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At its final meeting a week ago, the Press Complaints Commission ruled that an article written for the Daily Telegraph by the prime minister, David Cameron, breached the editors' code of practice.
The PCC decided that the piece, "We're building an immigration system that puts Britain first", included an inaccuracy.
Cameron, in setting out the government's plans to impose further immigration controls, wrote that "while most new jobs used to go to foreign workers, in the past year more than three quarters have gone to British workers."
But Jonathan Portes, director of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR), complained to the PCC that Cameron's claim was factually wrong.
He said the Office of National Statistics (ONS) figures from which Cameron's claim was drawn related to net changes in employment, not "new jobs". He pointed out that the chair of the UK Statistics Authority (UKSA) had previously stated publicly that it was inaccurate to describe net change in employment as "new jobs".
It was wrong for two reasons. First, the net change in the number of people in employment is not the same as the numbers who move into employment; it is the difference in the flows of people into and out of employment.
Second, the number of people in employment, and the number of jobs in the economy, were not the same thing: an individual may have more than one job, or share a job.
The UKSA chair had confirmed to Portes that it wasn't possible to estimate the number of new jobs (or the proportion of those that were filled by UK nationals) based on the ONS figures.
Portes also noted an analysis of statistics by the London School of Economics' Centre of Economic Performance (CEP), which found that immigrants had never accounted for the majority of all new jobs generated in the UK.
According to the PCC ruling, the Telegraph initially defended Cameron's claim on the grounds that the public would understand an increase in employment as "jobs".
The ONS figures showed that between 1997 and 2010, 53% of the rise in employment was accounted for by foreign nationals. Over the last four years, in contrast, nearly 70% of the rise in employment had been accounted for by UK nationals, rising to 76% over the last year. The point being made, therefore, still stood.
After Portes supplied a copy of his correspondence with the UKSA, however, the newspaper offered to clarify the matter. It offered a wording that stated in part, "[ONS] data which the prime minister used for his analysis refer only to net changes in the number of foreign and British people in employment; it is not possible on this basis to determine the number of 'new jobs'".
This was accepted by Portes as a reasonable resolution to his complaint, but the newspaper - following objections from Downing Street - withdrew it. It then offered to publish the following correction in its corrections column, in print and with the online article:
"Our item 'We're building an immigration system that puts Britain first' (July 29), stated that while most 'new' jobs used to go to foreign workers, in the past year more than three quarters have gone to British workers.
We would like to make clear that the Office of National Statistics data on which this was based track net changes in employment, not 'new' jobs. The data show that British nationals account for more than three quarters of the growth in employment over this period."
Portes declined the amended correction and asked the commission to issue a ruling on the matter "to assist future discussion on the subject."
He maintained that the wording of any correction should refer to the CEP analysis and the UKSA correspondence, and a copy of the UKSA correspondence should be linked from the correction online.
But the PCC decided that there had been an offer by the Telegraph of "sufficient remedial action." It acknowledged that there was a balance to be struck between presenting potentially complex statistics in a manner that was comprehensible to readers, and ensuring that the meaning of the statistics was not distorted.
In this instance, however, the commission concluded that the statistics to which the prime minister referred had been significantly misrepresented: there was a significant distinction between the numbers of people in employment and the allocation of new jobs.
While the commission reached this conclusion independently from the UKSA, it was relevant that the organisation, which is formally charged with ensuring good practice in relation to official statistics, had previously made public its position that the statistics published by the ONS should not be interpreted in this way.
The commission concluded that in publishing the claim the Telegraph had failed to take care not to publish misleading information, which placed it in breach of clause 1 of the editors' code.
The paper was therefore required under the terms of the code to publish a correction. While the commission expressed significant concern about the newspaper's withdrawal of an initial offer of correction that had constituted an appropriate and sufficient remedy to the breach of the code, it concluded that the subsequent correction it had proposed was sufficient to remedy the code breach.
It clearly identified the inaccuracy and adequately explained the meaning of the statistics. There was no requirement for the newspaper to refer to the separate CEP analysis, which suggested a contrary interpretation to that originally (and baselessly) made in the article.
The PCC concluded that newspaper should now publish the correction in order to avoid a breach of the code. That correction can be found appended to the online version of the article.
Source: PCC
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