Sunak, who has a habit of making false and inaccurate claims, recently said that government debt is falling. The Prime Minister made the inaccurate claim both in a social media video as well as in the House of Commons.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has been slammed by the statistics watchdog after he once more made a misleading claim.
Sunak, who has a habit of making false and inaccurate claims, recently said that government debt is falling. The Prime Minister made the inaccurate claim both in a social media video as well as in the House of Commons.
Sir Robert Chote, the chair of the UK Statistics Authority (UKSA), said the prime minister’s assertion that “debt is falling” may have caused “confusion” and “undermined trust in the government’s use of statistics.”
After Sunak said “we have indeed reduced debt” at Prime Minister’s Questions on 22 November, his assertion was scrutinised further, with Lib Dem MP Sarah Olney highlighting how ONS figures showed public sector net debt has risen on every measure.
Downing Street sought to defend Sunak’s claim by arguing that Sunak was referring to a projection that debt would be falling as a proportion of GDP by 2028.
In a letter to Lib Dem Treasury spokesperson Sarah Olney, responding to her concerns, Sir Robert said that “the average person in the street” would have interpreted the comment to mean “debt was already falling or that the government’s policy decisions had lowered it at fiscal events – neither of which is the case”.
He added: “This has clearly been a source of confusion and may have undermined trust in the government’s use of statistics and quantitative analysis in this area.
“Members of the public cannot be expected to understand the minutiae of public finance statistics and the precise combination of definitional choices that might need to be made for a particular claim to be true.”
Sarah Olney said: “Rishi Sunak knows he has no good story to tell on the UK economy so he has resorted to making one up.
“The least this no-growth Prime Minister could do is be honest about it with the British public.
“Instead, he has reached for the Boris Johnson playbook and is undermining trust in politics. This is desperate stuff from a desperate prime minister and it is right that he has been called out on it.”
Basit Mahmood is editor of Left Foot Forward
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