Iain Duncan Smith, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, is to be called in front of the Work and Pensions Select Committee in June over the misuse by the department of government statistics. This follows the rebuke from the official statistics watchdog for claiming that the benefits cap is pushing people to find paid work.

The select committee’s decision to ‘examine the way the DWP releases benefit statistics to the media’ follows a petition to the committee, signed by 96,666 people, calling for the committee to ‘hold IDS to account for his use of statistics on welfare’. Jayne Linney, who set up the petition on Change.org commented: ‘By starting this petition we’ve shown that everyone has the tools to call politicians out if they try to make things up. They can’t get away with spinning statistics any longer.

Source: Commons Select Committee release, 20 May, 2013

Links: Commons select committee press release, Change.org petition, New Statesman report