On Saturday morning Labour sent out an embargoed press release on behalf of Jonathan Ashworth MP, Labour’s Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, claiming “The Tories are breaking all the wrong records…”. The claim was that more than half a trillion working days had been lost to sickness since the last General Election. An astounding number.

Ashworth was due to do the media round on Sunday morning where no doubt he would be intoning gravely about this Tory record. A trillion is a thousand billion. Or a million millions. There are 33 million people in the British workforce. So doing the maths this works out 500,000 / 33 days lost per person since 2013, which equates to 15,151 days lost per British worker to sickness.  You can see where Guido is going with this maths lesson. This is roughly 7 times as many working days as there have been since 2013.

There are exaggerations and there are exaggerations. The implicit claim from Jon Ashworth – that no one had gone to work since 2013 – was so ridiculous it made Guido laugh even before doing a rough calculation. If Labour win the next general election he will be responsible for a £250 billion spending budget. That he signed this press release off suggests he is innumerate. 

This wasn’t a typo, in the footnotes of the press release they repeated the “half  a trillion” claim. After some 4 hours had passed Labour’s press office realised their numbers were out by a mere 100,000%. They sent a correction. These are the same people who claim their spending plans are fully costed and their figures have been checked.