After a receiving the lowest scores in polls assessing last week’s debate, the pressure was on Gordon Brown to raise his game this week.

But did this pressure affect the accuracy of his claims?

Conservative help for elderly

In a heated exchange with David Cameron over Conservative plans to help the elderly Mr Brown claimed the Conservative manifesto did not discuss free eye tests or free prescriptions for the elderly.

A quick look at the Tories ‘Older People Manifesto’ has no mention on either of these points.

However Mr Cameron was also clamed that Labour leaflets have inaccurately claimed that the Tories would scrap free TV licences and the winter fuel allowance or cut concessionary travel.

While copies of such leaflets are yet to appear online a commitment to protect both of these things is included in the Conservatives’ manifesto.

Dodgy leaflets

When confronted by Mr Cameron on the misleading content of some Labour campaign leaflets, Mr Brown said: “I did not authorise any leaflets like that.”

This has been questioned by the SNP, who have complained about a leaflet issued in Mr Brown’s Kirkaldy and Cowdenbeath constituency, which claimed the SNP will cut concessionary travel for the elderly.

A press release from the SNP rejects that this is their policy.

Detroit Plane bomber

Discussing the threat from global terrorism Mr Brown claimed Umar Farouk Abdulmutalla, who attempted to blow up a Detroit bound plane last Christmas, was trained in Somalia.

This is not true.

As this report recounts, Mr Abdulmutalla, a Nigerian citizen, entered Yemen on 4 August 2009 with a visa to study Arabic in the country. However Yemeni officials reported that he instead went to remote mountain areas to meet “al-Qaeda elements” before leaving a few weeks before the attempted Christmas Day attack.

Reports also suggest Mr Abdulmutalla was radicalised during his time studying engineering at University College London, when he attended mosques under surveillance by British security services.

Europe

The Prime Minister defended Britain’s membership of the European Union citing statistics on the apparent economic benefits.

"Three million jobs depend on our membership of the European Union, half our trade is with the EU…750,000 businesses trade with Europe,” he claimed.

There are figures that bear out Mr Brown’s claim.

The issue of jobs dependent on the European Union is not clear cut. A study by the National Institute of Economic and Social Research suggested up to 3.2 million jobs were “associated directly” with exports of goods and services to the European Union.

However, the report also said: “This does not necessarily mean that the number of jobs in the economy is similarly affected”.

So the research does not back up Mr Brown’s claim that the jobs “depend” on Britain’s EU membership. 

Official EU records show that the value of goods exports to the EU was £124,509,000,000 while with non-EU countries the figure was £103,161,000,000.

ONS figures for all trade also showed that 58.9 per cent of UK trade was with the EU in 2001.

We have so far been unable to establish the source of Mr Brown’s figures on the number of businesses which trade with Europe. We will update when we get the statistics.

Wind Power

Defending the Government’s record on renewable energy Mr Brown’ claimed that Britain was the “world leader” on offshore power generation. The figures seems to back him up.

In 2008 the Government announced that with 597MW worth of constructed offshore wind generation, the UK knocked Denmark off the top spot for offshore generation.

However in terms of renewable energy as a whole, the UK was ranked third from bottom for share of renewable energy sources in 2005.