Salmond censured for stats claim

Alex Salmond has been strongly reprimanded by the UK Statistics Authority (UKSA) for claiming that Chancellor George Osborne had "managed to inflate the UK growth figures" by pressuring the Office for National Statistics to do so.

Speaking in his final session of First Minister's Questions, Salmond claimed that measures of UK growth had been revised to include the black economy and so figures were up, "not because the economy had improved but because the government had instructed the officials and statisticians to change the statistics."

Andrew Dilnot, chairman of the UKSA has written to Salmond defending the ONS and urged Salmond to reconsider his comments.

"Decisions in relation to this programme of work are taken exclusively by statisticians at ONS, in line with international standards and best practice," said Dilnot in the letter.

"To suggest, as you did, that official statistics of national importance such as these are subject to inappropriate Government influence is potentially corrosive of public trust in official statistics."

The UKSA is right to point out that the decision to revise the economic measures was pre-announced and in line with other countries moving to a new  EU-wide accounting framework.