LONDON -- Levels of street robbery - a growing political embarrassment for British Prime Minister Tony Blair -- soared by 28 percent last year, according to data released on Friday.

In figures that some commentators said showed Britain was the most crime-ridden nation in the Western world, violence, murder and burglary were also up. But in a sign of the issue's sensitivity, the government went to extreme lengths to insist overall crime levels were stable.

In a baffling report littered with conflicting data and peppered with references to potential statistical errors or reporting difficulties, the government sought to show crime levels were steady after what it said were "significant falls".

But data for crime recorded by police in England and Wales between April 2001 and April 2002 contained in the 200-page report painted a very different picture, Reuters reported.

They showed street crime surging by 28 percent, violent crime rising by 11 percent, house burglary up seven percent and murder up four percent. Sex crime levels rose in total by 11 percent, with incest up 16 percent, rape against women up 14 percent and rape against men up 11 percent.

Commentators reacted with horror to the figures and warned Blair -- who famously promised when he came to power in 1997 to be "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime" -- that he must do better if his labor government is not to suffer the electoral punishment for crime dealt out in France and the Netherlands. "By some measures, Britain now has the worst crime rate in the Western world," the right-of-center daily telegraph said in an editorial. "If labor is not to go the way of the French and Dutch socialists, he will have to do better than this." The daily mirror, normally supportive of the government, devoted its entire front page to nine photographs of bruised and bleeding crime victims and sneered: "Tough on crime? -- They'd laugh if it didn't hurt so much."

***** "Statistical Manipulation"? ******* But when it came to Friday's crime figures, the renowned "spin" capability of Blair's team scaled new heights in seeking to turn a 28 percent rise in street robbery into a "stable" picture of crime which the government welcomed.

For the first time, police recorded crime figures for the past year were presented in the same document as British crime survey (BSC) data, which are based not on records, but on interviews with a sample of 33,000 people across the country.

While recorded data showed overall crime rising by seven percent, the BSC estimated it fell by two percent.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Government's Home Office Minister John Denham insisted the BCS was the "most accurate" measure of crime and said it showed a welcome picture.

Opposition conservative home affairs spokesman Oliver Letwin accused the government of fiddling the figures, but said the truth about rising crime levels would still emerge.

"No amount of statistical manipulation can conceal what everyone on the estates in our inner cities already knows --that it is the gangs and the drug dealers rather than the forces of law and order that are in charge," he said.