Ed Miliband faced fresh controversy today over a claim that four-fifths of new private sector jobs have been created by London.
The independent Office for National Statistics told the Evening Standard that the figures used by the Labour leader were not its “preferred” way of comparing regional jobs.
Instead, it endorsed a different set of data which shows the opposite — that four-fifths of new jobs are created outside London, with Yorkshire and the east of England gaining particularly.
The ONS statement is a blow to Mr Miliband. He dropped the claim from a prepared speech in Leeds, but his spokesman said: “Ed stands by the words fully, but he decided to speak off-the-cuff rather than from a script.”
In the Commons this afternoon, David Cameron said Mr Miliband’s statistic had been “totally wrong” and demanded: “Have we heard an apology? Have we heard a correction? He will do anything to talk down the British economy.”
The ONS said in a statement: "ONS's Public Sector Employment (PSE) figures are the preferred source of employment estimates that give a split by the public and private sector at Region level and above.
"The reason for this is that PSE combines ONS's best source of public sector employment statistics (The Quarterly Public Sector Employment Surveys) with ONS's best source of total employment (Labour Force Survey) to give an estimate of private sector employment.
"This means that PSE has a better coverage than the Business Register and Employment Survey (BRES), which does not cover very small businesses that aren't registered for VAT or PAYE.
"However, for estimates below Region level, PSE estimates are unavailable due to small sample size issues.
"In this instance, BRES should be used, since it is a large survey and is able to produce public/private estimates down to Local Authority district level. Estimates from both PSE and BRES are based on the location of jobs rather than the residence of the worker"
