News OnTheWight’s fact check about Isle of Wight MP, Bob Seely, saying on BBC Radio 4’s main lunchtime news programme that the Island’s population had doubled in the last 60 years when it hasn’t, isn’t the only fact-checking taking place.
Isle of Wight Councillor Andrew Garratt (Lib Dem) has been keeping an eye on what Mr Seely says in the media, and Parliament, too.
Yesterday, Mr Seely claimed to News OnTheWight’s that his comment, “was a slip of the tongue, apologies, I meant to say – as I normally do – nearly 50 per cent (46.7 per cent) in 60 years”.
“As I normally do”?
One could be forgiven for a ‘slip of the tongue’ – we all make them, but it should only be occasional.
However, as pointed out to News OnTheWight by Councillor Garratt, Mr Seely managed to have a ‘slip of the keyboard’ about the same ‘fact’ in November 2022 when he opened an article in The Times newspaper stating,
First, in the past half century, the Isle of Wight, like quite a few places in the south and southeast of England, has doubled its population – yet we still export our young people.
His mistake was picked up and corrected on Twitter by Robert Colvile, a Director of the Centre for Policy Studies (centre right) think tank.
He corrected Mr Seely’s misleading statement. And then some.
Mr Colville says,
“But let’s go through Bob’s piece in detail. Here’s the very start of it. It’s a real shame that it’s completely wrong.”
More inaccuracies
Despite that, Councillor Garratt discovered that Mr Seely repeated the misleading and inaccurate information once again – this time in Parliament on 5th June 2023.
He is quoted as saying,
“On the Isle of Wight we have doubled our population in the last 50 or 60 years …”
So despite being corrected publicly back in November 2022, Mr Seely continued to quote a misleading and inaccurate statement.
Similar form
This behaviour follows a similar pattern to the ‘ghost kids’ claims by the MP.
He’d claimed that following the Covid Pandemic school closures, a staggering 100,000 “ghost kids” had disappeared from school registers.
Seely blamed this figure on the Children’s Commissioner (Dame Rachel de Souza), despite the fact that her office had admitted she “misspoke” during a live interview.
Corrected by Full Fact (again)
Mr Seely was made aware of this error by Full Fact – an independent fact-checking organisation – in February 2022, but he still repeated the misleading and inaccurate statement as recently as 19th June 2023 – during a debate about a report from the Privileges Committee about Boris Johnson’s behaviour.
When News OnTheWight ran the article about this on 5th July we wrote to Mr Seely to ask why he continued to quote numbers of ‘Ghost pupils’ in Parliament when he’d previously been told were incorrect and misleading by Full Fact?
Seely: I took her remarks in good faith
Mr Seely eventually responded to our question two week’s later (on 18th July 2023) claiming,
“I am still trying to find out the exact numbers. I was quoting the Children’s Commissioner, Dame Rachel de Souza, as I took her remarks in good faith.
“It is widely acknowledged that there was a concerning drop in the numbers of children not attending school. It seems to be more difficult to put an exact number on it.”
“Please stop saying things that aren’t true”
Yes, as Full Fact has previously explained, it is difficult to put an exact number on it, so one might imagine the MP would stop quoting inaccurate and misleading figures when referring to it.
As one reader put it,
“Mr Seely, your constituents would like you to please stop saying things that aren’t true on national media and in Parliament.”
