"We've made a lot of progress in many areas," he said. Statistics, however, may not be one of them.

Today’s warning of wholesale losses of manufacturing jobs, of a sector "struggling" of confidence waning in all but three UK regions may have been keenly timed to coincide with the Bank of England’s monthly interest rate meeting. It may have been temptingly pre-released to journalists to ensure maximum coverage.

But any hopes of the Bank being barracked by a flat-capped mob, of the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street hounded into lowering her rates, went out the factory window at 9.30am when National Statistics showed that manufacturing had, in fact, been doing better than expected.

The same sector which the CBI warned was suffering "general gloom" had staged a significant revival in December. Furthermore, the sector’s dismal performance in the autumn had not been so bad after all, with National Statistics adding a heady 0.7 points to its November index reading of factory output.

So the sector’s much-reported courtship with recession could be dismissed as premature tittle tattle spread by economists who used provisional National Statistics data when adding two and two to make misfortune. Revise the figures and, voila, the equation collapses.

As if to drive the point home, a separate National Statistics report showed goods exports rising five times as fast as imports, undermining the CBI’s assertion that "the past three months saw a widespread fall in export orders".

Britain even managed to raise its exports to America by £652 million. This was in a month of severe dollar depression, before the consensus over the currency’s hopelessness emerged to nurse it back to health.

The reports increased the likelihood that the Bank’s "eventual next move will be to raise interest rates", Howard Archer, the Global Insight economist, said. The prospect of a cut in interest rates appeared as distant as a $2 pound.

So should Sir Digby sack his pollsters? Not a bit of it.

For a start, December’s increase in exports was fuelled largely by improved oil production, which allowed the country to export 27 per cent more crude than it had three months before, and import 9 per cent less.

Conspiracy theorists might point to the hand of the looming general election in the upbeat official data. The marked decline in America’s key jobs reports since last year’s presidential elections can only feed the fears of those mindful that while figures cannot be contested, the way they are compiled can.

Yet in Britain, the level of revisions evident in today’s report is unfortunately consistent with National Statistics’ recent performance. The office’s figures may be official but their accuracy is all too often superficial.

Maybe Sir Digby might, on retiring from the CBI, want to turn his talented hand to turning round National Statistics. For that, he would deserve at least a peerage.

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