The government’s fiddling of coronavirus test figures echoes the lies on the side of the Brexit bus

Analysis: There’s a clear pattern of behaviour here. The brazen distortion of Covid-19 testing figures suggests that the Vote Leave team's cavalier attitude to statistics has been carried into Downing Street, says Ben Chu

The £350m a week claim was criticised by the UK Statistics Authority too (Getty)

The latest letter from the head of the UK Statistics Authority to the health secretary Matt Hancock is the most ferocious the official watchdog has ever sent to a politician.

Sir David Norgrove writes that the use of data presented by Mr Hancock and other ministers on the number of Covid-19 tests performed by the government “falls well short” of the Code of Practice for Statistics.

He’s referring to the now well-aired fact that the total daily test figures boasted about by the government include test kits merely posted out and that swabs on a single patient are sometimes counted as multiple tests.