The latest data on hospital admissions for assault bring little comfort to the Home Office’s Tackling Knives Action Programme, launched in ten areas in June 2008.

A year ago the Home Office and No 10 got into serious trouble by claiming that in the TKAP areas, admissions for assault were down by 27 per cent in the July-September quarter of 2008 compared to the same quarter in 2007. Despite warnings from the NHS Information Centre that the figures were potentially inaccurate, the Home Office included them in a press release, earning a rebuke from the UK Statistics Authority.
 
New data  released by the IC yesterday show that the effect of TKAP on admissions is barely perceptible. In the year from October 2007 to September 2008, there were 42,362 admissions for assault in England, 26,475 (62.5 per cent) of them in TKAP areas. In the period from October 2008 to September 2009 there were 43,478 admissions, 27,076 (62.3 per cent) in TKAP areas.
 
So admissions for assault increased by 2.6 per cent over the year:  by 2.3 per cent in TKAP areas and by 3.2 per cent elsewhere. Squinting hard, one might see that as a tiny gain – admissions have risen a fraction more slowly in the TKAP areas than elsewhere. But the difference is so small as to be meaningless.