Em--I apologize for my apparent "countrycentrism". It wasn't that, so much as I was assuming (nope, I never will learn) that, while numbers of deaths were unlikely to be falsified at lower than the actual number, the causes of death that England's figures must include might well have caused that total to be exaggerated--compared to our total, that is. I would be interested to compare the two countries' totals for ONE direct cause of death only, say, literally freezing to death.
Though I do agree with mav's point that, barring accident, we have no business letting anyone in either country die because it's cold.