…it appears from this report in the FT that the Prime Minister didn’t so much provide correct figures in answer to Nick Clegg’s questions as, er, provide made-up ones:
Mr Clegg said house prices were falling faster than at the start of the last property crash.
He quoted Ministry of Justice figures showing that more than 95,000 orders to repossess properties were made last year – a fraction below the 103,000 orders made in 1990 at the start of the last housing crash.
Mr Brown replied that there were only 27,000 repossessions made last year, against 200,000 in the first two years of the 1990s.
But the Lib Dems said the latter figure exaggerated the extent of the last crash. Just fewer than 120,000 homes were removed from mortgage-holders in 1990 and 1991 combined, 80,000 less than the prime minister claimed.
The figure for repossession orders, at 95,374, is at its highest since 1993.
This is where the two questions limit really begins to bite.
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According the Ministerial Code of Conduct (recently reissued by G Brown) “It is of paramount importance that Ministers give accurate and truthful information to Parliament, correcting any inadvertent error at the earliest opportunity. Ministers who knowingly mislead Parliament will be expected to offer their resignation to the Prime Minister.”
Maybe time to start showing some of those “elbows” we keep saying we’ve got
The figures put to him were surely in the same category? And a proprtion of those orders too will not lead to repossessions. If he’s asked a question measured in bananas it is reasonable to reply in bananas don’t you think?