Duncan Smith corrects the record on jobless households

Putting forward his argument for an overhaul of the UK welfare system last month, Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith lamented a situation that had, he said, left Britain with "the highest rate of jobless households in Europe."

This was a striking claim — but one that Full Fact had already warned against. The claim had originated in data compiled by Eurostat, but had entered the political dialogue in this country through a document produced by Centre for Policy Studies (CPS).

The CPS report condensed Eurostat's data into a single finding that Britain had "the highest incidence of adults in workless households of the six largest EU economies." While this claim is selective and requires context to be properly understood, it is supported by the data.

However, when it was cropped for the purpose of bold headlines in the Telegraph and the Mail, it became straightforwardly wrong: Britain does not, as the former claimed, have the "most 'workless households' in the E.U."

Abbreviated to the point of inaccuracy, the claim passed into the hands of Mr Duncan Smith, who cited it in a House of Commons statement the same day.
We were concerned about this erroneous information entering the political debate, and contacted the Secretary of State's office pointing out his mistake.

Exactly one month later, we are pleased to see that a ministerial correction has been entered into the House of Commons records. The statement is now reads that Britain has "one of the the highest rates of jobless households in Europe's major economies."

When this "major economies" caveat was originally posited, we had some doubts how representative and relevant it was. But since Britain has also been demoted from the top of this inglorious league to being a mere contender, we can accept the claim as legitimate.

This figure does not necessarily imply an unusual level of generational unemployment. It should be noted that factors such as living arrangements may have an influence — for a fuller discussion, see our previous article on this claim.

And perhaps Mr Duncan Smith's clarification might have been a little more prompt: a House Resolution states that inadvertent mistakes should be corrected "at the earliest opportunity". Nevertheless, we are encouraged to see ministers acknowledging their factual errors.

Now that this claim has been restored to its full form, we will seek to ensure that it is not misleadingly truncated again.