Politics Live

 The Prime Minister has repeatedly made claims that the NHS is set to receive £34 billion and described this in a number of ways: as the biggest spending increase in modern memory, or a “record sum” or the biggest boost for a generation.

It’s certainly not a record sum and whether or not you think this is the biggest increase in modern memory really depends on how good your memory is.

The £34 billion is a spending increase in real terms of £20.5 billion between 2018/19 and 2023/24 (this was first announced in July 2018). The last time spending increased by at least that amount in real terms was between 2004/05 and 2009/10, when it increased by £24 billion in real terms.

We've written more about this here. 

During his Conservative manifesto launch speech, Boris Johnson said Labour’s plans mean “higher taxes for everybody in this country, £2,400 extra.” The claim also appears in the Conservative manifesto.

This figure was first calculated by the Conservatives before the publication of Labour’s manifesto, so we called the calculation “largely meaningless”, as the Conservatives couldn’t know, at the time, exactly what Labour’s policies were.

Now that Labour’s manifesto has been published, we know it proposes £83 billion of increased spending by 2023/24. Labour has since announced compensation for the WASPI women at a cost of up to £58 billion in total (so an additional £11.5 billion per year).

If you divide that £83 billion figure by the number of income tax payers in the UK, it gives you a figure of roughly £2,600, or adding in the funding for WASPI women, the figure would be £3,000. But those figures are meaningless. They don’t mean that every income tax payer will have to pay this to fund the pledges.

That’s because Labour does not plan to fund its spending pledges through higher income tax for everybody (and even if it did, the cost would fall disproportionately on higher earners).

Labour doesn’t plan to raise income tax for those earning under £80,000 a year, and says that this increased spending will mainly be funded through taxes including corporation tax, a financial transactions tax, and higher income tax for those earning over £80,000 a year. 

The IFS says that “it is unlikely that one could raise the sums suggested by Labour from the tax policies they set out.” 

So Labour’s calculations have their problems, but it’s wrong to suggest that every income tax payer in the UK will fund every penny of Labour’s additional spending, and in equal amount.

A leaflet from Catherine West, the Labour party candidate for Hornsey and Wood Green, includes the following doughnut chart as evidence that “only a vote for Labour can guarantee Johnson won’t enter 10 Downing Street again.”

It claims to show the result of the 2017 general election in the constituency. It’s correct that Ms West won 65.4% of the vote as the Labour candidate. But the rest of the doughnut chart being blue suggests that the Conservatives took the remaining 34.6% of the vote.

That’s misleading. The Liberal Democrats took 16.1% of the vote, the Conservatives took 14.8% and the Greens took 1.9%.

Good afternoon. The big story yesterday was the launch of the Conservative manifesto, which we wrote about here. 

In particular we looked at how the pledge to recruit 20,000 more police officers won’t restore the number lost since 2010, and how the pledge to recruit 50,000 “more nurses” hasn’t actually factored in the cost of eventually paying their salaries.

We’ve also examined comparisons between the day-to-day spending pledges of the three main UK parties. While the Conservatives have only pledged £3 billion a year of extra day-to-day spending in their manifesto, that doesn’t include pledges to increase spending on things like the NHS and schools made before the election. 

Today, among other things, we’re looking at other claims made yesterday on the Andrew Marr show from Plaid Cymru leader Adam Price on the support for Welsh independence, and Angela Rayner on how many women are in poverty because of the changes to state pension age.

We’ve also written about why Labour had to correct its broadband costings in its manifesto.

And from the Mail, please watch this amazing video of Michael Crick exposing a ruse from a Conservative party candidate.

Following the launch of the Conservative manifesto, journalists pointed out the big difference between the levels of increased current (day-to-day) spending promised by the three main parties.

It’s important to note that the manifestos (in general) do not include spending that will increase in the future but has already been announced. The costings for the Conservative manifesto only include new spending announcements made since the election was called.

For example, the Conservative manifesto spending list doesn’t include its already-announced pledges to:

• Increase school funding in England, worth £4.3 billion per year by 2022/23 (the Conservatives wrongly give a higher figure by ignoring inflation and adding up multiple years.) 
• Increase spending on the NHS averaging £20.5 billion per year (again the Conservatives use a higher figure which ignores inflation).
• Recruit more police officers at a cost of £1 billion from 2019 to 2020. 

So while the Conservatives plan to increase annual current spending by £3 billion compared to what’s already been announced, overall they plan to spend a lot more than £3 billion extra per year than we spend today. 

It’s not clear to what extent the other parties would continue all of the previous spending commitments made by the government.

Since the Labour party manifesto was launched, they have also announced a major spending commitment on women’s pensions which was not mentioned in the manifesto.

In the BBC Question Time leaders special, Jeremy Corbyn said of the options that would be included in Labour’s planned second referendum: “This will be a trade deal with Europe or remaining in the EU, that will be the choice that we put before the British people within six months. Any other option will require years of negotiations, either with the EU or the USA and put our public services at risk.”

This is not Labour’s position. Labour’s proposal is not to negotiate a trade deal with the EU before the referendum (which they have promised within six months of being elected). They propose to renegotiate the withdrawal agreement, and the non-binding political declaration on the future trade relationship between the EU and the UK, but this is not the same as negotiating a trade deal.

The EU has said that it will not begin negotiations on a trade deal (and other aspects of the future relationship) until a withdrawal agreement is ratified.

It’s possible that Mr. Corbyn simply misspoke when he said “trade deal”, but his subsequent comments that “any other option will require years of negotiations” add to the confusion. 

If Leave were to win the referendum on Labour’s renegotiated withdrawal agreement, the UK would still have to finalise its new relationship - we don’t have enough details on what Labour’s Leave deal would mean to know how difficult that would be, and therefore how long it would take to negotiate and ratify a new agreement.  

If the UK wanted to join an established organisation like the European Economic Area (the arrangement that allows Norway, Iceland and Lichtenstein barrier-free access to the Single Market), that could be easier to agree than a comprehensive free trade deal - but other EEA members would need to agree the UK should join. Labour has not so far said this is what it wants, talking instead of a “strong economic relationship” based on “close alignment.” 

If Labour wanted to negotiate a bespoke trade deal with the EU, that would likely take longer. There is no realistic prospect of Mr. Corbyn’s trade deal being in place immediately after a second referendum result.

Mr. Corbyn also said, when talking about Labour’s tax policies, “95% of the population will pay no more whatsoever in tax. The top 5% will pay a bit more.”

This is wrong: Labour does propose some tax changes that would result in some of the 95% paying more. As we wrote in our fact check of Labour’s manifesto: “It’s correct that the Labour manifesto plans no increases in VAT, income tax or National Insurance for people earning less than £80,000.

It’s also correct that people earning less than £80,000 account for around 95% of taxpayers (somewhere between 95% and 96% according to 2016/17 figures from HMRC).

But that doesn’t mean Labour plans no tax rises whatsoever for these people, because there’s more to tax than just VAT, income tax and National Insurance.”  For example, as an audience member pointed out, Labour’s manifesto commits to scrapping marriage allowance.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies manifesto analysis said: “If you want to transform the scale and scope of the state then you need to be clear that the tax increases required to do that will need to be widely shared rather than pretending that everything can be paid for by companies and the rich.”

You can read more on this issue in our fact check of the manifesto.

Fiona Bruce and the Prime Minister clashed during his Question Time Leaders’ interview over how many “new hospitals” are being built.

BJ: As a result of the decisions that we have, in ten years time, 40 new hospitals will have been built. 

FB: It is six, just so we're clear.

BJ: Yes we're starting with six but there are 40 on the program.

FB: At the moment it’s upgrading six existing hospitals-

BJ: No, sorry, no, no, it’s building six new ones immediately, but a program over the next 10 years with seed funding already going in to build 40 new hospitals.

Fiona Bruce was right, and Boris Johnson was wrong to correct her.

The government’s latest announcement was to upgrade six hospitals by 2025, not to build six brand new hospitals. Some of these plans (such as at Whipps Cross in London) involve completely replacing the existing hospital with a new building, but all six are upgrades to existing hospital sites. 

You can argue about whether it’s fair to call those “new hospitals”, but in denying Fiona Bruce’s perfectly accurate description of the plan as “upgrading six existing hospitals”, Mr. Johnson got it wrong. The clear implication the viewer would have taken from the exchange is that these are new hospitals where none previously existed.

On the issue of the plan for 40 hospitals, another 21 hospital trusts are being given £100 million in seed funding to prepare a business case for their hospitals—but no money for any actual building work. The plan is for works on these hospitals to take place between 2025 and 2030.

So the 40 new hospitals Mr Johnson referred to includes the six hospital upgrades described above, plus 34 that the government says that seed funding will cover. 

The Conservative manifesto hasn’t been published yet, so we don’t know if it will have any more detail on how these extra 34 hospitals will be funded, but given that building work on them is unlikely to happen in the lifetime of the next parliament it wouldn’t be a surprise if it wasn’t.

The government has also previously made a separate announcement, for £850 million for 20 hospitals to receive upgrades to facilities and equipment over the next five years.

We’ve written more about these hospitals plans here.

Boris Johnson also said that the Conservatives are putting the “biggest ever cash boost” into the NHS. 

He’s presumably referring to the increase in NHS funding for England planned for between 2018/19 and 2023/24. Accounting for inflation, which is how prices change over time, it’s about £20.5 billion. 

It’s incorrect to say that’s a record amount of money. For example, between 2004/05 and 2009/10 the real terms increase was higher at £24 billion.

Nicola Sturgeon was challenged on tonight’s BBC Question Time about Scotland’s high budget deficit, after an audience member pointed out it would need to bring its deficit down to levels acceptable to the EU if it wanted to join. She argued that “that is a deficit that has been accrued under the Westminster system of government”.

Scotland’s net fiscal deficit is higher than that of the UK as a whole, as a proportion of the size of its economy. In 2018/19 it’s “deficit” was between 7 and 8.5% of its economy, depending on whether and how you count revenues from North Sea oil. By contrast, the overall UK budget deficit is expected to be about 2% of GDP in the same year.

It’s correct to say, as Ms Sturgeon goes on to, that “I don't control as first minister the macro economic policies of the United Kingdom.” In other words, the Scottish government can’t control things like interest rates.

The underlying argument here is that the deficit faced by an independent Scotland could be lower than it has as part of the UK, but independent experts have suggested this is unlikely to be the case.

As the Institute for Fiscal Studies has pointed out in the past, an independent Scotland would face pressures on its budget and would need to take action either by raising taxes or cutting public spending.

It also points out that the main policies to promote economic growth proposed during the last independence referendum were tax cuts and spending increases, which would increase Scotland’s budget deficit (in the near-term).

Scotland has some control over its own deficit at the moment, as it has powers to raise some taxes on its own. At the moment, around 29% of all the revenue collected in Scotland is devolved—which is much higher than it was before recent Acts of Parliament transferred additional powers to the Scottish government.

But another factor behind Scotland’s relatively big deficit is that government spending per person is higher in Scotland than the UK average. The Scottish government has previously put forward some reasons why, including its low population density and greater need for certain public services.

Jo Swinson claimed that as a result of leaving the EU “we are going to be poorer, people are going to lose their jobs, there will be less money for our NHS.”

None of these statements is flatly incorrect, but they all need some clarification.

On the question of being poorer, it’s important to understand that expert forecasts don’t expect the UK to be poorer than we are now. Rather, they estimate that the UK economy would grow by less in a Brexit deal scenario, compared to a scenario where we remain in the EU.

Most forecasts from the government and expert think tanks expect UK GDP to grow by between 2% and 7% less in a scenario where we leave with a Brexit deal, compared to one where we remain in the EU. GDP is the value of everything produced in the UK economy.

These estimates are each looking at slightly different time periods (ten to fifteen years), and slightly different modelled Brexit scenarios—but they all broadly resemble Boris Johnson’s proposed deal.

It’s also important to remember that these are only modelled estimates, which means they contain quite a lot of uncertainty. For example, if a decision to remain in the EU was followed by intense political pressure to leave or have another referendum, this could create more economic uncertainty and affect GDP, meaning less of an economic benefit from remaining.

Whether Brexit means “less money for the NHS” really depends on how the government of the day chooses to manage its accounts. We’ve previously found that the Lib Dems’ estimate of a £50 billion “bonus” in additional money for the government to spend in a remain scenario is reasonable (although highly uncertain, for the reasons given above). 

But the Lib Dems don’t plan to spend most of that “bonus” on the NHS; it’s mostly going on education pledges, such as 20,000 extra teachers. So while remaining might mean more money that could potentially be spent on the NHS, it doesn’t necessarily mean that’s where the money will go. 

You could imagine a government spending more on the NHS in a Brexit scenario, than another government would spend in a remain scenario—if the government in the Brexit scenario is committed to more NHS spending overall. 

As for the questions of job losses, none of the recent forecasts of Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal we've seen have addressed the issue in detail. It seems likely that some companies would pull out of the UK—at least in part—in a Brexit scenario, leading to job losses, but we don’t have a clear picture of what would happen to the overall employment picture.

UK in a Changing Europe says that a Brexit deal with a “restrictive” migration policy would lead to 550,000 fewer people in the workforce than in a remain scenario—but this is due to reduced immigration, not job losses.

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.