Chapter 6. How can governments be prevented from manipulating statistics about Covid-19?

Abstract

This chapter is part of a project examining how politicians manipulate statistics and how they can be institutionally countered. We rhetorically analyse how the Chair of the United Kingdom Statistics Authority countered the Minister of Health who was manipulating the statistics for Covid-19 testing. The Chair wrote two public letters to the Minister. The first was diplomatically phrased. When this letter failed to achieve its purpose, the Chair wrote a more directly critical letter, which was effective. We analyse the letters and how they were reported in the UK national press. The diplomatic letter was virtually ignored, but the second letter was widely reported, with newspapers framing the story as a respected independent ‘watchdog’ censuring a minister for misusing statistics.