UK statistics watchdog says Downing Street was repeatedly warned over Johnson’s misleading jobs claims

The United Kingdom's statistics watchdog has said that Downing Street was repeatedly warned over Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s misleading jobs claims.

Johnson's leadership credentials have been badly tarnished by controversies and missteps in recent months, leading to calls from some of his own lawmakers for him to resign.

Ed Humpherson, the director general of the UK Statistics Authority (UKSA), said there had been “a series of informal discussions” before the regulator took the “unusual” step of issuing public rebukes to No 10 over the same issue twice last month.

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“This is not something we do lightly – we don’t have an objective to get a certain amount of column inches,” Humpherson told the Observer. “And this is not an intervention at a personal level. We are clarifying the correct interpretation of those statistics. In a sense, we’re on the side of the statistics. We are not a referee in the debate.

“I had written to the head of data science in No 10 about this issue. And that itself followed a series of informal discussions where we said ‘we think you need to look again at how these numbers are being referred to’.”

“We don’t have to do this very often because by and large politicians and the people who brief politicians try really hard to get it right. And the general experience is that when they don’t quite get it right, they welcome the clarification that we provide.”

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Johnson had recently received a questionnaire from London’s Metropolitan Police as part of the investigation into parties in Downing Street during COVID lockdowns.

If he is found to have broken his government’s own COVID rules, the embattled prime minister could be fined and will face even more pressure to stand down from fellow lawmakers already furious at his proximity to the “partygate” affair.

Johnson brushed off calls to quit over the scandal, promising to reform the way his office is run and insisting that he and his government can be trusted.

“It’s unusual. We had to write twice to Matt Hancock about testing data in May and early June 2020,” Humperhson said. “It is unusual, but not without precedent.”Humpherson welcomed the declaration on government reform that the prime minister and the cabinet secretary made last year, to build greater expertise in government on data.

“It was really strong on the role of data, the role of analysis and the role of validation. That’s brilliant,” he said.

Referring to initiatives such as the coronavirus dashboard, he said: “The data revolution within government has been happening over time, but the pandemic really accelerated that.” He said there was a recognition that data was more useful when it was linked together from several sources, and the Office for National Statistics’s new Integrated Data Service was doing this across government.

“The risk is that the data stays close to the chest,” he said. “And actually what the pandemic shows is that there is a public appetite to make it available.”

(With inputs from agencies)