Full Fact v Daily Express: how and why it happened

This story started nearly 12 months ago and—despite a significant breakthrough today—it still isn’t over.

Last September, the Conservative party and its representatives started to claim that 100,000 more migrants would enter the UK every year under Labour. Within days, we published a fact check which concluded that the claim was misleading. We asked several party representatives not to repeat the claim—and 2,700 people even signed a publicised letter to the then Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and party chair Greg Hands about it, but they and others continued to mislead.

Come December, the Migration Observatory had pointed out that the 100,000 calculation even included a mathematical error, but this didn’t stop Richard Holden—Greg Hands’ successor as party chair—from repeating the claim in a comment piece for the Express published on Boxing Day. This meant that we could make the case for his comment to be corrected in accordance with the ‘accuracy’ clause of the Editors’ Code of Practice, upheld by IPSO, which describes itself as ‘a self-regulator paid for by publishers which are members but (it) carries out its work independently from them’.

We didn’t want to have to involve IPSO. We hoped that the Daily Express would voluntarily agree to correct the claim in line with the Editors’ Code, or that Richard Holden would agree to correct it in line with the commitments he made to honesty as an MP and minister. So, we started by asking Richard Holden and the Daily Express to correct the piece in early January. We sent reminders and waited for a response up towards the maximum time IPSO recommends waiting before submitting a complaint. But by late April there was still no correction, not even a response to our request.

When we submitted our complaint to IPSO we knew we’d need to take the right step at every turn to secure the correction needed. We were linked up with barrister Gervase de Wilde of 5RB who kindly provided pro bono support. When the Daily Express finally engaged with us and offered a footnote that failed to correct the claim with due prominence—so the public would be duly informed—we happily followed advice to hold out for more.

Now, over nine months after the comment piece was first published, it has finally been corrected. To quote IPSO’s ruling: “The article was reporting on a matter of significant public debate – illegal immigration and plans to stop boats arriving in the UK. To report as fact, and without explaining the basis, that the Labour Party’s plans for migration would see Britain take in an extra 100,000 illegal migrants a year was significantly inaccurate, taking into account the importance of readers being able to understand the context of public policy decisions.”

So, at last, one of the 25 repeats of this claim detected by Full Fact’s AI since late December alone has finally been corrected. In the time it took for this solitary repeat of an inaccurate claim ‘on a matter of significant public debate’ to be corrected, local elections, mayoral elections and a general election have all been and gone.

This ruling is a very belated breakthrough, albeit one with the potential to mean much more in the future. What makes it really worth reading about is its wider significance. For us, it was never just about correcting a claim in a comment piece, important as that is. Full Fact v Daily Express has delivered at least three key things that we hoped for.

Firstly, the ruling reaffirmed that the 100,000 claim was significantly inaccurate. This might help us to secure more corrections in the future and take the life out of a claim that should never have run on for so long.

Secondly, the ruling has shown that the press must take greater care than the Daily Express did in this instance to avoid publishing inaccurate, misleading or distorted information, even when it is published as ‘comment’. If a claim is independently verifiable, publications should independently verify it, not take a claimant’s word for it.

Thirdly, and most importantly, IPSO’s investigation took us closer to the root of the problem that needs solving. Despite everything Full Fact, our supporters and other stakeholders have done to make sure the Conservative Party knew this claim was misleading, correspondence revealed by the complaint process showed that the party still “stood by” it. This is deeply troubling.

While IPSO’s been reaching its ruling, we’ve also seen the Conservatives and Labour repeat unreliable and speculative figures ranging from £2,000 to £4,800 respectively, even though they’ve been warned about them by us and others. This apparent race to the bottom risks taking historically low public trust in politicians to unprecedented depths.

On the face of it, this ruling belatedly secures one correction amidst countless repeats of misleading claims, but it can and should mean much more. Full Fact v Daily Express should strike a hammer blow to the 100,000 claim and shine a light on wider problems with accuracy and trust that urgently need addressing.

In the next chapter of this story, we’ll ramp up action to stop claims like this from being made, repeated, and left uncorrected for so long. It’s clear that parties need to significantly improve the accuracy of what they say, as well as the regulations that should compel them to act honestly, if public trust is to be restored. We won’t see a happy ending otherwise.