Boris Johnson has been accused of double-counting in order to meet his manifesto commitment of delivering 200,000 new jobs by 2016.
The promise was included in the Mayor’s 9 point plan for London which formed part of his re-election manifesto.
At Wednesday’s Mayor’s Question Time session Liberal Democrat AM Stephen Knight claimed the Mayor was counting ongoing employment as new jobs.
Mr Johnson denied the claim and expressed confidence he would meet his target.
After the meeting Mr Knight commented: “When you examine the figures it is clear that Boris Johnson is claiming 104,000 of these new jobs would be created through his housing programme, however in reality there will be only about 25,000 people employed each year.
“In order to claim this as 100,000 new jobs the Mayor has counted each person employed per year as a new job. This is as daft as saying the Mayor of London himself will be holding four jobs over the next four years.”
Knight also accused the Mayor of “peddling dishonest statistics.”
The Mayor has faced repeated criticism of his use of statistics, including those relating to the success of the City Hall backed Heron unit at Feltham Young Offenders Institute.
During today’s meeting Labour’s Joanne McCartney repeated calls for Johnson to sign up to the UK Statistics Authority’s Code of Practice for Official Statistics.
The Mayor declined to give such a commitment.
In November he attacked the impartiality of the UK Statistics Authority, calling its then chairman a “Labour stooge”.
After Wednesday’s meeting McCartney told this site: “Boris failed the test of transparency yet again. He has got into hot water before and has twice been pulled over the coals by the UKSA. But you know you’ve hit a nerve when he acuses a respected civil servant of being a political stooge. All we are asking for is impartial stats.”