The Chair of the UK Statistics Authority, Sir David Norgrove, has ruled that Boris Johnson and Priti Patel “misrepresented” crime statistics and presented them in a “misleading way”.
It comes after Liberal Democrat MP Alistair Carmichael reported the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary to the watchdog for falsely claiming that crime had fallen by 14% between September 2019 and September 2021, when the exact opposite had happened.
Liberal Democrat Home Affairs Spokesperson, Alistair Carmichael MP, said: “This is a damning verdict from the official watchdog. Yet more distortions from Boris Johnson and his Cabinet to play down the extent of crime.
“When the Government’s record on crime is so bad that both the Prime Minister and Home Secretary feel the need to fiddle the figures, it is clear we need a new approach.
“The Prime Minister must come before Parliament to apologise for his latest lie and set the record straight.”