Lies, damned lies and statistics.

Dominic Grieve, the Shadow Home secretary, is beginning to surprise many people with the effectiveness with which he has undertaken his brief. The apparently dry and scholarly lawyer has already caused the government much trouble in just a few months.

Today he announced two reforms on the handling of crime statistics which would be introduced by an incoming Conservative Government. Both are intended to make it more difficult for any government to misuse crime statistics, in the way that the "progress on knife crime statistics" did before Christmas, and for which Jacqui Smith subsequently had to apologise.

Firstly, responsibility for compiling and publishing both sets of data, - (police) recorded crime statistics and also the British Crime Survey, would become the responsibility of the Office of National Statistics. This body until fairly recently at times has seemed more like an arm of government, or of the Labour Party, but more recently has acquired greater reputation by its balanced stance, even facing down Gordon brown on the definition and size of public debt within the budget. The public and experts now have a greater trust in the ONS.

Secondly, the incoming Conservative Government would abolish the present practice of permitting ministers, their special advisers and civil servants having pre-release access, and thus able to "spin" the figures before release. They will still be able to put their (defensive) slant on the data, but will have no more opportunity than anyone else. Since 1997 they have been able to make a preemptive announcement. Even if subsequently opponents made them retract, their immediate announcement had long enough unchallenged to emerge with some influence.

The ONS should improve the trust placed in national statistics, and government attempts to explain away will be contemporary with opposition condemnation.

It is worth quoting Grieve: "Labour have proved themselves serial manipulators of official statistics. Their obsession with covering up, rather than facing up to, problems has meant serious violent crime has only got worse. A new approach is required (and hence) we propose (the) two radical reforms of crime statistics."

If such reforms are enacted then accountability and transparency will be enhanced and deception will become more difficult. Moreover, any future government which proposes to rescind the principles will immediately be suspected of wanting to use deceit.

Grieve seems to be making harder for David Davies to be considered worthy of replacing Grieve. This is no mean achievement.