Just as Miller tries to set the record straight when it comes to overinflated statistics, yet another policy-maker emerges with embellished numbers in an effort to join the virtue-signaling bandwagon. 

This week it was the turn of Labour’s new MP for West Worthing Dr Beccy Cooper, who despite formerly having worked as a physician for the NHS nevertheless managed to mess up how many people it has to treat with gambling addiction when she wrote for the Sussex Press that “official figures show that 2.5 per cent of the population…are at high risk of gambling-related harms.” 

Yeah, sorry Beccy, but those numbers will be drawn from the widely discredited Gambling Survey for Great Britain (GSSB), a document the Office for Statistics Regulation has decried as “misleading” and “lacking transparency.”

In fact, it was a bad week for the physician to use incorrect data. The organisation Cooper would place most her trust in, having worked in it for most of her doctor’s career, the NHS, released its latest statistics on problem gambling citing the current rate at 0.4 percent – more than six times less than the figure she herself quotes.

It’s a shameful error, but one that – conveniently – fits the narrative of the APPG for Gambling Harm that Cooper is a key member of. 

Mr Miller: grab another sheet of GamCom-headed letter-paper. We have yet another politician’s record to set straight.