Politics Live

The Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer today announced plans for the UK to spend 2.5% of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on defence by 2027. This will be funded by a reduction in Overseas Development Assistance (ODA, also known as the overseas aid budget), from 0.5% to 0.3% of Gross National Income (GNI). 

Mr Starmer also said the government’s “ambition” is that defence spending will increase to 3% of GDP in the next Parliament.  

He said the government will “deliver our commitment to spend 2.5% of GDP on defence, but we will bring it forward, so that we reach that level in 2027”. (The previous Conservative government had committed to reaching this figure by 2030, while before today Labour had not set a specific timeframe.) 

Mr Starmer told MPs the government would maintain defence spending at that level “for the rest of this Parliament”, and claimed doing so “means spending £13.4 billion more on defence every year from 2027”. 

However the £13.4 billion figure—which wasn’t mentioned in the government’s press release following the announcement of the spending increase—has since been queried, including by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) and the Conservatives, who claimed “the numbers don’t add up”.  

At a press conference this evening, Mr Starmer was more specific, saying reaching 2.5% by 2027/28 would represent an “increase of £13.4 billion year-on-year compared to where we are today”. 

And when we asked the government about the £13.4 billion figure, it told us it is the difference between defence spending of £66.3 billion in 2024/25, and the £79.7 billion it is now expected to increase to in 2027/28. (We assume these figures refer to NATO-qualifying spend, which the 2.5% target refers to, rather than the Ministry of Defence’s budget). 

We were told that if defence spending was held at 2.3% of GDP in 2027/28, it would currently be expected to be £73.6 billion, but that the government’s announcement today means the £6.1 billion in funding from the ODA reduction will result in defence spending of £79.7 billion. 

The £13.4 billion figure therefore refers to the increase in defence spending by 2027/28 compared to its current level, not the increase compared to what it might otherwise have been in 2027/28 without today’s announcement. 

In its initial reaction to today’s announcement, the IFS warned the £13.4 billion figure appeared to be “misleadingly large” as it “only seems to make sense if one thinks the defence budget would otherwise have been frozen in cash terms”.  

It’s not the first time we’ve seen this kind of calculation on defence spending increases, however. We wrote last year about the then-Conservative government claiming it would increase defence spending by £75 billion—a figure which assumed defence spending would otherwise have been frozen in cash terms over the following six years, and therefore decreased as a percentage of GDP.

US president Donald Trump’s claim yesterday that his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskyy is a “dictator without elections” has been widely rejected by European leaders.

Mr Trump’s comments are based on the fact that Ukrainian presidential and parliamentary elections scheduled for last year were postponed due to the ongoing war in the country, and no new dates for these have yet been set. 

Under the terms of Ukraine’s constitution, elections cannot be held while the country is under martial law (which was declared by Mr Zelenskyy on 24 February 2022 following Russia’s invasion, and has been extended multiple times by Ukraine’s parliament since).

Experts have also noted a number of practical obstacles to holding elections—around one-fifth of the country is currently occupied by Russia, millions of Ukrainians are displaced or serving on front lines, and there are various security concerns.

Sam Van der Staak, Director for the Regional Europe Programme of the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, told Full Fact: “The postponement of Ukraine's elections is legitimate because Ukraine's own constitution dictates that while there is martial law there won't be elections. 

“There is also broad public and political consensus within Ukraine that there should not be elections during wartime.”

Russian president Vladimir Putin has previously claimed that Mr Zelenskyy could not sign a peace deal “because of his illegitimacy”.

In a phone-call with Mr Zelenskyy yesterday, the Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer reportedly noted that the UK had itself postponed elections during World War Two. A general election was due to be held in 1940, but was delayed year after year until the end of the war in Europe in 1945.

Elections, and the laws guiding when and how they must take place, vary by country. Historically, different countries have taken different approaches when faced with the prospect of holding national elections during times of war. 

During World War One both the UK and Canada extended their parliamentary terms (effectively delaying elections), while New Zealand postponed elections during World War Two.

Parliamentary elections have also been postponed in Israel due to conflict, for example during the Yom Kippur war in 1973. More recently, in 2023 local elections were pushed back following the 7 October attacks, though these were ultimately held a few months later, while the war in Gaza was still ongoing.

In other cases, though, elections have gone ahead during wartime—for example, Australians went to the polls during both World Wars.

Perhaps most notably, the 1944 presidential election was held in the United States (though it’s been explained elsewhere that postponing a US presidential election for a substantial period of time would not be allowed under the country’s constitution). 

US presidential elections during World War Two were not without controversy, however, as President Franklin D. Roosevelt broke with precedent to become the first US president to serve more than two terms in office, ultimately leading to the establishment of constitutional term limits.

British politics is dominated once again by the war in Ukraine, and the impact of the Russian invasion on wider European security. Not for the first time though, the headlines have been led by President Trump. 

Speaking overnight following talks between US and Russian officials, Mr Trump appeared to suggest that Ukraine “started” the conflict with Russia.

He said: “Today I heard [from Ukraine], ‘we weren’t invited’. Well, you’ve been there for three years, you should have ended it three years [ago], you should’ve never started it. You could have made a deal.”

Russia has often sought to blame Ukraine for the conflict, including in its justification for launching its full-scale invasion in 2022. German fact checkers DW Fact Check have previously looked in detail at Russia’s claims that Ukraine started the war.

Full Fact’s chief executive Chris Morris writes:

It is a fact that Russia seized Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, in violation of international law. It is also a fact that Russia launched a full scale military invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, but failed to achieve its initial goal of taking the capital, Kyiv.

Why Russia took those actions is a matter of opinion, and is the subject of often venomous political debate. 

What is new here is that President Trump has broken the western consensus that Russia was and is at fault for the war in Ukraine. And that will have lasting implications in Westminster, across Europe, and for the future of the western alliance.  

Chris has also just written in response to US Vice President JD Vance’s remarks over the weekend about freedom of speech and democracy—you can read his ‘JD Vance is wrong, facts are not opinions’ blog here.

An article published by the Express on Monday claimed that “as it stands the UK spends 2.5% of GDP on defence”.

But that’s not correct. In 2023/24 the UK spent approximately 2.3% of its GDP on defence, and as the Ministry of Defence told Full Fact this week it is currently expected to maintain this level of defence spending as a percentage of GDP in both 2024/25 and 2025/26.

The government has said it is committed to increasing defence spending to 2.5% of GDP, but has yet to set out a timeframe for doing so. Our Government Tracker has full details on this pledge.

We’ve contacted the Express for comment and will update this live blog with any response.

In response last week to new GDP quarterly growth figures, Conservative shadow chancellor Mel Stride MP claimed on GB News and Sky News that when the Conservatives left office, the UK had the “fastest growing economy in the G7”.

We’ve heard similar claims from Conservative politicians a lot in recent months, and have previously asked the party to confirm exactly what it’s based on. We have asked the Conservative party again about Mr Stride’s most recent claim, but haven’t yet received a response.

One such claim we looked at last year appeared to be based on combined GDP growth figures for the first two quarters of 2024.

Those figures did initially show that the UK had the highest GDP growth in the G7 over that period. However subsequent revisions to the data, which we wrote about last month, suggested that the UK actually had the joint-fastest growing economy in the first two quarters of 2024 (up 0.7% in Q1 and 0.4% in Q2), alongside the United States (0.4% in Q1 and 0.7% in Q2). (In fact, unrounded figures showed the US had the slightly higher growth of the two over the two quarters).

Now, following further revisions, the latest data once again suggests the UK did indeed have the fastest growing economy in the G7 based on this measure (0.8% in Q1 and 0.4% in Q2), ahead of the US, the figures for which are unchanged.

Meanwhile, figures published last week by the Office for National Statistics estimate that the UK economy grew by 0.1% in Q4 2024, following 0.0% growth in Q3 2024 (broadly covering Labour’s first three months in government). The UK’s Q4 growth was the third highest in the G7 during this period (though note that data for Japan is not yet available).

In its election manifesto Labour promised to “secure the highest sustained growth in the G7”. We’re monitoring progress against this pledge in our Government Tracker.

Following last week’s Prime Minister’s Questions, Full Fact wrote to the Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, to ask him to correct the record, after he appeared to confuse net migration figures and immigration figures.

We’ve not received a response, but Mr Starmer still seems to be getting the figures mixed up and at least one other minister has made a similar mistake in recent days (though other ministers have referred to the figures accurately).

At today’s PMQs, Mr Starmer claimed of the Conservatives: “They presided over record high levels of immigration. Reached nearly one million.”

And earlier this week, in a statement press released by the Labour party, border security and asylum minister Dame Angela Eagle said: “The Tories lost control of our borders with immigration at a record high of nearly one million”. 

As we explained last week, these figures aren’t quite right. Immigration (the number of people moving to the UK for 12 months or more) actually reached a record high of approximately 1.3 million under the Conservatives, in the year to June 2023. 

The figure of “nearly one million” meanwhile appears to refer to net migration (the number of long-term immigrants to the UK minus the number of long-term emigrants), which in the year to June 2023 is estimated to have reached a record high of approximately 906,000.

On a topic as high-profile and polarising as immigration, we believe it’s important that ministers quote statistics precisely and accurately, and correct inaccurate or misleading claims as soon as possible.

We’ve contacted Dame Angela about this, and will update this blog if we receive a reply.

The leader of the Scottish Conservatives, Russell Findlay MSP, claimed on BBC One’s Question Time [13:10] on Thursday that “140 million Americans cast their vote” for Donald Trump.

This isn’t correct. According to the US government’s official vote count, 77,302,580 votes were cast for President Trump in the 2024 presidential election. 

This represented about 49.8% of the 155,238,302 votes cast in total.  

When Full Fact contacted Mr Findlay’s office, they quickly told us that his comment was a “slip of the tongue”, explaining that he meant to refer to the total number of Americans who voted. 

Mistakes happen, and we’re grateful for the prompt acknowledgement.

Labour MP Deirdre Costigan appears to be the latest politician to have confused the number of people on the NHS waiting list with the number of cases.

Ms Costigan, who is also a member of the Health and Social Care Committee, said during an evidence hearing on 29 January: “The big number that [my constituents] have heard is that there are 7.6 million people on the waiting list.”

Full Fact’s AI monitoring tools have previously spotted more than 50 similar claims apparently confusing the number of cases on the NHS waiting list with the number of people.

The latest data from NHS England estimates that as of November 2024, there were about 6.3 million unique patients waiting to start 7.5 million courses of treatment.

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

Past work by the Office for National Statistics does suggest that about 9.7 million adults in England were waiting for some kind of NHS service last winter, but this figure includes many services not covered by the official elective care “waiting list”.  

We’ve fact checked similar claims about the number of people on the NHS waiting list a number of times over the last year—including a recent example in The Times.

We have contacted Ms Costigan for comment and will update this article if we hear back.

At today’s Prime Minister’s Questions, the Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer claimed that the previous government “quadrupled immigration, reaching almost one million a year”.

We think the PM may have been intending to refer to net migration (the number of long-term immigrants to the UK minus the number of long-term emigrants) rather than immigration—we’ve contacted Number 10 to ask about this.

According to the Office for National Statistics, in the year ending June 2023 net migration was estimated to be 906,000. That’s the highest level since current comparable records began in 2012, and more than four times higher than in the year ending June 2019 (when it was estimated to be 224,000).

Meanwhile in the year ending June 2023, immigration was estimated to be 1,320,000—some way over a million. That’s also the highest level on record, but historic data shows estimated immigration did not “quadruple” under the Conservatives, either compared to when they entered office in 2010 or compared to any point during their time in office.

Today, 31 January 2025, is the fifth anniversary of the day the UK formally left the European Union. 

And to mark it, we’ve been taking a quick look back at some of the claims we’ve fact checked about Brexit, both in that period and before, since the EU referendum nearly nine years ago. 

During the Covid-19 pandemic, for example, we saw government ministers claim the UK’s vaccine rollout was quicker due to Brexit. 

That wasn’t correct in terms of regulatory approval at least—under EU law countries are allowed to act independently to approve vaccines in emergency situations. Yet we’ve heard versions of this claim repeated often in the years since. 

Indeed, as recently as yesterday, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage MP appeared to say something similar when he told the Daily Express, while speaking about what he thought Brexit has achieved: “We got a vaccine out more quickly than any other country. Some people think that’s great, some don’t, but we were able to do it.” 

There’s been confusion over the value of trade deals made since Brexit, as well as which deals were rolled over from our time in the EU (though a word of caution, some of the specifics in those fact checks are now likely to be out of date, particularly as new free trade agreements have since come into force). 

A common issue we’ve seen with some of the claims we’ve checked about the impact of Brexit on the UK’s economy is that they are based on counterfactual estimates, without always making that clear.So for example a 2023 claim that tax revenue had fallen by £40 billion a year was based on a comparison between how the UK had performed since the EU referendum and how it might have been expected to perform had the UK not voted to leave the EU—it wasn’t a figure for how the UK’s tax revenue had actually changed since 2016. This important distinction hasn’t always been made clear when the figure has been cited.

We’ve also repeatedly checked claims about the European Court of Human Rights in the years since Brexit. Contrary to some claims we've seen, the court is part of the international organisation the Council of Europe, and is not an EU institution. The European Convention on Human Rights, the implementation of which is overseen by the court, protects the human rights of members of the Council of Europe and the UK’s membership of it is not connected to the EU or to Brexit. 

You can read more of the fact checks we’ve written about Brexit here.