Lib Dem crime pledge a bit iffy

I suspected for a moment that Nick Clegg and Chris Huhne (pictured) might be forming some sort of crime-fighting duo.

A yellow Batman and Robin perhaps, or even a Lib Dem Cagney and Lacey.

The thing is they’d promised to solve an extra 82,000 crimes a year if elected, and I couldn’t work out how they could do that without getting on the front line.

It turns out their figure is a rather dubious one worked out from their pledge to get an extra 10,000 bobbies on the beat. Their thinking being:

10,000 extra officers X the average no of crimes solved by each UK bobby = 82,265 extra crimes solved in England and Wales.

The idea that an injection of cash from Westminster would definitely translate into crimes solved has to be ridiculous – there are just so many different factors at play.

I’m pretty sure, for example, that even the Lib Dem’s powers of persuasion wouldn’t be able to win over criminals into playing along.

And there’s more – the pledge to provide the extra bobbies will apparently be paid for through scrapping ID cards, says Lib Dem HQ.

Isn’t that the same cash that the party’s treasury spokesman Vince Cable has already earmarked to help pay off UK debt?

Yes, say party HQ – but actually they’re expecting the ID card scheme to yield more savings than the Government is admitting and so it might be able to cover the police scheme and pay off debt.

Hardly a solid foundation for major parts of finance and home affairs policy.