Politics Live

At the Labour party conference this week we’ve heard a number of senior politicians repeat a familiar claim about the state of the economy inherited from the previous government.

In fact, in her speech this afternoon Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves twice mentioned a “£22 billion black hole” in the public finances and also referenced “£22 billion of spending plans, this year, that the previous government did not disclose”, while Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner mentioned the same figure in her own speech on Sunday.

We looked into this figure when it was first used by Ms Reeves back in July.

It’s taken from a Public Spending Review published by the Treasury which found that “forecast overspend on departmental spending is expected to be £21.9 billion” above the totals set out in the previous government’s Spring Budget.

The figure includes several “unfunded policy decisions” made by the previous government as well as £11-12 billion in higher-than-expected public sector spending on pay, even before newly announced pay rises are taken into account.

The extent to which the economic landscape inherited by Labour was unexpected is disputed, however.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) had warned ahead of the election that a new government would likely see a shortfall of £10-£20 billion by 2028/29 which would likely result in cuts to unprotected government budgets. And following Ms Reeves’ announcement in July IFS director Paul Johnson said many of the challenges outlined were “entirely predictable”.

However, he also said that “the extent of the in-year funding pressures does genuinely appear to be greater than could be discerned from the outside”.

Earlier this month, it was reported that cabinet secretary Sir Simon Case wrote in a letter to shadow chancellor Jeremy Hunt MP that the lack of a Spending Review since 2021 has contributed to uncertainty over public finances.

However Mr Hunt said the letter raised “more serious questions” for the government, and suggested that the £22 billion figure may be “a political device to justify tax rises”.

In her speech to conference this afternoon, Ms Reeves also said that she took the decision to means test the Winter Fuel Payment “faced with that £22 billion black hole” and the fact that “the state pension will rise by an estimated £1,700 over the course of this Parliament”.

As we explained earlier this month, the £1,700 figure is correct for the full new state pension based on the expected increase of 4% next year, and Office for Budget Responsibility forecasts for the triple lock from 2026/27 to 2029/30. It would represent an average annual increase of just under £350.

In her Labour party conference speech on Sunday, Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner said Labour had ended “the ban on onshore wind”.

We’ve written before about the impact planning rules introduced by the previous government had on onshore wind development in England.

The rules introduced in England in 2015, which Labour has now reversed, were often described as a “de-facto ban” due to a substantial decrease in applications for onshore wind sites.

But there was no formal ban as such on onshore wind farms.

In a post on X (formerly Twitter) earlier this week the Conservative party said: “The UK had the fastest growing economy in the G7 this year until Labour got in. Now it’s flatlined.”

It’s true the latest official figures show there was no month-on-month growth in the UK economy in July, with Labour forming a government on 5 July. But this doesn’t tell the full story—month-on-month growth was also flat in June, ahead of the election and when the Conservatives were still in government.

We’ve asked the Conservatives what figures they were looking at to make the claim, and haven’t had a response. But the comparison seems to refer to two sets of GDP figures measuring growth over different timeframes.

The claim that the UK had “the fastest growing economy in the G7 this year” appears to be based on the UK’s growth across the first half of 2024, which we’ve written about before. UK GDP increased by 0.7% in the first quarter of the year, and by 0.6% in the second quarter—the highest combined rate in the G7 over this period, according to the Resolution Foundation think tank.

The claim that the economy has “flatlined” since Labour entered government, meanwhile, appears to refer to month-on-month growth. As the graph below shows, this was flat in July but also in June, so the recent period of zero growth appears to predate Labour coming into office.

Health secretary Wes Streeting claimed three times in parliament this week that previous Labour governments have overseen the shortest waiting times and the highest patient satisfaction in the health service’s history.

As we’ve reported before, there’s not comparable data going back long enough to be sure that either of these claims are true.

Addressing the House of Commons on 9 September, Mr Streeting said he could “call on any number of Labour health secretaries who helped deliver the shortest waiting times and the highest patient satisfaction in history”. He repeated that comment twice more. These comments were then also reported on by PA and detected by Full Fact’s AI tools.

We’ve fact checked these claims from prominent Labour politicians a number of times before.

As we said previously, it’s not clear what a claim about the ‘shortest waiting times in history’ would be based on. Waiting times don’t appear to have been recorded nationally until 1987, and have been measured in different ways since. If Mr Streeting meant to refer to the size of the waiting list then these have also been measured in several different ways since the NHS was founded, and experts at the Nuffield Trust have told us that they’re not aware of any data that would allow a direct comparison of this sort.

Likewise, we’ve been unable to find a consistent measure of patient satisfaction across the NHS’s history.

Public satisfaction with the NHS began to be measured consistently in 1983, and reached its highest point in 2010, just after the end of the last Labour government. (Although it’s unlikely the Conservative-led coalition that followed had significantly influenced the NHS by then.)

We’ve contacted Mr Streeting’s office and will update this blog with any response.

BBC News and the Independent have been the latest media outlets to confuse the number of people and the number of cases awaiting treatment on the NHS. Both have now corrected their articles, after Full Fact got in touch.

Both said there were 7.6 million people on NHS waiting lists, whereas in fact there are about 6.4 million people in the latest data, waiting for non-emergency care in England. These people are awaiting treatment in 7.6 million cases (because some people are waiting for more than one thing).

We’ve fact checked similar claims a number of times over the last year.

It’s important to remember that the data on non-emergency treatment doesn’t cover everyone who is waiting for anything on the NHS in England.

Survey data published by the Office for National Statistics in April 2024 suggests that in January and February 2024, around 21% of adults in England—or about 9.7 million in total—were “currently waiting for a hospital appointment, test, or to start receiving medical treatment through the NHS”.

Speaking on BBC Breakfast this morning, crime and policing minister Dame Diana Johnson MP said: “clearly knife crime over the last decade has increased.”

While this is true when looking at overall knife-related offences in England and Wales, some of the increase is due to changes in the way police record such crimes. In addition, some forms of knife crime are currently at a lower level than they were prior to the pandemic. 

In December 2020 a new methodology for counting the number of offences involving knives or sharp instruments was implemented. As a result, the following year the Office for National Statistics noted that the changes and improvements had “made substantial contributions to rises in recorded crime, including offences involving knives or sharp instruments”.

It added: “Increases in these offences since 2015 will be partly because of a genuine increase in these offences and partly because of improvements in recording.”

While knife-enabled crime recorded by police rose by 4% between March 2023 and March 2024, the figure is 3% lower than the equivalent for the year ending March 2020, prior to the pandemic. 

Following years of substantial increases, offences involving “possession of an article with a blade or point” in England and Wales fell by 3% in the year ending March 2024. Although hospital admissions for assault involving a sharp object increased, they are 18% below pre-pandemic levels. 

These figures exclude data from Greater Manchester Police.

We’ve contacted Dame Diana and the Home Office for comment.

A claim that Labour’s energy plans could save households up to £300 on their bills has re-emerged, after reports that the figure had been dropped by the government.

In an article last week the Times reported: “A government source said Labour stood by a commitment made in its election campaign, although not detailed in its manifesto, that the party’s plans would bring household energy bills down by an average of up to £300 a year, which was based on independent data modelling.”

We fact checked this figure before the election. It’s based on a report by the energy think tank Ember, which estimated that under a scenario in which the UK met its renewable energy commitments, the average household electricity bill would be around £300 lower in 2030 than in 2023.

However, the £300 figure is based on the level of the energy price cap in July-September 2023. The price cap has since decreased (though it will increase in October from its current level).

What’s more, the £300 figure is not actually a direct assessment of the impact of Labour’s plans, but an estimate of the impact of a different, less ambitious scenario than Labour is proposing.

The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero confirmed to Full Fact that it stands by the figure, and said that while it couldn’t deliver change “overnight”, achieving its energy goals by 2030 would “protect billpayers permanently”.

In a speech in the Downing Street garden today, the Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said there’s a “£22 billion black hole in the public finances”. 

We’d already heard Labour party chair Ellie Reeves mention the same figure during interviews this morning.

Mr Starmer and Ms Reeves are referring to an announcement made by the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, last month. At the time, she said an audit by the Treasury had discovered a £22 billion forecast overspend this year. 

We looked into this last month. 

Ahead of the election, the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) had said that a new government would likely see a shortfall of £10-£20 billion by 2028/29. After the chancellor’s statement, IFS Director Paul Johnson said many of the challenges Labour outlined in July were “entirely predictable”, but that the in-year financial pressures did “genuinely appear to be greater than could be discerned from the outside”. 

Following the chancellor’s statement, the Office for Budget Responsibility said it had launched a review into the preparation of the Departmental Expenditure Limits forecast for the March 2024 Economic and Fiscal Outlook, the report they produced for the then Conservative government’s Spring Budget. The review would look at the “adequacy of the information” provided by the Treasury at the time. 

The Labour party chair and minister without portfolio, Ellie Reeves, said on Sky News this morning: “We’ve come into government. We’ve fixed the disputes with the junior doctors, so that people can get the appointments that they need.”

It’s true that the government has made an offer considered acceptable by the BMA, the union that represents the doctors. 

However, it’s probably going a bit far to say this means they’ve “fixed” the dispute, since the doctors themselves are still voting on whether to accept the offer. The referendum to decide this doesn’t close until 15 September.

We’ve asked Ms Reeves for comment and will update this blog with any response.

In January, we fact checked former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak when he made a similar claim, saying the previous government had “reached resolution” with other doctors, when at the time both consultants and specialty/specialist doctors had not yet confirmed that their strikes were over.