Economist demands apology from Theresa May over PMQs attack on Labour's plans
3 min read
A top economist has demanded an apology from Theresa May after she used his writing to attack Jeremy Corbyn at Prime Minister's Questions.
Simon Wren-Lewis accused the Prime Minister of having "lied" to the House of Commons by claiming he had said Labour's economic plans "did not add up".
Quoting from the 'Economics For The Many' book, Mrs May told the House: "I actually have a book here that's edited by the Shadow Chancellor.
"And in article by an economic adviser to the Labour Party he says about their last manifesto: 'The numbers did not add up', [and] that this was a welcome feature and largely irrelevant."
But Mr Wren-Lewis, the Oxford University economist who wrote the chapter, took to Twitter to lash out at the Prime Minister and make clear that he had been discussing analysis of Labour's spending plans by the Institute for Fiscal Studies [IFS] rather than passing judgement on them.
He said: "Apparently the Prime Minister quoted me saying about Labour's 2017 manifesto 'the numbers did not add up'.
"In fact I said 'Let us suppose the IFS [Institute for Fiscal Studies] was correct' and examined consequences.
"I have never taken a view on whether they did/didn't add up. If that is what she said, she lied."
Pressed on whether Mrs May could have been badly briefed by a researcher, Mr Wren-Lewis added: "Just because someone tells you a lie does not mean you didn't tell a lie. If she was mislead [sic] I'm sure she will put it right in some kind of statement."
The full paragraph from the book in question says Labour's manifesto was "strongly criticised, based on Institute for Fiscal (IFS) analysis which said that their calculations did not add up".
But it adds: "The political impact of this criticism was completely blunted, however, by the fact that the Conservative manifesto was completely uncosted."
The row followed a heated PMQs clash between Mrs May and the Labour leader, in which Mr Corbyn urged the Prime Minister make good on a pledge to put an "end to austerity" and accused her of being "out of touch with the reality" of the Government's Universal Credit welfare shake up.
But Mrs May shot back: "What have we seen under this government? We've seen more money being available to the police.
"We've seen more money for the health service. More money for social care. More money going into local authorities.
"More money going into our schools. And at the end of this parliament we'll be spending £500m more in real-terms on people of working age and children in our welfare system."
She accused Labour of seeking to take the public finances back to "square one".
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