With polling day just one week away, David Cameron went in to the final televised leaders’ debate looking to revive the prospect of a Conservative majority that many had thought inevitable just weeks ago.

Having been accused by the much-respected Institute for Fiscal Studies earlier in the week of providing the least detailed economic policies of the three, the Conservatives perhaps had more questions to answer than their opponents.

Full Fact has thus far found Mr Cameron’s debate night claims to be patchy at best; would his final performance be any different?

The National Insurance rise

From the off, the three leaders traded blows on one of the issues that has dominated the campaign since the election was called: the proposed rise in the National Insurance Contribution Scheme (NICS). Mr Cameron, whilst acknowledging the necessity of certain tax rises, was quick to state that “we can stop the one tax that is going to hit the very poorest hardest, the National Insurance rises”. Will the NICS rise disproportionately hurt the poor?

The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) looked into the redistributive impact of each party’s National Insurance policy earlier this week, seemingly reaching different conclusions to Mr Cameron. According to the IFS, the poorest 20 per cent benefit most under the NICS proposals made by Labour and the Lib Dems, with the Conservative policy being the only one to increase the net income of the richest fifth of the population. Whether or not this completely undermines Mr Cameron’s claim is a moot point.

Throughout the exchanges, the Conservative leader repeatedly referred to the NICS rise as a ‘tax on jobs’, referencing remarks he had earlier made suggesting that the move would be a “jobs killer”. Here Cameron stands on firmer ground.

The Federation of Small Businesses suggested last month that the proposed 1p rise would cost the economy 57,000 jobs. Furthermore, research from the British Retail Consortium suggested that the estimated £220m that move would cost the retail sector would be largely absorbed by cuts in part-time jobs, lending more credence to Mr Cameron’s claim that the tax rise would hit the poorest in society.

These are claims that are subject to some debate however. For example, Edward Troup, head of the Treasury budget, tax and welfare directorate pointed out in his evidence to the Treasury select committee on the subject that the last time such a rise was undertaken, unemployment actually fell.

Efficiency Savings

Defending his National Insurance policy from attacks from his opponents, Mr Cameron went on to outline how his party would fill the £6bn hole left in the budget by his revocation of the tax rise. Here he claimed that “£6bn saving this year is £1 in every £100 that Government spends. That glossy leaflet through your door is £1 in every £100, the 7 per cent pay rise for NHS workers is £1 in every £100.” Do these figures accurately reflect realities in public spending?

The seven per cent pay rise Mr Cameron refers to applies exclusively to those given to NHS chief executives, which according to the Incomes Data Services' NHS Boardroom Pay Report 2010 was 6.9 per cent. This is not a pay rise that was shared across NHS staff – or even, as Mr Cameron has previously claimed, NHS managers – and, as Full Fact has previously demonstrated, is one that has been occasioned by the rising number of NHS Foundation Trusts, which are larger organisations with greater financial responsibilities.

In 2009, the NHS budget was £107.5 million, of which some 60 per cent was spent on staffing costs. However chief executives only numbered just over 600, and held an average salary of £147,000 according to the Income Data Services report. The 7 per cent pay rise therefore cost the NHS just under £6.3bn, well short of the £1 in every £100 of the health service budget that Mr Cameron suggests was spent on the raises.

Unemployment and Benefits

As the debate turned to joblessness, Mr Cameron again sallied forth with some statistics to back up his position on the benefits system, stating that “we have 5m people on out of work benefits and 3 million on incapacity benefits, we have 900,000 young people not in education, not in training and not in employment, that’s record unemployment”. Are these statistics legitimate, and do they represent ‘record’ numbers?

Here annual National Office for Statistics data seems to support Mr Cameron. As the Conservative leader suggests, the number of people claiming out of work benefits such as incapacity benefit or jobseeker's allowance increased by 675,000 from August 2008 to reach a record 5.08 million in August 2009. This represents the lowest employment rate – 72 per cent - seen in the UK since 1996.

This can indeed be construed as ‘record unemployment’, but it’s not necessarily a cut-and-dry matter. The number of those classified as ‘economically inactive’ rose by 110,000 in the latest quarter of 2009 to 8.16 million, which is the worst figure since records began in 1971.

However some groups, such as students, would find themselves classed in this group even though they would not generally be considered ‘unemployed’, as Mr Cameron suggests. Indeed the rising numbers of young people attending university has been one of the key factors driving up this measure over the past few years.

The number of people claiming Jobseekers Allowance, a more widely accepted measure of unemployment, actually fell in March 2010 by 32,900 to 1.54 million, the fourth time the figure has fallen in the last five months, and it remains lower than the levels seen during the recessions of the 1980s and 1990s, where it peaked at 9.9 per cent and 9.7 per cent of the population respectively.

Conclusion

According to early opinion polls, Mr Cameron was widely believed to have won the final TV debate. Whilst his overall performance may have been strong, his use of the facts was rather less so.

At best, Cameron used accurate figures to draw misleading conclusions, as with his conflation of economic inactivity and unemployment demonstrated when discussing benefits.

At worst, Mr Cameron’s claims lacked any basis in reality, as was the case with his suggestion that NHS pay rises accounted for one per cent of health spending. The Leader of the Opposition’s assertion that Mr Brown’s proposed rise in National Insurance contributions would hit the poor hardest did inadvertently touch upon an interesting discussion still raging on its impact on various economic groups, but Mr Cameron failed to add any detail to qualify this claim.

Whilst viewers may have registered an improved performance from Mr Cameron, sadly Full Fact cannot say the same.