Office for Statistics Regulation criticises Conservatives over ‘£2,000 tax rise’ claim

The Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) has called on political parties to use statistics with “intelligent transparency”, following days of scrutiny of the Conservatives’ claim that a Labour government would mean £2,000 higher taxes per working family.

We’ve written a full fact check on this figure, finding it to be unreliable and based on a number of questionable assumptions. We also published a blog post noting that the claim was not solely based on Treasury costings, after Rishi Sunak claimed during the 4 June TV debate that “independent Treasury officials have costed Labour’s policies and they amount to a £2,000 tax rise”. 

The OSR, which provides independent regulation of official statistics, said in its statement: “When distilling claims into a single number, the context should be sufficient to allow the average person to understand what it means and how significant it is.”

The OSR said it had not commented on the accuracy of the figure because its “remit focuses on official statistics produced by Government”. 

But it warned that someone hearing the figure would have “no way of knowing that this is an estimate summed together over four years”, and added: “We warned against this practice a few days ago, following its use in presenting prospective future increases in defence spending.”

We’ve asked the Conservative party for comment and will update this post if we hear back.