Coronavirus: Expert cited by Boris Johnson to defend UK’s death toll tells prime minister to ‘please stop’

‘Of course we should now use other countries to try and learn why our numbers are high’, says statistician

A statistician whose work has repeatedly been used by Boris Johnson and other government figures to deflect questions about the UK’s high coronavirus death toll has accused the prime minister of misrepresenting his views.

David Spiegelhalter, a professor of the public understanding of risk, wrote an article last month about the complexities of comparing different countries’ coronavirus mortality rates.

“My cold, statistical approach is to wait until the end of the year, and the years after that, when we can count the excess deaths. Until then, this grim contest won’t produce any league tables we can rely on,” he wrote in a piece published by The Guardian on 30 April.

Since then, Prof Spiegelhalter has repeatedly been cited by the government in answer to questions about why the UK’s coronavirus death toll is the second highest in the world.

England’s chief medical officer, Prof Chris Whitty, told a Downing Street briefing last month the article showed comparing death rates in different countries was a “fruitless exercise”.​

Mr Johnson again cited the piece on Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday, saying in response to Labour leader Keir Starmer: “I would echo what we’ve heard from Professor David Spiegelhalter and others: at this stage, I do not think that international comparisons and the data is yet there to draw all the conclusions that we want.”

Prof Spiegelhalter, chair of Cambridge University’s Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication, later tweeted: “Polite request to PM and others: please stop using my Guardian article to claim we cannot make any international comparisons yet.

“I refer only to detailed league tables – of course we should now use other countries to try and learn why our numbers are high”.

The UK became the European epicentre of the coronavirus pandemic with death toll of more than 30,000 – higher than every nation in the world except the US.

The soaring death toll has prompted calls for an inquiry into why more people have died in the UK than other European countries.

Speaking on Tuesday as country’s fatalities overtook Italy, once the continent’s worst-hit nation, foreign minister Dominic Raab suggested the UK’s toll was only so high because it was a “world leader” in “collecting statistics”.

“I don’t think we’ll get a real verdict on how well countries have done until the pandemic is over and particularly until we’ve got comprehensive international data on all cause of mortality”, he added.