Government officials were warned repeatedly about making misleading claims about job figures before the official statistics watchdog reprimanded Boris Johnson over the matter.
Ed Humpherson, the director general of the UK Statistics Authority (UKSA), said there had been “a series of informal discussions” before the regulator took the “unusual” step of issuing public rebukes to No 10 over the same issue twice last month.
During more than half a dozen editions of prime minister’s questions since November, Johnson has made the misleading claim that more people are in employment in the UK than before the pandemic began.
Yet, although the numbers of workers on payrolls has risen, the number of self-employed people has dropped significantly so that the total number of people in work is down by 600,000
