Virginia McVea, chief executive of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA), used the figure to defend a proposal to stop paying coastguard rescue officers (CROs). The plan followed a court ruling that officers, while volunteering for service, were classed as workers with the right to minimum wage and holiday pay because they were paid for their time. The MCA sought to end that pay and reclassify them as volunteers.
The agency has now admitted its poll did not sufficiently back up the 90 per cent claim, after an investigation by the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR). In a letter to McVea this week, the OSR's director general, Ed Humpherson, said: "Neither of the surveys [cited] asked CROs directly about their support for the proposed volunteer model, so do not provide evidence relating to the reported claims. [The] MCA has been unable to provide any further evidence to underpin the reported claims."
Nicola Savage, a national officer for the GMB union, said the union would treat a failure to produce the reports as a deliberate attempt to mislead, and that McVea should resign, as hundreds of coastguards had already asked her to do. The GMB has said nearly 600 CROs backed a vote of no confidence in McVea.
Joe Robertson, one of several MPs who have campaigned on behalf of CROs, accused McVea of misleading MPs and coastguards during three separate meetings. He called on her to "do the right thing and apologise for misleading MPs, CROs and the public", and to provide a written account of how she came to repeat the claim and why she had not published surveys she promised to MPs on 24 June.
Leaked results of an MCA survey, reported by the Guardian in July, showed officers had actually been asked how volunteer and worker models would affect their availability, rather than whether they supported the proposed change.