Dear Sir Keir, At Prime Minister’s Questions on 28 April you said that “crime is going up”. You made a similar claim during the Commons debate on the Queen’s Speech on 11 May: “Since 2015, recorded violent crime has doubled”. As the Office for National Statistics says in every release of crime statistics, and I […]
Dear Sir David, I am writing to raise serious concerns over the misleading use of school funding statistics by the Conservative Party, including by Conservative Members of Parliament. In particular, I believe that the party’s claim that they have “increased school funding by a minimum of £5,150 per pupil” is false and misleading. This claim […]
Dear Mr Streeting, Thank you for your letter of 8 December about the use of statistics on school funding by the Conservative Party. The statements confused the minimum level of school funding per pupil with an increase in funding per pupil. In fact the minimum per pupil funding levels were set at £5,000 for secondary […]
Dear Mr Timms, Thank you for your letter of 2 June about the written response to your Parliamentary Question to ask how many people in 2019 were given leave to remain in the UK subject to the ‘no recourse to public funds’ condition. We agree that the response was confusing and unclear about why the […]
Dear Sir David, I have today received the following written answer to a parliamentary question, which I tabled on 20 May: Question: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many people were given leave to remain in the UK subject to the no recourse to public funds condition in 2019. (49575) […]
Dear Mr Holden, Thank you for your letter of 4 June about a comparison made on Newsnight between UK daily death figures and the total for the EU. You raise an important point about the difficulties of international comparisons, which are, as you say, subject to significant differences between countries in definitions and recording practices. […]
Dear Ms Cooper, Thank you for your letter of 7 May about the Government’s coronavirus testing programme, which has just come to my notice. I enclose a copy of a letter I sent yesterday to the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care on this matter [1] I have asked the Office for Statistics […]
Dear Secretary of State, On 2 April the Government announced its goal to carry out 100,000 COVID-19 tests a day by the end of April and on 6 May announced its ambition for 200,000 tests a day by the end of May. There has been widespread media coverage of the Government’s progress. I know you […]
Dear Mr Healey Thank you for your letter of 26 February in which you suggest that official measures of rough sleeping undercount the actual number of rough sleepers. The figures collected by the BBC and the official estimates published by Government are measuring different aspects of rough sleeping. As you note in your letter, Government […]
Dear Sir David New data obtained from local authorities under the Freedom of Information Act have been published today by the BBC suggesting 28,000 people were sleeping rough across the UK over 12 months, of which nearly 25,000 were in England. The Government’s own figures, as published by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local […]