How the claims were correctedAfter we made Mr Mearns aware of his error, he said: “At Prime Minister’s Questions last week I raised the incredibly important issue of the growing number of young people who are missing huge amounts of their education and the safeguarding risk this presents.
“In doing so, I quoted the figure of 140,000 children missing from education entirely in the last year. I took this figure, in good faith, from part of a series of articles on Sky News on the issue. I now understand that this figure is not accurate. The true figure, from the Government data, still stands at nearly 100,000 young people, which is still desperately alarming.”When referring to data, politicians and others in public life should ensure their claims accurately reflect what it shows.
Last month the Procedure Committee made recommendations regarding the corrections system in Parliament. It suggested that the corrections process, which allows ministers to correct the official record, should be extended to all MPs. Full Fact supports this recommendation, which if implemented would make it possible for an MP to arrange for a correction to be made to the parliamentary record in situations like this, where currently no such procedure exists.
Mr Mearns told us his figure was based on a Sky News report from May. After we got in touch, Sky News corrected that report, and Mr Mearns has now also written to the PM to correct his comments. (2/2)