Sajid Javid “misremembered” homelessness stats when he claimed Labour was responsible for a “massive rise”, the Tories have admitted.
The Chancellor told Sky News “Homelessness reached its peak in 2008 under the last Labour government, since then it’s down by almost a half.”
He added: “It’s Labour that was responsible for the massive rise in homelessness.”
In fact, the peak was reached in 2003, and Labour were in charge for all of the decline Mr Javid tried to take credit for, as the Mirror reported in 2017 , when Theresa May started using this brazenly untrue claim.
Figures show that the number of statutory homeless people in England was 135,590 in 2003, and 57,890 in 2017 - some 57% lower.
But the drop in numbers happened entirely on Labour’s watch - it had fallen to 42,390 by the time they left office in 2010 - a 69% drop.
In reality, the number of statutory homeless people in England has risen by 36% since the Tories took office.
And snapshot government figures show the number of rough sleepers doubled from 2010 to 2016 - and increased every single year.
While the Tories accepted Mr Javid got the year wrong in a statement to Channel 4 News, they stood by the misleading statistic.
They said Mr Javid: “misremembered the years, he meant the peak in 2003 under Labour”.
The UK Statistics Authority watchdog publicly rapped Theresa May for making the claim in 2017, saying it was “disappointing”.
