Boris Johnson has repeated an "incorrect" claim about jobs, hours after the UK's statistics watchdog explicitly told him it was incorrect and begged him not to use it again.
The Prime Minister claimed there were "more people in work than before the pandemic began" in a fiery PMQs session today.
Only yesterday, the Office for Statistics Regulation wrote to Downing Street to complain about the claim.
Director General Ed Humpherson noted that the PM was referring to payroll employment from PAYE real-time information.
But he warned "most of the self-employed and those whose jobs are not part of company payroll are excluded" from this.
Mr Humpherson told Downing Street: "The number of people on employer payrolls does not include everyone in work.
"ONS publishes data on the number of people in employment.
"The data for January – March 2020 estimate that 33.0m people were in employment compared with 32.4m people in employment for September – November 2021.
"It is therefore incorrect to state that there were more people in work at the end of this period than the start."
Yet today Boris Johnson told Keir Starmer at PMQs: "Above all, the most important thing we are doing is helping people into work.
"500,000 people off welfare and into work under our Way to Work scheme.
"More people in work than before the pandemic began and that is the record of this government."
Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary Jonathan Ashworth said: "Boris Johnson's dishonesty has been caught out yet again.
"The reality is that there are fewer people in work than before the pandemic and Ministers have no plan to deliver the well paid jobs that people need and deserve."
Aside from the claims disputed by the data watchdog, it also appears to be untrue that the government is trying to get 500,000 people "off welfare and into work".
Instead it wants to get 500,000 benefit claimants by June into jobs - but many of them might continue claiming Universal Credit by that point, due to low and part-time wages.
In his letter yesterday, Mr Humpherson told Downing Street's chief analyst Laura Gilbert: "It was disappointing that some earlier statements continued to refer to payroll employment as if describing total employment, despite contact from our office and from others.
"When we spoke, you emphasised the efforts that your colleagues take to ensure that briefings are accurate.
"I would like to thank you and colleagues for these efforts, which recognise that it is important that statements made to inform public debate are unambiguous."
Will Moy, CEO, Full Fact said yesterday: "We welcome today’s intervention from the Office for Statistics Regulation. The public deserves statistics they can believe, and the Prime Minister must now correct the record.
“Correcting mistakes is not an admission of failure, but a way for our elected representatives to lead by example, help build trust in public life and challenge those who promote cynicism about politics and our democracy.”
Tensions were so high that Speaker Lindsay Hoyle was forced to warn MPs not to accuse Boris Johnson of lying, before PMQs even started.
After turfing SNP Westminster leader Ian Blackford out of the Commons for doing just that, he said “I recognise there are frustrations”.
But he said: “There are means by which accusations of lying may be brought before the house, including by means of a substantive motion…
“Members may not accuse each other of lying or deliberately misleading the House unless such a substantive motion is under consideration.”
Otherwise, he said, debates risked “descending into fruitless cycles of accusation and counter-accusation”.
