The Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) has criticised Rishi Sunak, the UK’s Prime Minister, for making dubious claims about Labour’s tax plans. Mr Sunak had claimed that the plans would lead to £2,000 of tax rises per working household, but the OSR pointed out that this was a total over four years, rather than per year. The statement also criticised the Conservatives for presenting their accusation as if it had been produced by impartial civil servants. Speaking to ITV’s Tonight, Mr Sunak dismissed the claims of the OSR and Labour, stating that they were “rattled that we’ve exposed their plans to raise tax”.
Sir Keir Starmer, the leader of the Labour party, hit back at Mr Sunak’s claims after the first televised debate between the two leaders, accusing the Prime Minister of deliberately lying about Labour’s plans. Like the Conservatives, Labour has pledged not to raise the rates of income tax, National Insurance and VAT if they win the election.
BBC Verify analysed the Conservative’s £2,000 tax claims and concluded that they risked misleading people. In a statement released on Thursday, the statistics watchdog said that without reading the full Conservative Party costing document, someone hearing the claim would have no way of knowing that this was an estimate summed together over four years. After a controversy over a previous claim that the UK economy was “going gangbusters”, which was later referred to by officials including Mr Sunak, the OSR recently closed an investigation into the matter.
The OSR recently wrote to the main political parties to warn them about “ensuring the appropriate and transparent use of statistics”. Sir Robert Chote, the chair of the UK Statistics Authority, stated that “official statistics should serve the public good”, and “when statistics and quantitative claims are used in public debate, they should enhance understanding of the topics being debated and not be used in a way that has the potential to mislead”. The UK economy is expected to be a key campaigning point of the general election, with leaders of various parties setting out their plans on how they would improve growth and productivity
Read the full article from The BBC here: Read More