Martin Lewis has accused Kwasi Kwarteng of “denigrating the experience of fraud victims” with his “outrageous” defence of Boris Johnson’s false claim that crime had fallen under his leadership.
Seeking to rescue his premiership amid the fallout from Sue Gray’s Partygate update, the prime minister told the House of Commons that crime had fallen by 14 per cent – a claim later denounced as “misleading” by the head of the UK Statistics Authority watchdog.
Mr Johnson’s claim is only true when excluding fraud and computer misuse – with overall crime having actually risen by 14 per cent, according to the latest Office for National Statistics (ONS) data.
But seeking to defend the prime minister, the business secretary suggested on Sunday that Mr Johnson had only been referring to crime which “people experience in their-day-to-day lives”.
On Tuesday, the MoneySavingExpert website founder accused Mr Kwarteng of causing an “outrage” with the comments, and urged him to apologise.
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“To hear the business secretary say that fraud and online scams aren’t something people experience in their daily lives is outrageous,” Mr Lewis told BBC Radio 4.
“Millions of people face it every day. I’ve had over 30 scam reports just about me today before I did this interview.
“And to have the business secretary – and I don’t normally get political, or party political, at least – but to have the business secretary try and defend the fact they put out slightly questionable, iffy crime figures by denigrating the experience that people in this country have with scams, and the lives that have been lost or destroyed because of scams, is an outrage.
“He must and needs to apologise if he has any shred of decency in him.”
Mr Lewis was backed up by television presenter Kirstie Allsopp – who caused her own controversy this week when she suggested in a Sunday Times interview that young people could afford to get on the housing ladder if they made “sacrifices” – who tweeted that he was “spot on about fraud and its impact”.
The government has been placed under investigation by the UK Statistics Authority after receiving complaints about claims that crime is falling, made by Mr Johnson in the Commons and by home secretary Priti Patel, in a quote published by the Home Office.
Despite a fall in most crimes during coronavirus lockdowns, some are now reaching or exceeding pre-pandemic levels – with rises in some offences like fraud offsetting reductions seen elsewhere, the ONS said last week.
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Additional reporting by PA
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