Politics Live

Labour’s national campaign coordinator, Pat McFadden MP, told Amol Rajan on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme [2:10:30] this morning: “We’ve got nudging eight million people on waiting lists at the moment.”

Later in the interview, Mr Rajan said: “There’s 7.5 million people in total waiting for procedures and appointments.”

Given the numbers they used, and some of the other statistics Mr Rajan quoted, it sounds like they were talking about NHS England’s referral to treatment (RTT) waiting times data, which is very often called “the NHS waiting list”. 

If so, they both made a common mistake, which we have written about many times, by mixing up the number of cases on the list (about 7.5 million in the latest data) with the number of individual people (about 6.3 million). There are always more cases than people, because some people are awaiting treatment for more than one thing, but we did not know how many more until November 2023, when NHS England began to publish an estimate for the number of people.

The RTT data doesn’t quite show the whole picture, however, as there are several other types of waiting list within the NHS. 

In April 2024, the Office for National Statistics published survey data it collected in January and February showing that about 21% of adults in England said they were “currently waiting for a hospital appointment, test, or to start receiving medical treatment through the NHS”. That suggests that about 9.7 million adults in England were waiting for something on the NHS at the beginning of the year—an estimate that is even higher than the ones quoted by Mr McFadden and Mr Rajan.

At Full Fact we’re getting ready to fact check the general election, and this week saw the launch of our General Election 2024 Crowdfunder.

Whether it’s one party making false claims about another’s policies, AI-generated deep fake videos showing candidates saying things they didn’t, or social media posts feeding users tailored facts on divisive issues, misinformation will influence the way some people vote in this year’s general election, or whether they vote at all. 

The volume of misinformation we are anticipating is unprecedented, but Full Fact has the experience and expertise (built up over four general elections and three referendums) to fact check the election at a scale never seen before. 

As well as fact checking false or misleading claims, we’ll be writing about how elections work, and publishing explainers on topics likely to feature in the parties’ campaigns. 

If you can help fund our biggest ever team of fact checkers, please give to the Crowdfunder today. It’s a great time to do so, as the first £25,000 of donations will be doubled by a matching pot. 

With your support, our work can reach millions of people, ensuring that voters in every constituency can make informed choices on the issues that matter to them.

Speaking to Sky News last week about government plans to expand Britain’s nuclear power industry, energy secretary Claire Coutinho claimed the proposals were “in stark contrast to the last Labour government who built no nuclear whatsoever”. We’ve seen similar claims from a number of Conservative politicians in recent years. 

It’s true that no nuclear plants were built during Labour’s term in office from 1997 to 2010. But Ms Coutinho’s claim would benefit from some additional context, given that nuclear plants typically take a long time to build, and the period from initial proposal through to completion can be longer than any one government’s time in office. The Conservative and Conservative-led governments since 2010 have yet to complete a new nuclear power station, and the two sites they have granted new licences to—Hinkley Point C in Somerset and Sizewell C in Suffolk—were proposed under plans drawn up by the last Labour government. 

The lead time on the construction of nuclear power stations can be significant. For example, Sizewell B, Britain’s newest nuclear power station, was first announced in 1969, began construction in 1988 and was connected to the National Grid in 1995.

Having initially opposed nuclear power on economic grounds, Tony Blair’s Labour government later proposed a raft of new power stations. In a speech at the CBI in 2006, Mr Blair warned that failing to build them would make it more difficult for the UK to meet climate change targets and leave the country dependent on foreign imports of gas, “mostly from the Middle East, and Africa and Russia”.

These proposals were blocked following court action by Greenpeace, but in 2009 the Labour government announced fresh plans for a new generation of power plants. 

The 2010 election saw the Conservatives take power as part of a coalition with the Liberal Democrats, who were at that stage opposed to further nuclear development. The Lib Dem leader at the time, Nick Clegg, had previously said it would not be worth building such plants, as they would not provide any power for at least a decade. In negotiating the agreement to enter government with the Conservatives though, a position was reached that allowed Labour’s plans to go ahead. However costs spiralled in the aftermath of the 2011 meltdown at the Fukushima power station in Japan. 

In addition, privatisation of electricity companies in the 1990s had resulted in what became known as the ‘dash for gas’, where investors turned away from nuclear and coal power stations and put their money into gas-fired power stations that could generate the same power output—and therefore the same level of profit—for 20% of the capital cost. 

Asked why Labour had failed to build any nuclear power stations during its last term in government, current Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said in a 2022 Commons exchange: “The last Labour government gave the go ahead for new nuclear sites in 2009. In the 13 long years since then, not one has been completed.”

Defence spending has become a key political battleground in recent weeks, and it came up again today when the Prime Minister Rishi Sunak gave a heavily-trailed speech at the Policy Exchange think tank.

In the speech itself, Mr Sunak said: “We’ve proudly taken the generational decision to increase defence spending to a new baseline of 2.5% of GDP by 2030. Yet Labour have refused to match our pledge.”

And in the Q&A that followed the speech, Mr Sunak said: “We’ve made the decision to increase defence spending to 2.5%... Keir Starmer and the Labour party have been crystal clear that they don't believe in that. They will not match that choice.”

So what exactly have the Conservatives and Labour pledged on defence?

Last month the government announced that it would increase defence spending to 2.5% of GDP by 2030.

At the time, the government—including Mr Sunak—claimed this represents £75 billion in additional defence spending. We’ve explained previously that this figure is misleading.

By comparison, the Labour party has said it is also committed to increasing spending to 2.5% of GDP. But unlike the government, it has not set out a specific timescale to meet this target, and instead says only that it will raise spending to 2.5% of GDP “as soon as resources allow”.

In response to the government’s announcement last month, shadow defence secretary John Healey MP said Labour would support a plan that was “fully costed and fully funded, and set out in the government’s baseline budgets”.

The government’s defence spending pledge has been questioned by a number of think tanks, with the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the Institute for Government and Chatham House saying the government has not adequately explained how it will be funded.

During an interview on Good Morning Britain today, Conservative MP and former immigration minister Robert Jenrick said his “personal record” was “instituting the biggest reduction in net migration of all time”.

He added: “I persuaded the Prime Minister to put in place measures that will reduce the number of people coming into this country by 300,000.”

Mr Jenrick’s comments refer to a series of measures announced in December last year. The government has estimated that had these measures been in place, together with previously announced restrictions on international students bringing dependants, around 300,000 people who came to the UK in the year to September 2023 would not have been able to come.

It’s important to note though that these are government estimates of what the impact of the new measures might be. A 300,000 fall in net migration would likely represent a record reduction, in recent years at least, but clearly the actual impact of the measures may be different, and we don’t yet know that they will result in “the biggest reduction in net migration of all time”.

The measures announced in December include:

• stopping overseas care workers from bringing family dependants and requiring care providers to register with the Care Quality Commission if they are sponsoring migrants
• increasing the skilled workers visa earning threshold from £26,200 to £38,700
• increasing the minimum income requirement threshold in stages for family visas
• reforming the Shortage Occupation List and ending the 20% going rate salary discount for shortage occupations.

The government’s detailed estimates for the impact of each measure can be found here. While the eventual impact of these measures is yet to be seen, last week the government said the number of people applying for skilled worker, health and care and study visas in the first three months of 2024 was down by 24% on the same period last year.

Meanwhile, provisional figures show that estimated net migration did fall during Mr Jenrick’s time as immigration minister, but not by a record amount.

At Prime Minister’s Questions today, Rishi Sunak claimed the government has “overseen a fall in poverty, but particularly child poverty, since 2010”.

As we’ve explained before, there are different ways of measuring poverty. There has been a fall in child poverty according to one measure at least, but other measures show a different picture.

When politicians talk about poverty statistics, they’re often referring to figures published by the Department for Work and Pensions on relative low income and absolute low income:

• Relative low income measures the number of people in households where the income is below 60% of the national median average that year.
• Absolute low income measures the number of people in households where the income is below 60% of the average median level in 2010/11, adjusted for inflation.

The latest data shows the number of children in absolute poverty after housing costs fell from 3.7 million in 2009/10 to 3.6 million in 2022/23. 

But the equivalent figure 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.

It’s also increased before housing costs, from 2.6 million to 3.2 million in 2022/23. 

As well as looking at the numerical total of children, there is also data on the proportion of children in low income households.

The proportion of children living in relative poverty has increased from 20% in 2009/10 (before housing costs) to 22% in 2022/23, and from 29% (after housing costs) to 30% over the same period. 

The proportion of children in absolute poverty before housing costs was 19% in 2009/10 and this fell to 18% in 2022/23. After housing costs are taken into account, it’s fallen from 28% to 25%. 

Following reports earlier this week that a failed asylum seeker has been sent from the UK to Rwanda, an article published online by the Daily Express has repeatedly described the removal as a “deportation”.

A similar claim was also made in Parliament on Wednesday by Conservative deputy chair Jonathan Gullis MP, who, referring to Rwanda, said “we have now deported our first illegal migrant”.

This isn’t technically correct, according to the official definition of ‘deportation’ at least. As we explained in a fact check earlier this year, the Home Office describes deportations as “a legally defined subset of returns, which are enforced either following a criminal conviction, or when it is judged that a person’s removal from the UK is beneficial to the public good”.

The case being reported this week involved a different type of return, called a “voluntary” removal (where someone liable to be returned leaves the UK of their own accord, either with or without support from the Home Office).

It’s worth noting though that the term ‘deportation’ has sometimes been used more loosely when talking about returns in general. For example, the Migration Observatory says “in general usage, deportation refers to the removal of a foreign citizen from a country’s territory”, while in March the Prime Minister appeared to use the term without being clear that the figure he was referring to covered both enforced and voluntary returns.

It was reported by The Times and the BBC in March that the government had begun offering some failed asylum seekers £3,000 to voluntarily leave the UK for Rwanda.

This is separate to the Rwanda removals scheme announced by the government in 2022, which would involve asylum seekers whose claims are deemed inadmissible in the UK being sent to Rwanda, where their claims would be processed. The Home Office has this week announced that it has begun detaining asylum seekers who have been identified for relocation under this scheme, after the government’s Safety of Rwanda Bill passed into law last week.

We contacted the Daily Express and Mr Gullis for comment but did not receive a response.

Tomorrow, 2 May 2024, sees elections for councillors and mayors taking place across parts of England, and for Police and Crime Commissioners in England and Wales. 

In recent days we’ve been looking into a number of claims related to these elections, as well as making sure voters have access to accurate, relevant information on how the elections themselves work. 

This includes our investigation which revealed council websites were giving voters in England and Wales out-of-date information on the electoral system used in the elections. Full Fact’s intervention has ensured these websites have been updated, so they now correctly refer to ‘First Past the Post’, the system which will be used tomorrow. 

And yesterday we published an explainer on the rules about voter ID, after seeing a number of misleading claims about the new rules, as well as reports from the Electoral Commission that in last May’s local elections about 14,000 people who went to a polling station were unable to vote, as they didn’t have the right ID.

We’ve also fact checked claims from politicians standing in one of the biggest contests tomorrow, for Mayor of London.

This includes a claim from the Conservatives that the current Labour mayor, Sadiq Khan, is planning to introduce a pay-per-mile scheme for motorists in the capital. (Mr Khan has ruled out introducing a pay-per-mile scheme, though the Conservatives have argued this pledge can’t be trusted and Mr Khan has previously spoken of the potential for introducing such a scheme in the future.)

Last week we also fact checked three claims from BBC London’s live mayoral debate—this included looking at whether it’s true that Transport for London fares have been “frozen”, and whether “ordinary Londoners” can afford to live in the city. And today we’ve investigated claims from Labour that Conservative candidate Susan Hall plans to “cancel” universal free school meals in the capital. 

We’ve heard another repeat of Labour’s claim that there’ve been 25 tax rises since 2019. 

In a video posted on X (formerly Twitter), shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves referenced “25 Tory tax rises”.

Ms Reeves and other Labour politicians, including Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer and members of the shadow Treasury team, have made similar claims in recent months. 

As we’ve explained before, it’s not clear how Labour arrived at this figure and they’ve not published their workings. 

Full Fact was sent what appeared to be the list of 25 tax rises by shadow Treasury minister Lord Livermore back in January. It includes a range of tax rises that have been introduced since 2019, but omits others, such as the windfall tax. 

The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) told us there have likely been hundreds of tax rises (and reductions) since 2019, and simply counting the number of tax rises “isn’t very interesting or meaningful”. 

The IFS said a better way of measuring tax rises is to look at the total amount of tax raised, and by this metric, this Parliament is “the biggest tax-raising Parliament in modern times”. 

After the Prime Minister suggested earlier today that Labour peers were delaying the government’s Rwanda bill, we’ve seen claims in response from a Labour MP and a journalist that there is a “Tory majority” in the House of Lords.

This isn’t correct. No party has an overall majority in the House of Lords. 

The Conservatives are the largest party in the Lords, with 277 peers, followed by 182 crossbench peers (not affiliated to a party), and 172 are Labour peers.

The remainder are either members of smaller parties or sit as independents.

We fact checked an opposite version of this claim made by defence minister Grant Shapps earlier this year.