"Brown admits mistake on defence spending evidence "

The BBC reports that:

"Gordon Brown is to correct his evidence to the Iraq Inquiry after accepting defence spending had not risen in real terms every year under Labour.

The PM, chancellor during the war, said he now accepted it "did not rise in real terms" in one or two years.

...

Mr Brown told MPs he had written to the inquiry chairman Sir John Chilcot. "

That's odd because I blogged about Channel 4's "Fact Check" piece on Gordon Brown's armed forces funding claims last weekend. However this Channel 4 piece was not about Gordon Brown misleading the Chilcot Inquiry but about him misleading the House of Commons. I presume therefore that Gordon Brown will now apologise to the House of Commons for his claims that

"I put the facts before the inquiry on Friday. I said to the inquiry very clearly first of all that the expenditure of the Ministry of Defence has been rising in real terms under this Government.

...

I have to tell the right hon. Gentleman that the defence budget has been rising every year. He might have had a complaint if we were cutting the defence budget every year, but it is rising every year."

If Gordon Brown does not apologise of his own free will then I hope that an apology is demanded of him by the House of Commons authorities, as misleading the House of Commons is a very serious matter.

Claim after claim from Gordon Brown stated with absolute certainty as absolute fact, when he must have known it was not true. Here's that Channel 4 news piece for you to watch...

Now Gordon Brown has only admitted that defence spending "did not rise in real terms" in one or two years. The Channel 4 FactCheck shows that it actually fell in four years - 1998-1999, 1999-2000, 2002-2003 & 2007-2008. As I said at the weekend I think "playing fast and loose with the figures" just about sums up Gordon Brown's performance on Wednesday and indeed much of his career since 1997. And that Channel 4 summary again: "Gordon Brown's central claim... is fiction".