Business of the House

Can we have a debate on the robustness of the British crime survey? It is an annual survey that the Government put great store by in judging whether crime is rising or falling, yet it does not cover a variety of offences, ranging from commercial offences, murder—because the victims of that cannot be interviewed—and offences that it calls victimless, including drugs offences. Crucially, it also does not cover offences against people who are aged 16 and under because they are not interviewed as part of the survey. Can we have a debate on that matter, to try to discover how we can make the British crime survey to crime in today’s Britain, rather than crime in the Britain of 1981 when it was established?