BORIS Johnson has insisted he got the “overall picture” correct when quizzed on “misleading” figures he has repeatedly given to Parliament.

The UK Statistics Authority (UKSA) took the unusual step of sending a public letter to the Prime Minister in February after he repeatedly claimed that employment was higher than it had been before the pandemic.

UKSA chair Sir David Norgrove told Johnson it was “wrong” to make such a claim, saying the data showed the number of people in employment to be down by around 600,000 – despite a rise in the number of people on payrolls.

Norgrove said Johnson would be giving a “misleading impression” if he claimed more people were in employment and failed to make this distinction clear.

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Quizzed about the UKSA intervention during his appearance in front of Westminster’s Liaison Committee, Johnson insisted he had gotten the “overall picture” correct.

"The employment record of the government has been absolutely outstanding," he added.

Labour MP Stephen Timms asked the Prime Minister if he accepted the “point in the letter”.

“I just wanted to confirm that you recognise that total employment is now less than it was before the pandemic began,” Timms (below) said.

The National:

“Well unemployment is actually,” Johnson began, before being reminded the question was about employment.

Johnson said he had been “mindful of Sir David’s chastisement” but insisted that “on all occasions I stressed that it was payroll employment that I was talking about”.

In fact, Johnson told Parliament on January 19: “We have more people in employment and more employees on the payroll now than there were before the pandemic began.”

He said on January 12 that the UK had “420,000 more people in work now than before the pandemic began”, repeating a near-verbatim claim made on January 5.

Timms brought Johnson’s history of repeating the misleading claim up, saying: “On the employment point, you have said in the Commons, nine times I think, that the number of people in work is higher now than it was before the start of the pandemic.”

The Tory leader responded that he believed he had taken “steps to correct the record”.

When this was questioned, Johnson seemed unsure if he had in fact corrected the record, looking to those behind him to confirm.

He then added: “I certainly was very, I've been very punctilious to talk about payroll and employment.”

Ed Humpherson, the director-general of the UKSA, told The Observer that there had been several “informal discussions” behind the scenes about the Prime Minister’s incorrect use of the data before any public interventions were made.

In a letter sent in early February, before Norgrove’s later that same month, Humpherson told No 10 it was "disappointing" that Johnson had "continued to refer to payroll employment as if describing total employment, despite contact from our office and from others".