After recent stories regarding Gordon Brown’s inaccurate use of facts and figures, we were keen to see if there was any improvement in the clarity of information given by the Prime Minister.

Taking an initial look at some of Mr Brown’s claims, here’s our assessment of how the Labour leader fared in the accuracy stakes during the course of the inaugural TV debate.

Since 1997 the number of failing schools has come down from 1600 to 250. True

Earlier this year Full Fact looked into the figures and found they checked out.

In 1997 the number of underperforming schools (where less than 30 per cent of pupils achieve five GCSEs grade A-C) was 1,610 in 1997 and by 2009 this had fallen to 247.

We will need to approach the Labour for an explanation of why Mr Brown was so confident it would be zero next year.

No unskilled worker from outside the EU can come into Britain now: Untrue

The Prime Minister is only talking about economic migrants. Factoring asylum seekers, of which there were nearly 4,000 successful applications in 2008, it is extremely likely that there would be unskilled workers among this number.

Labour’s plans to reduce the number of peers by 50 per cent will save more money than the Conservatives’ proposals for a 10 per cent cut to the number of MPs. Untrue

Gordon Brown has said that a reformed House of Lords comprising of elected members would be half its current size.

The Conservatives have proposed to reduce the number of MPs by 10 per cent as part of a wider plan to cut the cost of politics. But which would save the most money?

Looking at how much each peer costs, figures show that peers expenses totalled £18,988,000. Divided by the 707 peers who sit in the House, this gives a cost of £26,857 per Lord.

If the number of peers was reduced to 300 the total bill for their expenses would be £8,057,142, equalling a saving of £10,930,857.

However only 465 Peers claimed expenses in 07/08 so average expensees for a member of the House of Lords works out at £40,834 per peer.

Cutting the numbers in the Lords to 300 would therefore reduce costs to £12,250,322, a saving of £6,737,677.

It is however feasible that a reformed chamber would have a new system of expenses.

Turning to the Commons, there will be 650 MPs after the election. Dividing the total salary cost of MPs by the number of MPs gives an average salary cost of £90,181., while the cost of staff per member is £169,117.

If these two figures were reduced by 10 per cent £16,854,419 would be saved – already higher than the saving from Labour’s plan without taking into account the cost of MPs expenses.

Unemployment continued to rise for five years after the official end of the recession in the 1980s: Untrue

According to the record of GDP, the recession of the eighties ended in the last quarter of 1980. Unemployment did continue to rise despite a return to growth in the economy, however figues from the ONS on unemployment show the total number of unemployed began falling in mid 1984.

Unemployment in Britain has stayed below that of Europe and America during the recession. True

As our article last week discussed, the UK unemployment rate in the UK has stayed below that of America and the EU average.

However, UK saw a faster rise in its unemployment rate.

The police have been merged with immigration and customs. Untrue

The Prime Minister made reference to merging the police with immigration and customs yet so far this has not happened. In 2008, the immigration agency merged with HM Revenue and Customs and UK Visas into the UK Border Agency.

Indeed the creation of a dedicated border police force has been proposed by the Conservatives.
 

The Government is now spending £5bn on the war in Afghanistan. True

In January 2010, the Treasury announced that spending on Afghanistan would increase to £5bn (or five thousand million, as Mr Brown put it) for the year 2010-11.

Conclusion

Most of the claims analysed above are not strictly accurate. It is arguably only the claim made about cutting the cost of politics where an explanation is needed as to why Labour’s proposals would save more money, as the evidence raises questions over Mr Brown's claim.

by Patrick Casey