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Sceptical of knife epidemic * Mark Easton * 7 Jul 08, 16:11 GMT After my post on Friday looking at the hospital admission figures for stab and gunshot victims in England, a story was widely reported that knife violence accounts for 14,000 people in Britain being admitted into hospital last year. You may have seen it in the Independent on Sunday which claimed an exclusive and then almost everywhere else, including the BBC. Well, I have checked out the story and discovered that the figure includes not only attacks but also accidental injuries from knives and other sharp implements. If one looks only at assaults with sharp objects (stabbings to you and me) the figure for the UK halves to about 7,000. I have now been able to lay my hands on the Scottish data for the same category which shows approximately 1,300 stab victims north of the border for 2006/7, which is actually a fall from 2002/3. The figures for Northern Ireland are small, but again the numbers of hospital admissions has fallen over the same period. The inflation of the figures seems unnecessary to make the point: injuries from stabbings have gone up in England - particularly in London. However, knives have become political weapons. No politician wants to be accused of complacency, so rhetoric trumps analysis. It wouldn't matter if exaggerating the scale of the problem didn't make it more likely youngsters will seek to protect themselves with knives and the wider population will needlessly worry about what is a tiny risk for all but a few. I was puzzled, having studied this data, why the Home Office should be suggesting that doctors need to report stab wounds in the same way they report gunshot wounds to the police since we have the figures already The reason, I understand, is that the hospital figures only apply to those admitted to hospital rather than treated and sent home. Ministers want police to have better information for their community crime mapping. What I suspect such an exercise would reveal is that knife crime is rising in some inner-city areas, fuelled by gang culture, drugs and alcohol. However, it may actually be falling in much of the UK and I remain sceptical that there is good evidence of a national "epidemic". PS: I have done a bit more number-crunching for a piece on tonight's BBC News at Ten and I think it is quite informative. By my calculations, knife crime has risen three times faster in London over the past five years than the rest of England. This, I think, demonstrates how the situation in the capital has driven the claims of an epidemic. BBC NEWS | The Reporters | Mark Easton's UK