THE release of official figures that are expected to reveal how ministers have wasted billions of pounds on schools, the police and other key public services have been delayed until after the election.

The much anticipated figures — exposing how huge rises in public spending to almost £500 billion a year since 1997 have not always been matched by an adequate improvement in services — were due to be published in April.

The figures could have been an embarrassment to Labour, which is fighting for re-election on the basis of improved public services. However, the Office for National Statistics (ONS), a department of the Treasury, has decided to hold back their publication until after polling day.

It has also emerged from leaked documents that Tony Blair has admitted in cabinet committee meetings that the public does not trust government claims on public services.

To overcome the problem, he ordered that new “productivity figures” should be drawn up last year — but the move has backfired as officials are now forced to delay publication to avoid political embarrassment.

At a cabinet committee meeting last March he ordered that the ONS should change the way that key statistics were compiled so that Labour could present a more “credible” story in the run-up to the election.

“The prime minister said it was of fundamental importance that the major investment in public services which the government was making was seen to deliver,” state leaked minutes of the meeting, which was also attended by Gordon Brown and John Prescott.

Blair and other ministers agreed that “departments found it difficult to defend their own figures on performance improvement as, unless they were verified by authoritative, independent sources, they would not be trusted”.

The decision to hold back the new statistics this weekend has sparked Tory claims that Labour is trying to hide the fact that it has not delivered on public services. David Davis, the shadow home secretary, said the Tories would demand the figures were published immediately. “Once again the figures appear to have been fiddled to protect the guilty,” he said.

Total spending on schools, hospitals, police and other public services has risen more than 50% since Labour came to power. NHS spending alone has doubled since 1997 and will have tripled by 2008.

However, officials told Blair in private last year that overall productivity had actually decreased by 10% because of red tape and growing numbers of bureaucrats. Efficiency in the NHS and schools had declined by 15%-20%. As a result, ministers ordered Len Cook, head of the ONS, to help to formulate plans to change the way the figures were drawn up.

Experts believe that the new method of calculating will, when finally published, still show a substantial fall in public sector productivity. They point to initial revised figures on the NHS published last October, which show that productivity fell in every year since Labour came to power, with up to £6 billion being wasted in red tape.

Since then the ONS has been ordered to draw up new figures on schools, the police, the criminal justice system and social services. Cook stated publicly in January that they would be published “by the end of April” and repeated the assurance in a letter to Professor David Rhind, chairman of the Statistics Commission, on January 28.

Cook has since made a U-turn, writing again to Rhind to say their publication will be delayed until after the election.

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