BLUNKETT ACCUSED OF ABANDONING CRIME TARGETS

David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, was accused last night of dropping or
watering down a raft of Government targets on crime, asylum and drug abuse.

Mr Blunkett has quietly abandoned more than 20 key targets or changed their
definition to make them meaningless, Conservatives claimed. The attack came
after it emerged that the Home Office website showed a series of changes to
public service agreements arranged with the Treasury in 2000.

Among the targets dropped were promises made to "reduce by 2004 the economic
cost of crime" and to "reduce by 2004 the time from arrest to sentence", the
Conservatives claimed.

A pledge to "reduce levels of repeat offending amongst problem
drugs-misusing offenders by 35 per cent by 2005" and a promise to "disrupt
10 per cent more organised criminal enterprises by 2004" were also dropped,
the Conservatives said.

And a promise "to reduce robbery in our principal cities by 14 per cent by
2005" was amended to "reduce robbery in ten street crime initiatives by 14
per cent".

Oliver Letwin, the Shadow Home Secretary, said: "Some targets that are not
achieved are quietly dropped. Others are renamed or amended. The objective
is to hope that no one will notice.

A Home Office spokesman denied the targets had been dropped, claiming that
they had been earmarked for new "public delivery agreements" with the
Treasury.