The work and pensions secretary Mel Stride told Parliament on Monday that “one in four cancers are caused by smoking”. As we wrote in a fact check about Steve Barclay last week, this isn’t quite right.
It’s estimated smoking causes about a quarter of all cancer deaths, but around 15% of cancer cases.
We wrote to Mr Barclay’s office, who told us he meant to say “cancer deaths”. We’ve now written to Mr Stride as well.
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