Tony Blair and his ministers like to quote from the British Crime Survey when they claim they have done well on crime. On the face of it, the British Crime Survey is the best source because it is based on interviews with a large sample of people - 40,000 - in their own homes. This gets rid of the problem with official recorded crime that the rate at which crimes are recorded a) varies from one crime to another and b) may vary over time. So, the BCS appears to be objective and realistic.

But Trevor Kavanagh in The Sun makes the point that the British Crime Survey is deficient is several key ways:

• It does not ask anyone under 18 about their experience as victims of crime
• It obviously cannot include murder (since the victims are not around to tell the tale).
• It does not include crimes against commercial property
• It does not include rape or other forms of sexual violence on the grounds that families are reluctant to talk about such things.

These are important omissions. A great many of the victims of crime are under 18. These are also often victims of violent crimes - the sort of crimes which the officially recorded crime figures suggest are rising dramatically. Murder, of course, is the ultimate violent crime.

It is very convenient that the BCS figures do not include rape and sexual assault, too. This is another category of crime which - according the officially recorded figures - is going up. The Government likes to claim that this is because women are more willing than before to report such things.

The Sun took the initiative of commissioning a Mori opinion poll to find out just how commonplace crime has become in Britain if you cut out the Government in the assessment of it. (The present Government's willingness to manipulate statistics and turn civil servants into its propagandists is another reason for wanting to do this.)

The sample used is regrettably only 1,001 but the results are grim. Of adults, 83 per cent have been victims of one crime or another. That might not seem too bad - on the basis that many of the crimes will have been minor and older adults have been around a long time during which to experience crimes. But the remarkable thing is that 81 per cent of 15 to 17 year-olds also say that they have been victims of crime. That suggests a phenomenally high incidence of crime among the young.

Again, of adults, 30 per cent have been victims in the past year. But of 15 to 17 year olds, 52 per cent have been victims. That is a truly enormous figure. Young people, according to this poll, are more likely to have endured a crime in the past year than not.

A UN international survey - not using official figures of any Government - has previously suggested that England and Wales had the equal highest crime rate out of 12 selected countries. Australia shared this very high crime rate. Countries including the United States, France and Switzerland had lower rates.

James Bartholomew is author of The Welfare State We're In. Read the blog of the book here.