Why has Lindsay Hoyle, the Speaker of the house, thus far refused to demand a correction from the prime minister for seriously misleading the Commons about unemployment and crime figures, not just once or twice, but repeatedly (Johnson and Patel’s claims about falling crime ‘misleading’, says UK watchdog, 3 February)?
Boris Johnson has claimed that both these figures have fallen significantly since the pandemic, but official statistics – gathered by the Office for Statistics Regulation, the Institute for Employment Studies and independent watchdogs such as Full Fact – show that they have actually risen significantly. Johnson has claimed that employment has risen by 500,000 during that period, but a Labour Force Survey shows that it has actually fallen by more than that – by 600,000 in fact.
Johnson also claims that crime has fallen by 14%, when the official figures – which don’t exclude fraud and computer misuse as he does – show that instead of falling by 14%, the figure has risen by that amount. In other words, the prime minister inverts the truth when he speaks about these matters.
As the BBC’s More or Less programme reported this week, the PM has been written to by the chair of UK Statistics Authority and by Full Fact – the latter on six separate occasions – pointing out these untruths, and asking him to desist from repeating them and to correct the record in parliament. He hasn’t done either of these things. Indeed, the same lies are still tripping off his tongue.
According to Will Moy, chief executive of Full Fact, Johnson’s cavalier way with these statistics has been raised with the Speaker, whose response was merely to say that he expects ministers to live up to their responsibilities. What is that but an evasion, effectively a burying of his head in the sand?
When a minister lies to the house, what is it that the ministerial code demands? It certainly isn’t silence, Speaker of the house.
Dr Philip Hoy
Church Enstone, Oxfordshire
The Speaker has said, in relation to the prime minister’s baseless slur against Keir Starmer, that “words have consequences” (Report, 8 February). What exactly have the consequences been for Boris Johnson?
Rod Price
Mollington, Oxfordshire