Jeremy Hunt has been rebuked by the statistics watchdog for the second time this year after wrongly implying that public debt is forecast to fall.

Treasury officials were criticised by the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) for failing to give clarity and context when discussing data, after the Chancellor suggested that debt levels would fall when they will in fact only rise less steeply.

In a tweet on April 25, which was reposted by the Treasury, Mr Hunt said: “To restore our public finances, I had to take some difficult decisions last autumn. But we have made progress. By 2027-28, headline debt levels are reduced by £53.7bn”.