Mr Hancock was on BBC on Friday 18th September saying,

"We have seen an acceleration in the number of cases over the last couple of weeks and we’ve also sadly seen that the number of people hospitalised with coronavirus is doubling about every eight days, so we do need to take action."

Mr Hancock is Health Secretary and so has access to the latest accurate figures, there should be no reason to doubt what he says, but I don't really trust our politicians anymore so I thought I'd check his figures, it's easy enough, anyone can do it on the GOV.UK website. The number of positive tests/cases is certainly increasing, that's indisputable, but what about the number in hospital doubling every 8 days ? I checked back two periods of 8 days from the 18th September, which is the date he said they were doubling every 8 days, to the 2nd and 10th September.

On the 2nd there were 425 cases in hospital in England, if the numbers were doubling every 8 days on September 10th there would have been 850 in hospital, in fact there were 553, the number had nowhere near doubled.

If the 553 in hospital on 10 September had doubled in 8 days, on September 18th there would have been 1,106 in hospital, in fact there were 988, an increase but well short of doubling.

Move on 8 days from Mr Hancock's claim, and if the 988 in hospital on the 18th had doubled there would have been 1,976 in hospital yesterday the 26th, in fact there were 1,622, again an increase but still not close to doubling. If you go back to the 2nd September and accept Mr Hancock's claim, there would now be 3,400 people in hospital with Covid, but the actual figure is as stated, less than half that, 1,622.

Liar, Liar, pants on fire.