Keir Starmer asks watchdog to intervene after it previously said £350m claim was ‘clear misuse of official statistics’



Labour has complained to the statistics watchdog about Boris Johnson’s claim that even more than £350m could be clawed back from the EU each week after Brexit.

Keir Starmer, the shadow Brexit secretary, asked the UK Statistics Authority to intervene after it previously said the foreign secretary’s repetition of the £350m figure used by the Vote Leave campaign was a “clear misuse of official statistics”.

“The £350m a week claim made by the Vote Leave campaign has been widely condemned as inaccurate and misleading,” Starmer said in a letter to Sir David Norgrove, the chair of the watchdog.

“For example, in September of last year the Statistics Authority wrote to the foreign secretary saying ‘it is a clear misuse of official statistics’. And yet, Mr Johnson has chosen to repeat this statement and expand on the claim even further. I do not believe this to be acceptable. I would therefore be grateful if you could make a statement on the accuracy of the foreign secretary’s most recent comments.”

Remain campaigners say the Vote Leave campaign misinformed the public because the figures are a gross contribution, not a net contribution taking account of the UK’s rebate and other money that comes back to Britain.

Johnson ratcheted up his defence of the slogan on the Vote Leave bus in an interview with the Guardian on Monday, highlighting figures that show the UK’s weekly gross contribution would rise to £438m by the end of a post-Brexit transition period. He also insisted leave campaigners had been right to pledge extra cash to the NHS.

“There was an error on the side of the bus. We grossly underestimated the sum over which we would be able to take back control,” Johnson said in the interview.

He has previously accused Norgrove of wilfully misinterpreting his comments, arguing he never claimed all of the £350m would be available for the NHS and public services.

The prime minister’s official spokesman did not dispute Johnson’s figures, saying: “Does the amount of money which we send to the EU fluctuate? And the answer is, yes it does. Some years it is bigger, some years it is smaller. Those figures are published on the OBR website.”

He added: “The PM has said that once we leave the EU we will have significant sums of money which we will choose how that money is spent, and we can spend that on our priority areas.”



However, some of those campaigning against a hard Brexit were unhappy with Johnson’s comments. Anna Soubry, the Conservative former business minister, told the BBC’s Daily Politics that “people have been conned” when it came to the £350m figure, and that Johnson had been “perpetuating these nonsenses”.

She added: “Boris is being irresponsible to continue to con people in this way. He should be honest about the challenges that Brexit poses to our country.”



Ruth Davidson, the Scottish Conservative leader, later gave an equivocal answer when asked whether she had been right to accuse Johnson of lying about the benefits of Brexit at the pre-referendum debate at Wembley.

“Well, look, he’s a member of the cabinet and he gets to see the Treasury’s books,” she said. “I’m not a member of government and I don’t. But my understanding from as many economists and government watchers that were there at the time was that I was correct in what I said when I was on the stage at Wembley debating it.”

Asked whether Johnson was lying then and lying now, she said: “Like I say, I can only take the analysis that I’ve seen, that I’ve seen from economists around the world, and we believed in the arguments that we were putting forward for remain.”