Conservatives: Labour's lies and cynical manipulation of statistics |

Wednesday 25th July 2012 | 17:31

Conservatives: Labour's lies and cynical manipulation of statistics

In their release today Labour claim that Tooting walk in centre has closed. This is untrue, it is open and there are no plans to close it.

Jane Ellison, Tory MP for Battersea said:

"Labour's report today cynically manipulates statistics and contains some downright lies. The Tooting walk in centre is open within St George's Hospital and there are no plans to close it."

"Many of my Battersea constituents use this walk-in centre and Andy Burnham should get his facts right before making assertions that will scare local staff and patients in a desperate bid to score cheap political points."

"Ed Miliband needs to tell his health spokesman to apologise to all the local people who use this excellent facility in Tooting."

Labour also cite a number of other Walk in Centre "closures" which have actually just been moved to another location in the district, for example Ashfield and Stapleford walk in centre services were transferred to A&E at King's Mill Hospital and Queen's Medical Centre, and services from Salford walk in centre were transferred to Salford Royal.

Manipulating statistics

Labour claim: The number of people waiting longer than 4 hours in A&E to be admitted to hospital, so-called 'trolley waits', also doubled in a single year - from 51,569 in 2010/11 to 106,945 in 2011/12, according to the Department of Health's weekly statistics

Fact: Labour are not comparing like with like and have used partial sets of statistics to artificially inflate their figures.

They have compared 22 weeks worth of data in 2010-11 with a full 52 weeks in 2011-12. They use the total number of waits for both years and claim the numbers have "doubled". This is a completely invalid comparison. If you compare on a like for like basis there is a more modest increase of around 9,000, which is 40,000 less than Labour claim.

Labour claim: A&Es across England recorded close to 1 million extra visits in 2011/12 compared to 2009/10 - as the annual number of visits rose from 20,511,908 to 21,480,589.

Fact: A&E attendances have been rising for years. In one year under Labour they rose by 2.5 million. Labour conveniently missed out the that the main rise in their comparison happened under their watch between 09/10 and 10/11 - a rise of 900,000. Between 10/11 and 11/12 they rose by just 100,000 - a huge drop in the traditional rate of increase.