Three years ago, the UK Space Agency (UKSA) raised the issue again and convened several meetings to assess interest.
The motion calling on ministers to reflect UKSA figures in their public statements on the NHS was rejected by a majority of 70.
The Labour motion noted that UK Statistics Authority (UKSA) chair Andrew Dilnot said "expenditure on the NHS in real terms was lower in 2011-12 than it was in 2009-10".
As the UKSA say to Mr Cavanagh in a separate note, "the liberal selection and interpretation of statistics in speeches and political statements is something we have to accept".
However, today's UKSA monitoring paper states that, while the Daily Mail quoted the correct number of specific offences of disorder, their story "did not give the numbers of the other offences" connected to the rioting.
For example, while the paper contrasts the widespread violence and arson in Croydon with just seven disorder offences, the UKSA calculates that hundreds more disorder-related offences were recorded by police in the area, including acquisitive crime, criminal damage and violence.
Not a hanging offence, then, but the affair is a reminder of how numbers can be used to shape a questionable political narrative, and how the existence of the UKSA means Ministers must now think twice before doing what once came naturally.
Today, the head of the official watchdog on government statistics, Sir Michael Scholar of the UKSA, has written to the Mr Grayling's boss, Iain Duncan Smith at the Department of Work and Pensions questioning the interpretation and release of the new "research".
In a briefing paper published on its website, the UKSA says Daily Mail coverage of crime figures on the riots "is likely to have left its readers with the impression that far fewer crimes were recorded as a result of the disorder in August than was actually the case".
With just a few days to go until Sir Michael Scholar leaves his job at the helm of the UK Statistics Authority (UKSA), the watchdog has for the first time turned its fire, not on politicians or civil servants it thinks have misused official stats, but on members of the press.
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