Jeremy Hunt's Treasury slammed by watchdog for 'misleading' inflation tweet

The Office of Statistics Regulation has written to the department's communications officer after a controversial message from the Treasury showing slight cuts in the cost of living

A watchdog hit the chancellor's department (

Image: PA)

A watchdog that cracks down on questionable statistics has complained about a Treasury chart showing small drops in inflation.

The Office for Statistics Regulation has accused Chancellor Jeremy Hunt's department of 'misleading' the public with a bar chart posted on Twitter.

Uploaded on February 15, it shows seemingly large declines in the consumer price index, which fell from 11.1% in October to 10.1% last month.

The real numbers were written on the bars.

However, the OSR intervened because the horizontal axis starts at 8% - rather than the traditional zero percent.

In a scathing letter, posted online, to the Treasury's communications chief, David Pares, the OSR's chief regulatory officer, Ed Humpherson, said: "We consider the manner in which the tweet presents this data is misleading.

The original Treasury post (

Picture:

Her Majesty's Treasury/Twitter)

“The chart gives a misleading impression of the extent of the deceleration in inflation, due to the y-axis starting at 8%. ”

He adds: "The guidance on visualizing data from the Government Analytics function makes it clear that when presenting data on a bar chart, the Y axis should always start at zero.

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"The guide notes that broken axes are particularly prone to misleading when used on bar charts, where the relative size of the bars is displayed so strongly.

"This would still be the case if the axis had been labeled clearly with a pause to signify the gap."

The OSR is the independent regulator of the UK Statistics Authority.