Jeremy Hunt's Treasury slammed by watchdog for 'misleading' inflation tweet

27 February 2023 , 17:55

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A watchdog has rapped the Chancellor's department (Image: PA)

A watchdog which cracks down on dodgy stats has complained about a Treasury graph showing small falls in inflation.

The Office for Statistics Regulation accused Chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s department of “misleading” the public with a bar chart posted on Twitter.

Uploaded on February 15, it shows apparently big falls in the consumer price index from 11.1% in October to 10.1% last month.

The real figures were written on the bars.

However, the OSR intervened because the horizontal axis starts at 8% - rather than the traditional zero per cent.

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In a stinging letter, published online, to Treasury communications chief David Pares, the OSR’s director-general for regulation, Ed Humpherson, says: “We consider that the way the tweet presents this data to be misleading.

The original Treasury post (HM Treasury/Twitter)

“The graph gives a misleading impression of the scale of the deceleration in inflation, due to the y-axis beginning at 8%. ”

He adds: “Guidance on data visualisation from the Government Analysis Function is clear that when presenting data on a bar chart, the y-axis should always start at zero.

“The guidance notes that broken axes are particularly likely to mislead when used on bar charts, where the relative size of the bars is displayed so strongly.

“This would still be the case had the axis been labelled clearly with a break to signify the gap.”

The OSR is the independent regulatory arm of the UK Statistics Authority.

The OSR posted a tweet criticising the Treasury (@StatsRegulation.Twitter)

Its website says: “Statistics should be produced in a trustworthy way, be of high quality, and provide value by answering people’s questions: providing accountability, helping people make choices and informing policy.”

It says one of its “principal roles” is to “report any concerns on the quality, good practice and comprehensiveness of official statistics”.

The Treasury was contacted for comment.

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