DAVID CAMERON’S use of crime statistics is a propaganda effort Joseph Goebbels would have been proud of, a former North-East police chief said yesterday.

Labour’s Lord Mackenzie of Framwellgate, a former Durham Police superintendent and ex-president of the Police Superintendents’ Association of England and Wales, accused the Prime Minister of misleading the public.

He pointed to Mr Cameron’s claim in the Commons this month that crime “went through the roof” under the previous government.

Lord Mackenzie told peers: “Not true. The latest annual update on national crime statistics for England and Wales, released last week on 15 July, demonstrate that the Government is misleading the public about the levels of crime.”

Opening a debate on policing and crime rates, Lord Mackenzie said that since 1997, the British Crime Survey showed violent crime had fallen by 42 per cent.

“Any attempt to suggest otherwise by misquoting or disbelieving the British Crime Survey, which is accepted as a gold standard by most British academics and internationally, is beneath contempt and it deserves to be exposed as a scaremongering propaganda effort which Joseph Goebbels would have been proud of,” he said.