Election Live

This week a number of political parties have been releasing their election manifestos, and this morning it was the turn of the Green Party. 

We’ve been combing through it with the help of Full Fact’s AI tools and working to fact check its key claims. You can see what we’ve been looking into in our round-up here.

The two main parties are publishing their manifestos this week - the Conservatives today, and Labour on Thursday. And we have plenty of suggestions for the winner of this election.

Our policy calls for the new government and parliament are split into three themes: what happens during the election period, the behaviour of politicians once elected, and our longer-term vision for a society better able to combat misinformation. During the election campaign we will continue to hold politicians to account for what they say and how they say it.

We are calling for the following commitments:

1. Protect democracy during an election period 

• Candidates should run honest and transparent campaigns so that everyone can make an informed decision on polling day.

• Political parties should commit to being honest in their campaign materials and not use deceptive campaign practices. 

• Political parties should commit to using AI transparently and responsibly.

2. Politicians must lead by example

• Once elected, politicians should improve public debate: get their facts right, back up what they say with evidence, and correct their mistakes.

• The next government’s Ministerial Code should be made statutory, and require ministers to use public data responsibly.

• The next Parliament must improve its mechanisms to ensure that MPs who fail to behave honestly are held to account.

3. Strengthen society’s resilience to misinformation

• The next government should strengthen online safety legislation to counter harmful misinformation - especially relating to health or when generated by AI.
• Fact checkers are on the frontline in this fight: the next government must ensure that fact checkers have timely access to data from online platforms and search engines about misinformation on their platforms.

• The next government must increase resources for media literacy to give the public the skills to tackle misinformation.

 
Good information really matters in a healthy democracy, and it's never been more important to campaign for honesty and accuracy in politics, and in wider public debate. Full Fact will do that throughout this election campaign, and we encourage our supporters to help get the message to candidates too. Sign up here to find out more about how you can help with this work.

This morning the Liberal Democrats officially launched their 2024 manifesto, which we’ve spent the day scrutinising.  

We’ve published an initial roundup of a number of claims made in the manifesto, including on tax, the asylum backlog and GP numbers, which you can read here. 

With several manifestos set to be released this week, we’ll be fact checking the pledges from other major parties in the same way. You can keep up to date with our most recent work on X (formerly Twitter). 

This morning the Prime Minister Rishi Sunak posted a two-and-a-half minute video on X (formerly Twitter) with a much more detailed explanation of a claim we’ve heard lots in the last few days—that under Labour, “every working household” would face a £2,094 tax rise.

The video was trailed in a separate short video put out by the Conservatives last night, with the words: “The proof. 8am.”

But as we wrote last week in our own detailed analysis of the claim, the £2,094 figure is unreliable and based on a number of questionable assumptions—and today’s explanatory video doesn’t address many of the concerns about it. 

For example, the video says the figure’s “overwhelmingly based on official costings signed off by the Treasury”, but fails to mention that many such costings rely on assumptions from special advisers, who are political appointees. We wrote about this point in particular on our Election Live blog as well.

On the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg this morning, Nigel Farage, Reform UK leader and candidate for the seat of Clacton, claimed “right now we’re just two to three points behind the Conservatives”.

As was suggested by Laura Kuenssberg towards the end of the show, this is a selective take on what the polls are currently showing. 

Of the polls we’ve seen, there have been three where the gap between the two parties was that small. YouGov’s from 3-4 June had the Conservatives on 19% and Reform UK on 17%. Its latest poll from 5-6 June shows Reform UK dropping one percentage point to 16% while the Conservatives remained on 19%. And another poll which shows the Conservatives within two to three points is Redfield and Wilton's from 5-6 June, which also has the Conservatives on 19% and Reform UK on 17%. 

However, there have been a number of other polls which show a wider gap. 

For instance, Deltapoll from 6-8 June puts the Conservatives on 21% and Reform UK on 12%, while Whitestone Insight from 7 June has the Conservatives on 22% and Reform UK on 16%, WeThink from 6-7 June reports Conservatives on 20% and Reform UK on 15%, Opinium from 5-7 June has the Conservatives on 24% and Reform UK on 12%, and Savanta from 5-7 June reports the Conservatives on 26% and Reform UK on 11%. 

Speaking on the programme, Mr Farage said he had concerns over how some pollsters prompted for Reform UK when recording voting intention. We have contacted Reform UK for comment and will update this post if we receive a response.

Image courtesy of Gage Skidmore

On Sky News’ Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips, work and pensions secretary Mel Stride claimed “we have reduced child poverty in this country by 100,000” since 2010.

Mr Stride’s claim is true according to one measure of child poverty—“absolute” low income after housing costs. The latest data shows the number of children on this measure fell from 3.7 million in 2009/10 to 3.6 million in 2022/23. 

But other measures show a rise in child poverty since 2010.

For example, the equivalent figure for absolute low income before housing costs shows an increase since 2009/10, from 2.5 million to 2.6 million. 

The number of children in “relative” poverty after housing costs has increased since 2009/10, from 3.9 million to 4.3 million. And it’s also increased before housing costs, from 2.6 million to 3.2 million in 2022/23.

We wrote more about these figures and the different ways to measure child poverty last month.

This evening we’ve been fact checking politicians from seven parties as they took part in the BBC’s first televised debate of the 2024 general election.

Appearing were the Conservative party’s Penny Mordaunt; Labour’s Angela Rayner; the Green Party’s Carla Denyer; the Liberal Democrats’ Daisy Cooper; the SNP’s Stephen Flynn, Plaid Cymru’s Rhun ap Iorworth and Reform UK’s Nigel Farage.

Ms Mordaunt repeated a claim we’ve seen several times from the Conservatives so far this election—she said Labour is going to put taxes up by “£2,000 per working household”. 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. 

Then Ms Rayner claimed there have been 26 tax rises under the Conservatives. This is similar to a claim we’ve looked at before—it’s not clear how Labour arrived at this figure and they’ve not published their workings.

Mr Farage claimed the so-called ‘tax burden’ is the “highest in this country since 1948”. 

It’s true that the ‘tax burden’—which refers to tax revenues as a percentage of gross domestic product—was the highest since the late 1940s in 2022/23. It’s since fallen slightly, but is forecast to increase over the next five years to a near-record level. We wrote about this last month.

During a discussion about the NHS, Mr Flynn claimed £18 billion of public sector “cuts” are “coming down the line”. 

This was the Institute for Fiscal Studies’ estimate in March of the real-terms reductions in spending “unprotected” government departments could face by 2028/29. However, the IFS has also said there’s uncertainty around the exact figures, as there aren’t published spending plans beyond this year. 

It now estimates unprotected budgets could face reductions of between £10 billion and £20 billion by 2028/29. This doesn’t appear to include the NHS however, as its budget is ‘protected’.

Finally, Ms Mordaunt claimed the Conservatives had met their 2019 manifesto commitment of “20,000 more police officers”. That’s true, but it comes after a substantial decline in police numbers between 2010 and 2018. 

We wrote more about these figures back in March. As of September 2023, there were 3,134 more police officers in England and Wales than in 2010.

The Liberal Democrats’ spokesperson for education, Munira Wilson, claimed in an interview on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme [2:41:47] this morning that families are “facing the highest tax burden since the second world war”. 

The so-called ‘tax burden’ refers to tax revenues as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP). While the financial year 2022/23 saw the highest tax burden since 1949—which had decreased marginally from 1948 when the records began—it fell slightly in the most recent year. The Office for Budget Responsibility has, however, forecast it to increase over each of the next five years to a near-record level. 

Other politicians have made a similar claim that the tax burden is at the highest level in over 70 years, which we’ve written about several times before. 

We’ve contacted the Liberal Democrats for comment and will update this article if we receive a response.