Rishi Sunak’s final conference speech as leader: fact checked

On Sunday former Prime Minister and outgoing Conservative party leader Rishi Sunak MP gave a short speech at the Conservative party conference in Birmingham. It featured a number of claims we’ve previously fact checked which would benefit from some additional context.

Mr Sunak claimed that his government left Labour “the fastest growing economy in the G7”. Similar claims from various Conservative politicians which we’ve written about previously appear to be based on the UK’s growth across the first half of 2024, which the Resolution Foundation has previously said was the highest in the G7. 

However the figures over a longer time period show a different picture. For example, in 2023, the UK saw the second lowest annual growth in the G7, ahead of Germany, and has also seen the second slowest growth since before the pandemic, also ahead of Germany.

(It’s also worth noting that earlier today, after Mr Sunak’s speech, the UK’s second quarter growth was revised down from 0.6% to 0.5%.)

Mr Sunak also claimed that the Conservatives in the last year delivered “a £900 tax cut for those in work”.

As we’ve explained a number of times, it’s true an average full-time worker (earning around £35,000) will save around £900 this financial year as a result of a combined four percentage point reduction in National Insurance contributions (NICs) implemented by the Conservative government. But not all workers will save that much, and once the impact of other tax changes is factored in, including ongoing freezes to the personal allowance and NICs threshold, the average worker’s overall tax savings are set to be lower.

Elsewhere in his speech the Leader of the Opposition claimed that “our children are now the best readers in the western world”. 

As we wrote during the election, this claim appears to be based on the results of the latest Progress in International Reading Literacy Study, which relates to primary school pupils in England. 

However it’s worth noting that according to a different measure, Programme for International Student (PISA) test results, 15-year-old pupils in Ireland, Canada and the US had a higher average reading score than those in England in 2022. 

Finally, the former PM claimed his party had “halved crime”. This is another familiar claim. It’s based on specific data from the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) which doesn't count fraud or computer misuse offences, so doesn't represent all crime.  

We’ll be monitoring other key speeches, including those of the four leadership candidates, throughout the Conservative party conference this week.