Boris Johnson today made a claim to Parliament that he already admitted was untrue weeks ago, and apparently promised not to use again.
The Prime Minister told PMQs there were “more people in work than there were before the pandemic”.
Yet less than a month ago, he accepted a correction about that very figure from the UK Statistics Authority.
It comes just as the PM prepares to order MPs to block an inquiry into whether he misled Parliament deliberately over Partygate.
Mr Johnson has denied deliberately misleading Parliament, insisting he reflected the facts as he knew them at the time.
While people on payrolls are up since pre-Covid, the number of people in jobs overall was still down by 580,000 compared to December 2019-February 2020, previous figures suggested.
And while UK employment was 75.5% in April 2022, the latest figure, that was still 1.1 points lower than pre Covid, the Office for National Statistics said.
The difference between payroll and employment is because payroll statistics do not capture the self-employed.
UKSA chair Sir David Norgrove previously told the PM “it is wrong to claim that there are now more people in work than before the pandemic began”, but he continued using the figure.
On March 30, Boris Johnson accepted he was talking about people on payrolls.
Asked by the Commons Liaison Committee if he accepted the UKSA's correction he said: “Yes I do.
“And that’s why I took particular care today, mindful as I am of Sir David’s chastisement on all...
A front-page article with the byline of veteran New York Times opinion writer Nicholas Kristof is the latest poisonous example of what I call the NGO “halo effect.” Headlined “The Silence That Mee...