Chancellor George Osborne faced a fresh “phoney stats” storm yesterday, days after a Treasury release on welfare spending was exposed as crude electioneering.

TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady lodged an official complaint with UK Statistics Authority chairman Andrew Dilnot alleging that the Tory minister broke its code of conduct by publishing flawed “Conservative propaganda” on departmental headed paper.

Ms O’Grady branded the October 23 release “a clear breach of the rules that protect the public from political spin disguised as official figures.”