THE deception of the public over speed camera statistics once again raises the spectre that safety is taking a back seat to the political machinations of a cabal of organisations protecting their own self-interests.

Oxfordshire County Council cannot avoid its share of responsibility over this issue in that it decided to withdraw funding for Thames Valley Safer Roads Partnership, the quango set up to oversee speed enforcement in the area.

Yet our concern is what it has always been: that the public of Oxfordshire is less safe on our roads because of a split between the police, the council and the Safer Roads Partnership.

Therefore it is of great concern to discover figures that suggested the roads were less safe did not actually paint a correct picture.

Such a claim would have concerned motorists and ramped the pressure up on Oxfordshire County Council as villain of the piece.

Even when an initial attempt to compare these figures was made, we were told it could not be done.

But now the truth emerges that if you evaluated the figures one way, speeding has actually dropped in Woodstock.

The partnership wriggles that it did not present these figures as painting a full picture but it has an experienced media office and cannot claim it did not know these figures would receive a lot of media coverage.

The public were misled. That damages the Partnership’s credibility. Public safety should be the only concern.

We do not care who meets the speed enforcement on our roads. But if quangos such as the Safer Roads Partnership are exposed as unreliable then the police must take up their statutory duty rather than sitting idly by as its partners mislead motorists with questionable statistics.