Politics Live

Labour MP and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Pat McFadden seems to have confused the number of people on NHS waiting lists with the number of cases.

Giving a statement in the House of Commons on the Covid-19 Inquiry, Mr McFadden said: “As I stand here today with 8 million people on NHS waiting lists.”

This is a mistake we’ve seen a lot of and involves mixing up the number of cases on the main waiting list in England (7.6 million according to the latest data) with the number of individual people (around 6.4 million).

The number of cases will always be greater than the number of individual people because some people will be waiting for treatment for more than one thing.

We’ve fact checked similar claims a number of times over the last year—including when Mr McFadden used the 8 million figure in May.

In April 2024, the Office for National Statistics published waiting list survey data giving a greater insight into how many people are waiting across other types of waiting lists not covered by the main waiting list.

This indicated that in January and February 2024, around 21% of adults in England—or 9.7 million adults—were “currently waiting for a hospital appointment, test, or to start receiving medical treatment through the NHS”.

This claim was detected using Full Fact’s AI tools. You can find more about these on our website.

Over the weekend both Chancellor Rachel Reeves and Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury James Murray MP claimed that the “tax burden” was at its highest in 70 years.

We saw this claim being made by various Labour figures throughout the election campaign earlier this year, when referring to the so-called ‘tax burden’ (tax revenue as a percentage of GDP).

As we’ve explained previously, according to the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), this was the case in 2022/23 when the tax burden reached 36.3%—the highest level since 1949 (when it stood at 36.9%) and the second highest since records began in 1948, when the tax burden was 37.2%. 

It’s since fallen slightly in 2023/24 to 36.1%. But current OBR forecasts—which are based on the previous government’s confirmed plans—show the tax burden is set to increase in each of the next five years, reaching 37.1% in 2028/29. That would be the second highest level on record.

However, it’s worth noting that under Labour’s plans the Institute for Fiscal Studies says the tax burden would increase at a slightly higher rate than under current OBR forecasts, reaching 37.4% by 2028/29. This would be the highest level on record.

On Sky News this morning presenter Kay Burley claimed the government has said it would reach the target of spending 2.5% of GDP on defence by the end of the current parliament. 

This isn’t correct. While Labour has said it is committed to the target of spending 2.5% of GDP on defence, it hasn’t set out a specific timeframe for achieving this.

Ms Burley’s comments came during an interview with Conservative shadow defence secretary James Cartlidge MP, who said Labour hadn’t set out a timescale. To this, she replied that Labour had said they’d reach it “by 2030”, before saying “by the course of this parliament is what they’ve said, they’ve not said 2030, they’ve said by the course of this parliament, and actually this parliament ends in 2029.” 

Ms Burley subsequently clarified later in the programme: “they haven’t publicly said that, but privately that is what they have been saying. So maybe I’ve disclosed more than I should, but yes that is what Labour is hoping to achieve although they haven’t said it in a public forum.”

Earlier this week, the government launched its Strategic Defence Review, which it said “will set out a roadmap to achieving 2.5% of GDP on defence”.

We’ve written more about Labour’s defence spending plans in our recent explainer.

Earlier today King Charles delivered the first King’s Speech for the new government, unveiling Labour’s legislative plans for the next year in Parliament.

A total of 39 bills were announced in the speech, the contents of which will now be debated across a number of days by MPs. 

As teased in the days leading up to the State Opening of Parliament, much of the speech revolved around Labour’s plans for growth, which we’ve written more about here.

The speech confirmed plans to introduce a Planning and Infrastructure Bill, as well as bills to establish Great British Energy and the National Wealth Fund, both of which are intended to facilitate investment in energy and green infrastructure.

Also announced today were plans to renationalise the majority of rail services, new worker’s rights reforms and a Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill.

Some of the bills announced in today’s speech, such as the Tobacco and Vapes Bill, had been announced by the previous Conservative government, but did not pass through Parliament before the general election.

Full Fact will continue to monitor proceedings in the House of Commons and will update this live blog with our latest analysis and verdicts on claims made during the debates.

Amidst the pomp and pageantry of this Wednesday’s State Opening of Parliament, King Charles III will deliver the King’s Speech—Labour’s opportunity to set out its legislative plans for its first year of government.

This is the first State Opening of Parliament under a Labour government since November 2009.

In a press release ahead of the speech the Government has said it will “put economic growth at the heart of its legislative agenda”, and confirmed that departments are preparing “more than 35 bills”, or new laws, to be put before Parliament.

Newspapers are already reporting on a range of bills expected to be unveiled in the speech, including on housebuilding, devolution, worker’s rights and artificial intelligence.

Full Fact will be keeping an eye on proceedings, including the debates following the speech, and using our AI tools to help identify claims by and about politicians for further investigation. We will continue to bring you our analysis as the new parliament officially gets underway.

In a speech earlier today Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves said the government would end the “ban on new onshore wind in England”, and later spoke of there being a “moratorium” on onshore wind development.

Planning rules introduced by the Conservative government have often been described as a “de-facto ban” on onshore wind power development in England—though to be clear, onshore wind turbines were not formally banned.

Planning considerations for England introduced in 2015 provided that onshore wind turbines (not including small-scale domestic turbines) could only be built in areas already identified as suitable in a local or neighbourhood plan (documents setting out a framework for future development of a local area), and which had the “backing” of the local community. The following year, decision making powers for larger-scale onshore wind farms were put in the hands of local planning authorities (having previously required permission from the UK government).

The 2015 changes set out that what constituted “backing” was “a planning judgment for the local planning authority”. However the Conservative government acknowledged last year that the policy tests had “been applied in such a way that a very limited number of objections, and even at times objections of single individuals, have been taken as showing a lack of community backing.”

As a result there’s been a substantial decrease in the number of applications and approvals for onshore wind sites in England since 2015 (though a limited number have been built).

In 2023 the Conservative government amended the National Planning Policy Framework with the intent to speed up the identification of suitable sites. However some campaigners have said the changes did not have a meaningful impact.

The Labour government today announced that it was immediately amending the Framework to remove the two policy tests established in 2015 entirely, and that it would consult on proposals to reinstate larger scale onshore wind projects as nationally significant infrastructure projects.

At the time of writing, Reform UK has won four seats in the 2024 general election and a 14% share of the vote. And over the last few hours we’ve seen a number of different claims about how old—or how new—the party is.

David Bull, Reform UK’s deputy leader, said on the BBC’s election coverage last night: “We’re four years old, we’re an insurgent party, this has come out of nowhere." 

Some on social media have suggested the party is much younger than that however, with posts on X and Facebook apparently claiming that it is at most six weeks old.

In fact, the party officially changed its name to Reform UK about three and a half years ago in January 2021, and prior to that was called the Brexit Party. The Brexit Party was incorporated in November 2018 and registered with the Electoral Commission in February 2019. 

Reform UK had no MPs until March 2024, when Lee Anderson, a former deputy chairman of the Conservative party, defected to it after having the whip suspended.

When the 2024 general election was called, the current Reform UK leader Nigel Farage initially said he would not be standing. But on 3 June he announced he would be taking over from Richard Tice as the party’s leader and running in Clacton in Essex, a seat he has now won. Mr Farage becoming leader was followed by a surge in the polls for Reform UK, which may be the cause of some of the confusion around how long the party has existed. 

Prior to taking the reins back at Reform UK, and before that leading the Brexit Party, Mr Farage was the leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP).

UKIP was founded in 1993 to campaign for Britain's exit from the European Union and in 1999 won three seats in the European Parliamentary elections. Mr Farage was leader from 2006 to 2009 and again from 2010 to 2016.

Newly elected Labour MP Douglas Alexander claimed that “one in six of us in Scotland are on NHS waiting lists” on BBC One’s election coverage early this morning (1:49:50)—but this misrepresents the data we have to hand.

As we’ve said before about similar claims, this misrepresents data from Public Health Scotland which only shows the number of cases, not people, on the waiting list.

We don’t have the data to determine how many individual people are on the waiting list in Scotland, or what share of the Scottish population they represent. This is because some people will be waiting for more than one thing so may appear more than once on the waiting lists.

The waiting list for new outpatient and inpatient appointments, as well as key diagnostic tests in Scotland was 840,300 as of March 2024. That is between a sixth and a seventh of the estimated population of Scotland in 2022.

Survey data from the Office for National Statistics found 22% of people aged 16 and over in Scotland are waiting for something on the NHS.

Douglas Alexander—a former Secretary of State for Scotland—won the seat in Lothian East last night, returning to parliament after losing his seat in Paisley and Renfrewshire South in 2015.

We’ve contacted Mr Alexander and will update this article if he responds.

This claim was brought to our attention by our artificial intelligence (AI) tools. Full Fact's AI tools have spotted hundreds of misleading claims on social media during the election.

With just hours to go until polls open we’ve seen both Labour and the Conservatives repeat claims that are either misleading or could do with important context.

In a statement picked up by local and national newspapers late on 2 July, Labour said Prime Minister and Conservative leader Rishi Sunak’s “unfunded manifesto” would mean “£4,800 more on people’s mortgages, NHS waiting lists rocketing to 10 million, and family finances hit further”. 

But as we’ve explained several times since Labour first used it last month, the £4,800 claim is a speculative figure presented as fact, and is therefore misleading.

£4,800 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.

The UK Statistics Authority has warned that presenting figures without full context may “damage trust in the data and the claims these data inform”.

Labour’s other claim, that NHS waiting lists could reach 10 million under the Conservatives, is also one we’ve fact checked before. The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) says Labour’s analysis has predicted a “highly unlikely” outcome, with analysts saying the waiting list is likely to fall slowly or “at worst flatline”, whichever party forms the next government.

On the broadcast round for the Conservatives today (3 July), work and pensions secretary Mel Stride repeated two claims on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that could do with additional context.

He said [1:36:34]: “If you take education for example, we’re the best readers now in the western world”.

As we’ve written about before, this is correct for England according to the results of one international study of nine to ten-year-olds in 2022, but according to another measure pupils which looked at 15-year-old pupils, Ireland, Canada and the US were better readers than their counterparts in England.

Mr Stride also said [1:36:37]: “Ofsted rated schools, 68% of them when we came to power as good or outstanding, that figure is now above 90%.”

While this figure is technically accurate for England, as we explained last month, changes to the way schools are inspected since 2010 means that a direct comparison between these two time periods is difficult. 

It is true, according to the latest data published by Ofsted, that 90% of schools are good or outstanding. This compares to 68% in 2010, when the Labour party was last in government. 

However, as Ofsted’s methodology explains, a number of factors affect the comparability of the most recent inspection outcomes for all schools and should “be used with caution”. 

But the UK’s statistics regulator, the Office for Statistics Regulation, stopped short of calling the claim misleading, saying it could be a useful indicator.

We’ve previously contacted Labour and the Conservatives about these claims and will update this post if we receive a response.