Fact checking Reform UK's election 'contract'
Reform UK launched its 2024 ‘contract’ today which is, essentially, the party’s manifesto.
With the help of Full Fact’s AI tools, we’ve been combing through the 28-page document and checking its key claims.
Find out what we’ve been looking into in our round-up here.
Is unemployment always higher after a Labour government?
In multiple interviews this morning defence secretary Grant Shapps claimed “every Labour government in history” has left unemployment higher.
This isn’t the first time Mr Shapps has made this claim—we fact checked him last year after he said the same thing.
As we wrote then, this is true of most Labour governments, including the two most recent ones (1997-2010 and 1974-1979), both of which saw unemployment increase.
These are the only Labour governments covered by currently comparable unemployment data, but historic unemployment data, while not directly comparable with current data, suggests there’s at least one exception to this claim, with unemployment falling during the Labour minority government of 1924.
In addition, though it wasn‘t a “Labour government” as such, it’s worth noting that between May 1940 and May 1945 the Labour party was part of the wartime government, led by Sir Winston Churchill, which left unemployment lower than when it came in. The unemployment rate dropped from 5.5% in May 1940 to 0.7% in May 1945.
Some Conservative governments have also seen rises in unemployment. When we looked at this issue back in 2021, we found that of the three completed periods of Conservative government since the war, at least two had seen increases.
Unemployment is currently lower than it was when the Conservatives entered government as part of the Coalition in 2010.
Sunday morning politics shows include familiar claims about waiting lists, tax and mortgages
On today’s morning politics shows we spotted some familiar claims we’ve previously fact checked.
On Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips [7:04 and 16:57], Labour’s shadow health secretary Wes Streeting twice mentioned “the 7.5 million” on waiting lists.
While Mr Streeting did not specify whether he meant people or cases on waiting lists, as we’ve written before, 7.5 million was the number of cases, not people, on NHS England waiting lists.
The latest data, collected at the end of April 2024, shows about 6.3 million people were waiting to begin about 7.6 million courses of treatment.
And on Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, Mr Streeting referred to “the kind of unfunded gimmicks we have seen in this Conservative election campaign which could see people’s mortgages go up by £4,800”.
As we explained a few days ago, this is a speculative figure, which seems to be an estimate of the average annual extra cost of a mortgage at the end of the next parliament. It is based on several uncertain assumptions, and some of the detail of Labour’s workings remains unclear.
For the Conservatives, transport secretary Mark Harper told Laura Kuenssberg that under Labour there would be a “retirement tax where you would have to pay tax on the basic state pension”. This is based on forecasts showing that under current government policy the new state pension is set to increase slightly above the personal allowance for the first time.
Labour says it’ll maintain current government policy and not raise the personal allowance, while the Conservatives say they will introduce a new age-related personal allowance that grows each year so that it will “always be higher than the level of the new state pension”. We wrote about this earlier this month.
Mr Harper also said on Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips [33:07] that under Labour there would be a “black hole” of “£2,000 for every family in the next, over the parliament”. As we’ve explained before, this figure is unreliable and based on a number of questionable assumptions.
The Office for Statistics Regulation has also issued a statement criticising the Conservatives’ use of this figure.
Political ads on Facebook repeat familiar claims about tax rises, waiting lists and immigration
We’ve been taking a look at some of the adverts political parties have been running on Facebook—and have found a number making claims we’ve previously fact checked.
A Facebook advert for Alex Fawbert, the Labour candidate for Boston and Skegness, ran between 6 and 10 June and received between 2,000 and 3,000 impressions, according to Facebook’s ad library. In the video featured in the ad, Ms Fawbert said: “We know that there are eight million people currently on waiting lists.” We’ve heard similar claims to this throughout the campaign, from Labour and the Green party. But as we’ve written before, it’s not what NHS data shows.
Assuming Ms Fawbert was talking about NHS England (which is the part of the NHS the UK government controls) and referral to treatment (RTT) data, which is usually what people mean by “the waiting list”, then it appears she was referring not to the number of people on waiting lists but the number of cases, and it’s been rounded up to eight million.
In the latest NHS England data, collected at the end of April 2024, about 6.3 million people were waiting to begin about 7.6 million courses of treatment. (At the time the ad started, the latest data, for March 2024, said 6.3 million people and 7.5 million cases.) There are always more cases than people in the data, because some people are awaiting treatment for more than one thing.
Meanwhile, an advert for Labour’s Uxbridge and South Ruislip candidate Danny Beales claimed that under the Conservatives “waiting lists will go up and up and hit 10 million”.
While it’s impossible to say for sure what’ll happen in future, as we wrote a couple of weeks ago, that prediction’s been challenged by the Institute for Fiscal Studies. It says lists are likely to “at worst flatline”, whichever party forms the next government.
Meanwhile the Conservatives’ claim that under Labour working families face a £2,094 tax rise features in a number of the party’s Facebook adverts, often as a standalone figure.
As we wrote last week, the £2,094 figure is unreliable and based on a number of questionable assumptions. It comes from a Conservative party estimate of Labour’s “unfunded spending commitments”, but many of the costings behind the calculation are uncertain. Even if the figure was right, we can’t be certain this money would be collected by raising taxes, and if it was, families are unlikely to be affected equally.
Finally, Jake Berry, the Conservative candidate for Rossendale and Darwen, made a familiar claim about immigration in a Facebook ad which the ad library says ran from 4 to 11 June and received between 7,000 and 8,000 impressions. The advert said: “Labour don’t want to control immigration. Their plans could see us take in 100,000 extra illegal migrants, from Europe, every single year.”
We’ve written about similar claims from Conservative politicians several times before. The 100,000 figure was circulated by the Conservative party last September in response to comments made by Sir Keir Starmer about a potential future returns agreement with the EU. But the way it was calculated is incorrect.
We don’t know how many more migrants might come to the UK as a result of any future returns deal negotiated under Labour. Labour has not detailed what such a deal would involve or said how many migrants it would be willing to accept.
We’ve contacted the Labour party and the Conservative party for comment, as well as all the candidates behind the adverts listed above, and will update this post if they respond.
Update: Labour candidate Danny Beales contacted Full Fact after this blog was published, noting that his use of the 10 million waiting list figure was based on Labour “analysis that was published in a national press release”. He added that “data this week has shown a further increase in waiting times”. The latest NHS England data, for April 2024, showed a slight increase in cases awaiting treatment, compared to the previous month.
It’s time for political parties to step up with a clear mandate for building trust
Following a busy week of manifesto launches, Full Fact analysis can reveal that none of the parties likely to play a role in the next government have put forward measures to meaningfully tackle misinformation in politics or to regulate political advertising.
This is not what the general public wants.
Findings published today by Full Fact and Ipsos Mori can reveal that three-quarters (75%) of UK adults expect misinformation to have at least some impact on the General Election result.
The survey paints a picture of a highly distrusting electorate sceptical of the information circulating in our political conversation and also of politicians themselves—approximately half (54%) say they tend to ignore what parties and politicians say because they don’t know if they can be trusted.
Alongside these findings, Full Fact’s petition to end deceptive campaign practices such as leaflets made to look like newspapers or fixed penalty notices—has gathered nearly 18,000 signatures, demonstrating considerable desire for parties to commit to running cleaner, more honest campaigns.
The survey found that many UK adults are affected by misinformation in their everyday lives:
- Thinking about news and current affairs, less than half (44%) find it easy to tell the difference between true and false information that they see online, and about one in three (34%) admit to having falsely believed a news story was real until they found out it was fake
- A quarter (25%) are worried that their own political opinions are based on false or misleading information.
Results indicate that such commonplace experiences of misinformation could have a corrosive effect on political participation in the UK. Thinking about the upcoming General Election:
- 54% tend to ignore what parties and politicians will say because they don’t know if they can trust them.
- 38% have been put off voting by the level of false or misleading claims in current politics or the previous election campaign; among younger adults, this rises approximately to half (52% of those aged 18-34).
The survey also shows clear majorities in favour of more robust action to enforce honesty and transparency in political communications:
- 88% of UK adults think that accuracy of factual claims in political adverts should be a legal requirement
- 71% support political parties adopting a set of standards for honesty and transparency in manifestos.
We have assessed all the manifestos of the parties most likely to enter government found that commitments to clean up politics do not match the scale of public support:
- The Conservative Party manifesto makes just one commitment to “improve standards in local councils by making their performance more transparent through the Office of Local Government."
- The Labour Party manifesto commits to improving standards in public life through a "clean-up that ensures the highest standards of integrity and honesty", including the introduction of their long-standing call for an independent Ethics and Integrity Commission. But further detail on the scope and powers of this Commission—such as its role in handling misinformation and political advertising—is urgently needed.
- The Liberal Democrat manifesto goes furthest, by including a number of promises to improve honesty and transparency, including to work “towards real-time transparency for political advertising”. It also commits the party to “pushing for a global convention or treaty to combat disinformation and electoral interference.”
None of the parties listed above have signed Full Fact’s pledge which would have committed them to ruling out using deceptive campaign practices during the election campaign. The Liberal Democrats, despite their manifesto commitments, have ruled out signing the pledge.
The public deserves a parliament that puts accurate information and higher standards in public life at the forefront of their agenda. We will work with whoever forms the new government to continue to work for a more honest and transparent politics.
Seven party leaders face off on ITV
This evening ITV hosted its second debate of the 2024 general election campaign—this time involving representatives from seven of the UK’s political parties.
The line-up was the same as the seven-party debate hosted by the BBC last week: the Conservatives’ Penny Mordaunt; Labour’s Angela Rayner; the SNP’s Stephen Flynn; the Liberal Democrats’ Daisy Cooper; Plaid Cymru’s Rhun ap Iorwerth; Reform UK’s Nigel Farage and the Green Party’s Carla Denyer.
We ‘live fact checked’ the debate, and you can now read a round-up of the claims we looked at.
Does Labour’s £4,800 mortgage claim add up?
On Tuesday, the Labour party claimed that the measures announced in the Conservative manifesto would raise the cost of the average mortgage by £4,800 over the course of the next parliament.
We’ve now dug into this figure, and found it’s speculative and based on several uncertain assumptions. You can read our full analysis here.
Fact checking the Labour party manifesto
It’s manifesto week and today it was Labour’s turn—Sir Keir Starmer launched the party’s 2024 election manifesto from Manchester this morning.
With the help of Full Fact’s AI tools, we’ve been rigorously reading the 136-page document and identifying key checkable claims.
Find out what we’ve been looking into in our round-up here.
Our calls on transparency in politics here: https://buff.ly/45kU2Ab
Sky News – The Battle for Number 10: Live fact check
Missed #BattleForNo10 on @SkyNews last night? We looked at claims on:
👮 Police numbers
🏥 Waiting lists
🪙 Tax
#GeneralElection #GE24
https://buff.ly/45jtJud