By Richard Johnstone | 9 January 2014
The chair of the local government select committee has made a formal complaint to the UK’s statistics watchdog over Prime Minister David Cameron’s claim that future local government spending would fall by only 2.3%.
Clive Betts has called on UK Statistics Authority chair Sir Andrew Dilnot to investigate the figure – first used by Chancellor George Osborne in June’s Spending Review and repeated by the prime minister – that ‘local government spending will drop by just 2.3% in future years’.
Betts said this had been ‘widely decried by every informed and independent body’ and neither the Treasury nor the Department for Communities and Local Government have provided evidence for how the figure was calculated. A 2.9% average reduction in council spending power for 2014/15 was announced by DCLG last month.
‘David Cameron and other ministers have had every opportunity to set the record straight and to answer some simple questions,’ Betts said. ‘They have simply failed.
‘I have now reviewed all the statements made by government ministers. It appears to me that there have been breaches of the relevant codes relating to statistical data. I have now made a formal complaint to Sir Andrew Dilnot requesting him to investigate the claims that ministers have made.’
