LibDem leadership candidate Layla Moran attempted to make a splash in the Guardian earlier this month, with a tale of extraordinary numbers of malnourished children living in Britian. Layla’s figures were enthusiastically written up by the Guardian, claiming “Almost 1,000 under-16s with malnutrition were admitted as inpatients to Cambridge University hospitals NHS foundation trust alone”. Except this simply wasn’t true. Not even close to true. Late last week Cambridge University Hospitals felt compelled to issue a statement slapping down Layla’s figures…

“The correct number of young patients admitted between January 2015 and January 2020 is 33, and not 915 as has been reported. This has understandably caused considerable concern to many.”

Far from Layla’s claim that 915 malnourished children admitted to Cambridge University Hospitals, in reality the true number was actually 33 in the last 66 months. 6 a year is of course 6 too many. Layla’s figures however were an exaggeration of some 2780%. Almost as forensic as Sir Keir…