Sir David Norgrove, the chairman of the UK Statistics Authority (UKSA), is an honourable man. When he publicly rebuked Boris Johnson for his use of the famous £350 million figure about our weekly EU contribution, I am sure he was statistically, not party-politically motivated. But two points occur. The first is that Sir David was, arguably, mistaken. He thinks Boris said that, after Brexit, Britain would have £350 million a week more to spend. He didn’t. He said ‘we will take back control of roughly £350 million a week’. This is correct. So long as we are in the EU, that £350 million a week is out of our control, because even our rebate, which forms part of that figure, is EU-dependent. When we leave, it will all be under our control. Sir David’s reaction came too fast. The UKSA had already attacked the £350 million figure when first used by the Leave campaign in the referendum. Is it in a grudge match with anyone who answers back?
Which leads to my second point. Never a week goes by without a senior politician using a statistic controversially. This is part of the adversarial character of politics. If a public official comments on one such remark, one naturally asks why he ignores others. Why attack Boris alone? People begin to doubt his neutrality. Looking at the authority’s record since Sir David became its chairman in March, I see that it has rebuked only one other politician — complaining to Amber Rudd about a misleading leak of immigration figures. Is it credible that Jeremy Corbyn or John McDonnell or numerous Remainers have brandished no figures which do not add up? As Treasury private secretary to Mrs Thatcher (and a very helpful witness for me in my biography of her), Sir David had painful experience in the ‘shadowing the Deutschmark’ saga of how hard it is to disentangle the economic and statistical aspects of the European issue from its politics, so it should give him pause.
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