Election 2019: live blog
Fewer than half of limited companies make less than £10,000 in profits
Following on from our earlier post about Nigel Farage's corporation tax numbers, we've heard back from the Brexit Party who've clarified that their policy is to waive corporation tax for the first £10,000 of pre-tax profits that companies earn.
Mr Farage is still wrong to claim that two-thirds of businesses make £10,000 or less in profits. In fact fewer than half of limited companies earn less than this.
We've looked at the details here.
Manifest-Oh no she didn't!
We spotted a video shared by the Conservative press Twitter account yesterday that appeared to show Jess Phillips saying Labour would fail to deliver on its 2019 election manifesto promises.
The video was not from yesterday, but October, where Ms Phillips was talking about manifestos and political parties more generally. The Conservative press account incorrectly dated the video.
They deleted and fixed the date, but the new video and a similar video on the main Conservative party Twitter account still suggest Phillips is talking about the 2019 manifesto.
You can read more about this here.
Nigel Farage gets tax numbers wrong
At the Brexit Party’s manifesto launch this morning, leader Nigel Farage pledged to remove corporation tax on business profits under £10,000.
Corporation tax is a tax on limited businesses, and the main rate is set at 19% of profits.
Justifying the proposal, Mr Farage said in the Telegraph this morning that: “two-thirds of British businesses do not make a profit over £10,000 every year but are nonetheless subjected to corporation tax.”
He made a similar claim in his speech this morning, that a million companies do not make a profit of over £10,000 a year.
This is incorrect.
Mr Farage seems to have confused the number of limited businesses who have to pay up to £10,000 of corporation tax (one million in 2017/18) with the number of businesses which make profits of up to £10,000 (and therefore would only be liable to pay corporation tax up to £1,900, on the 19% rate).
The Brexit Party correctly stated this statistic in their manifesto: “one million companies - some 66% of the total number - pay less than £10,000.”
It’s not clear that the party’s pledge is to stop all those companies paying corporation tax altogether, though. The party’s pledge seems to be that corporation tax would be waived for the first £10,000 of pre-tax profits, not the first £10,000 of tax owed.
We’ve asked the Brexit Party to clarify.
Manifestos manifest
If you hadn’t noticed yet, it’s manifesto week.
Yesterday was the turn of Labour who pledged an additional £83 billion of public spending, while claiming that there would be no increase in VAT, income tax or national insurance for people earning less than £80,000.
That’s technically correct, but that doesn’t mean people earning less than £80,000 would be completely unaffected by Labour’s tax plans. The scrapping of marriage allowance and increase in the sugar tax will have a disproportionate impact on lower earners, for example.
Lower earners could also be affected by the proposals to increase inheritance tax and corporation tax (not just paid by large multinationals, but 1.5 million businesses).
We’ve factchecked Labour’s manifesto and launch speech here.
Before Labour, on Wednesday it was the Liberal Democrats’ turn. As we have heard often through the campaign, the Lib Dems advocated for the financial benefits of remaining in the EU which it plans to spend on public services.
There’s always uncertainty with these sorts of predictions but we think their calculations are fair. You can read more from their manifesto here.
The Green Party also launched its manifesto this week, and we looked at some of the party’s claims about climate change.
As for the Conservatives, their manifesto launch is pencilled in for Sunday. We’ll be checking the launch speech live so check our twitter account (@fullfact) and the liveblog for the latest.
The funding for the bus goes down and down?
Rounding off our check of claims from last night’s ITV election interviews, Green Party co-leader Siân Berry claimed that “our buses have been cut back by nearly half.”
This refers to a 2018 report which found that, since 2010/11, local authorities’ spending on buses had been reduced by 45% in cash terms (or 51% taking inflation into account).
But that is not looking at all public money that goes into supporting bus services, as a larger chunk of funding goes directly from central government towards supporting commercially-run services.
More recent data shows that local authority spending on buses in England, excluding London, fell by 43% between 2009/10 and 2018/19, after adjusting for inflation. But between 2009/10 and 2017/18 across the same area, central government funding—which is the far bigger pot of money—fell by 19%.
You can read our full fact check here.
Are there duties in Djibouti?
Last night in the ITV leaders interviews Nigel Farage talked about trade barriers the EU raises against African countries.
We’ve fact checked claims like this before and while Mr Farage is not technically incorrect because there are some EU tariffs on African countries, the vast majority of African countries can export all goods tariff free to the EU.
You can read our latest factcheck here.
Lib Dem claims about EU health workers and the NHS are generally true
We've looked into the claims made by Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson about nursing and Brexit from last night.
Generally, she was right in her claims; the NHS employs tens of thousands of workers from other EU countries, the number of nurses from EU countries has dropped, and this has been seen especially since the referendum. Although other factors could be at play.
We've got factchecks of claims from the Greens and the Brexit Party still to come.
SNP's currency claim on uncertain ground
From last night's leaders interviews on ITV, we've looked into the claim from Nicola Sturgeon that Scotland wouldn’t be forced to join the euro if it became an independent country and negotiated entry into the EU.
It’s a bit more complicated than that. Most EU countries have to commit to joining the currency, but it’s unclear whether in practice they would or could be forced to join.
We’ll have updates from the other three leaders on the programme shortly.
Will Moy on Today
Here's a clip of Will Moy, our Chief Executive, on the Today programme this morning. He'll be appearing across TV and radio throughout the day.
Good morning!
Yesterday saw the first point during the election campaign when the leaders of the two main parties went head-to-head, in a debate on ITV.
As the debate got underway, the Conservative press office changed their Twitter logo and renamed their account ‘factcheckUK’, tweeting out “fact checks” which were supportive of Boris Johnson’s claims.
We criticised the Conservatives for this during the debate and you can hear more from our chief executive Will Moy who discussed the issue on BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme this morning.
The debate itself inevitably started with Brexit, with Jeremy Corbyn and Boris Johnson clashing over their Brexit timetables, and what Mr Johnson’s deal means for the Irish border.
Next up was the NHS, with claims about nurse vacancies, the extent of government funding, and whether the Conservatives have committed to build 40 hospitals, or to reconfigure six.
This was followed by a third main section on the economy, and topics covered included poverty, inequality, the UK’s economic performance, and corporation tax.
Both Corbyn and Johnson got some things wrong, and plenty of claims needed more context. You can read our assessment of last night’s claims here.
After an hour’s respite with I’m a Celebrity… ITV resumed the election coverage with interviews with the Lib Dems’ Jo Swinson, the SNP’s Nicola Sturgeon, The Brexit Party’s Nigel Farage, and the Green Party’s Sian Berry.
We’ll be posting fact checks of some choice claims throughout the day on our liveblog.