them.

PS: You can listen below to report on pedagogy, including an interview with , chairman of the Children, Schools and Families Select Committee:

PPS: You can also see Ahmed, Faisal and Gitte in the video below, from this morning's Breakfast News.

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• |
• |
• - What's this?

Today's report on childhood deserves its full and provocative title: .

It is an uncomfortable read and likely to elicit delight and outrage in equal measure: delight to those who believe that it is British society's lack of values that is the cause of so many of its children's ills; outrage to those who will regard its analysis and conclusions as a moralising attack on individual freedom.

The independent inquiry panel - 11 experts including eight professors - says its report is evidence-based. But its tone is passionate. Adult selfishness is blamed for many of the problems afflicting young people in Britain: high family break-up, teenage unkindness, unprincipled advertising, too much competition in education and ("of course" say the report's authors) "our acceptance of income inequality".

There is an emotional bluntness to the analysis. It talks of the need for "a more caring ethic and for less aggression, a society more based upon the law of love".

"We are arguing," say the authors, "for a significant change of heart in our society."

Britain's relationship with its children is under the spotlight - particularly since found that young people in the UK were the unhappiest in any of the world's rich nations. The Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, in a contribution to today's report, describes a climate of "sentimentalism and panic".

Echoing Conservative party arguments, the collapse of the traditional family is seen as a critical factor. Lone parents, absent fathers, working mothers - all are listed as potentially damaging to young people's lives.

"Child-rearing is one of the most challenging tasks in life and ideally it requires two people," the report concludes.

It produces evidence suggesting that three times as many three-year-olds living with lone parents or a step-parent have behavioural problems compared to those living with married parents.

More generally, the report concludes: "Children with step or single parents are 50% more likely to suffer problems with academic achievement, self-esteem, popularity with other children, behavioural difficulties, anxiety and depression."

That is not to say that there are not millions of examples of children and young people growing and thriving in one-parent or step-parent marriages. The argument is that the odds are better in a nuclear family.

"The closeness of fathers to their children influences the children's later psychological well-being even after allowing for the mother's influence," the report states, also suggesting that women's new economic independence has contributed to family break-up.

The report says that parents should have a long-term commitment to each other as well as to the welfare of their child, recommending a civil birth ceremony - conducted by a registrar - explicitly stating the responsibilities parents are accepting. It calls for free parenting classes around birth and professional family support if things get difficult. The choice of staying at home to bring up a family should be more easily available, it argues.

While these ideas may appeal to traditionalists, the report's recommendation for an increase in taxes, significant redistribution of wealth to counter child poverty and huge new investment in mental health services, education and child care may well be criticised as politically naive.

So may its assertion that British society has "tilted too far towards the individual pursuit of private interest and success".

Calls to scrap SATS tests in English schools, abandon school league tables, ban advertising to under-12s and prevent building on any open space where children play are radical, and unlikely to happen in the short term.

Nevertheless, after three years of study and with 35,000 submissions, this is arguably a landmark report on the state of childhood in Britain - and a starting point for a debate as to why a million and a half British children are unhappy and why young people's emotional health appears to be worsening.

While the government might wish to pick on the first line of this report which states that "in many ways our children have never lived so well", the inquiry panel concludes that "more young people are anxious and troubled" with evidence to suggest that "the proportion of 15-to-16-year-olds experiencing significant emotional difficulties rose significantly between 1974 and 1999" and that "more young people have significant behavioural difficulties".

In a postscript to the report, the Archbishop of Canterbury writes that it "resolutely refuses to give an apocalyptic analysis of a generation out of control; but what it does is to turn a sharp eye on the society in which children are being raised and ask how it has become tone-deaf to the real requirements of children".

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• |
• |
• - What's this?