Last month, Mr S did a little digging into Matt Hancock’s claims that he managed to reach 100,000 tests a day – finding that Health Secretary had been fudging his figures by including tests that had merely been posted rather than just tests that had actually been completed. The expert verdict is now in, with the UK Statistics Authority pointing out the same problem.
Sir David Norgrove, chair of the monitoring body, has criticised the government’s counting methods, stating that ministers have continued to include posted tests in the figure for tests carried out.
In his letter to Hancock, published this morning, Sir David says: ‘This distinction is too often elided during the presentation at the daily press conference, where the relevant figure may misleadingly be described simply as the number of tests carried out.’
The letter goes on to say that: ‘The aim seems to be to show the largest possible number of tests, even at the expense of understanding’.
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