Politics Live

Labour MP for Hemel Hempstead, David Taylor, has corrected a claim he made on Facebook about the number of individuals “deported” under Labour, after being contacted by Full Fact.

The post, shared on 11 May, claimed: “We’ve already deported 24,000+ individuals with no right to be here.” This claim was detected by Full Fact’s AI tools.

However, as we explained last month, this figure refers to the total number of immigration returns that took place between 5 July 2024, when Labour formed a government, and 22 March 2025, not all of which were officially classed as ‘deportations’. The majority involved people who left the UK voluntarily, and we don’t know exactly how many of the 24,000 returns were in fact deportations.

We’ve seen this claim made by Labour politicians a few times lately. Last week, the defence secretary John Healey made the same claim on Times Radio Breakfast, and before that Josh MacAlister MP corrected a Facebook post that also referred to 24,000 people having been “deported”, after Full Fact got in touch.

On 14 May, Mr Taylor’s Facebook post was edited to say: “We’ve already removed 24,000+ individuals with no right to be here.” We’re grateful to Mr Taylor for promptly correcting his post after we got in touch.

Following this week’s exoneration of Peter Sullivan, who spent almost 38 years in prison for a murder he did not commit, many newspapers and media outlets said the case was thought to be the “longest-running” miscarriage of justice in UK history.

While this claim is true in some respects, it could do with some additional context.

Data from the miscarriages of justice registry at the University of Exeter, the largest database of wrongful convictions in the UK, shows that Mr Sullivan spent more time in prison before being exonerated than any other person in the database. However, others have had to wait even longer for justice, or died before their names could be cleared.

A notable case is that of Mahmood Mattan, who received a death sentence and was executed in 1952 after being wrongly convicted of the murder of a shopkeeper. His conviction was quashed by the Court of Appeal in 1998, some 46 years later.

It also took 46 years for Derek Bentley’s conviction to be quashed, after he was executed in 1953 for his part in the murder of a police officer the previous year.

Perhaps the person with the longest wait for exoneration in the UK is Winston Trew, a member of the so-called ‘Oval Four’, who was convicted of assaulting a police officer in 1972. Initially jailed for two years, he ultimately spent eight months behind bars. The evidence against him and several others was subsequently found to have been fabricated by a police officer who was later convicted of corruption.

Mr Trew, who is now in his seventies, had his conviction quashed by the Court of Appeal in December 2019, 47 years later.

A BBC article originally omitted this case, claiming it was Mr Bentley that had waited the longest for his miscarriage of justice to be recognised. After being contacted by Full Fact, the article has been clarified.

How common are miscarriages of justice?

The government does not provide a figure for the number of cases sent to the Court of Appeal, but a 2020 Freedom of Information request found 916 applications for leave to appeal against conviction were received by the criminal division of the court between June 2019 and March 2020.

To give some sense of the scale of cases dealt with by the courts compared to appeals, in England and Wales during 2023, magistrates’ courts closed 1.34 million cases and Crown courts disposed of 99,000.

One potential indicator of the scale of the issue is data from the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC), a body set up in 1995 after some high-profile miscarriages of justice from the mid-1970s were overturned in the late 1980s. These included the cases of the Birmingham Six and the Guildford Four.

From April 1997 up to March 2025, the CCRC received 33,155 referrals. Of these, 844 were heard by the appeal courts and 592 convictions were overturned. Of the remainder, 234 appeals were denied and 18 were abandoned by the applicants before a decision was reached.

NHS England has corrected a mistake in its calculation of the number of extra hospital appointments delivered so far by the Labour government, after Full Fact challenged the error.

NHS England initially claimed the new data, which is an official statistic, showed a 3.3 million rise in the appointments counted towards the government’s manifesto commitment, when it was first published this morning. The figure was used in a (since-corrected) NHS England press release, and cited in a comment by the health secretary, Wes Streeting, that was quoted in the media.

But this figure comes from data that has been standardised to take account of the different number of working days in the periods being compared. And NHS England’s calculation mistakenly assumed there were 20 working days in February 2024. In fact, 2024 was a leap year, and there were no public holidays that February, so the month had an extra day, which fell during the week, making 21 working days.

As a result, the correct figure for the increase in appointments seen between July 2024 and February 2025, compared to the same period the previous year, is about 3.6 million. NHS England republished the data to include this figure after we told it about the problem, and released a correction to its statement about an hour after we got in touch.

The new statement said: “There was a calculation error in the file covering the number of additional appointments delivered since July. This has been updated from 3.3 million to 3.6 million.”

However at the time of writing the incorrect figure continues to appear in some news reports.

Before the 2024 general election, Labour promised to deliver an extra two million hospital appointments each year, although the party wasn’t clear exactly what this meant.

Then in February, NHS England began to publish data on the specific types of appointments being counted towards the pledge. At the same time, the government announced that it had been achieved. We have been monitoring this pledge on our Government Tracker.

Last October, NHS England quickly corrected a mistake in its waiting lists data, after we got in touch.

During an interview with Conservative shadow policing minister Matt Vickers on Times Radio [1:55:00] this morning, there appeared to be some confusion over how the number of asylum seekers being housed in hotels has changed since the general election.

Mr Vickers claimed that “the number of people in hotels was going down” prior to the election.

In response, presenter Stig Abell said that the number of people in hotels was “still going down”—a claim Mr Vickers described as “factually untrue”.

Mr Vickers is correct, according to the latest published data. The number of asylum seekers being housed in contingency accommodation in hotels had decreased for three consecutive quarters prior to Labour coming to office, and stood at 29,585 at the end of June 2024 (approximately 29% of all asylum seekers in receipt of support from the government).

The latest official immigration figures only cover the period up to the end of December 2024, but they show that the number of asylum seekers housed in hotels had increased by approximately 29% during Labour’s first six months in government, to 38,079 (approximately 34% of all those in receipt of support).

We’ve asked the Home Office to confirm the latest figure for the number of hotels being used to house asylum seekers. As of 13 January, the number had increased from 213 at the time of the general election, to 219 (though border security minister Angela Eagle said in January that several were due to close in the coming months).

In its election manifesto, Labour said it would “end asylum hotels”—we’re covering the government’s progress on this pledge in our Government Tracker.

Defence secretary John Healey is the latest Labour MP to incorrectly refer to the total number of immigration returns carried out under the government as ‘deportations’.

On Thursday 8 May, on Times Radio Breakfast [01:12:30], Mr Healey said: “24,000 people have been deported because they have no right to stay in Britain.” The claim was picked up by Full Fact’s AI tools.

But as we explained in a fact check last month, the 24,000 figure refers to the total number of immigration returns carried out between 5 July 2024 and 22 March 2025. Not all of these returns meet the official definition of a ‘deportation’—in fact, the majority involved people who left the UK voluntarily. We don’t know exactly how many of the 24,000 returns were officially classed as deportations.

We’ve contacted Mr Healey to ask him to correct the error, and will update this blog post if we receive a response.

Last week, we wrote about a similar claim made by Labour MP and Cabinet Office parliamentary private secretary Josh MacAlister, who corrected his claim on Facebook after Full Fact got in touch.

The UK and the United States today announced a “landmark economic deal” between the two countries—the first such agreement the US has reached on trade since President Donald Trump introduced wide-ranging tariffs on US imports.

Ahead of the announcement Mr Trump described the deal as “full and comprehensive”, and later told reporters when questioned on this point that the agreement was “maxed out”.

But in reality, the deal announced today covers only a limited set of measures involving specific sectors. The UK Department for Business and Trade has confirmed to Full Fact that it does not constitute a fully-fledged Free Trade Agreement (like that agreed between the UK and India earlier this week).

Today’s agreement includes a reduction in tariffs on UK car exports to the US, as well as the elimination of US tariffs on UK steel and aluminium exports.

The White House also says the deal will “significantly expand US market access in the UK”, in particular for agricultural exports.

A UK government press release said that “work will continue on the remaining sectors—such as pharmaceuticals and remaining reciprocal tariffs”, but added that the US had agreed to give the UK “preferential treatment in any further tariffs imposed”.

The full text of the deal is still to be published and neither party has confirmed when the measures agreed will take effect—at a press conference this afternoon the Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said the tariff reductions would “come into place as soon as possible”.

Meanwhile, during today’s announcement US commerce secretary Howard Lutnick claimed that the UK government “nationalised British steel” as part of the deal. This is not technically the case.

British Steel has not been nationalised, because the government has not taken full ownership and control of the company.

Last month the government passed emergency legislation to enable it to take control of British Steel’s Scunthorpe plant to prevent its Chinese owners, Jingye, from allowing it to close. The government gained the ability to reinstate sacked staff or enter the plant to prevent the blast furnaces from being turned off, but ownership remains with Jingye for now. Ministers have indicated however that full nationalisation remains a possibility, especially if no other buyer is found.

Finally, Donald Trump described the UK as the US’s “oldest ally, or just about”. That’s highly debatable—as Mr Trump himself seemed to acknowledge when he then added that a “couple of people claim that too, but let’s put it right at the top”.

Many—including Mr Trump himself previously—have argued that it is actually France which should be considered the US’s oldest ally. Welcoming French president Emmanuel Macron to the White House in February, Mr Trump said: “France is America’s oldest ally. Our cherished partnership has been a force for freedom, prosperity, and peace from the very beginning.”

This is a reference to the French monarchy recognising the United States as an independent country in 1778, two years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence. France also provided critical support for the American colonies against the British in the American War of Independence.

Others may point to Morocco, which was the first country to publicly recognise the United States of America with a decree in 1777.

The UK officially recognised the US by signing the Treaty of Paris in 1783, after the end of the War of Independence—though the countries fought again in the War of 1812.

Last week the Government announced that “reform” of the NHS App has prevented 1.5 million hospital appointments from being missed. It also made a number of other claims about the impact of the app, including that it has “saved almost 5.7 million hours of staff time” since July.

This may be the case, and the 1.5 million appointments figure has been reported in the media, and cited by at least one minister. But there’s currently no published data to support the claim, which means we’re unable to verify it.

We’ve contacted the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) a number of times about these claims, and it told us on Wednesday that it would share the data with us soon. At the time of writing we had not received it—we’ll update this blog when we do.

The government’s press release last week appeared to claim that the “accelerated rollout” of the app prevented 1.5 million appointments from being missed, although it’s not immediately clear what that covers, or how the figure has been calculated.

When Full Fact asked the DHSC what the claim was based on, it told us the data hasn’t been published and the claim was based on “internal figures”. (It did not initially respond to our subsequent requests to share these, before later saying it was working to provide them.)

This seems to be at odds with the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) guidelines on Intelligent Transparency, which say: “Data to support any public statement should be published in advance or at the same time as the statement is made… Where unpublished data are referred to unexpectedly, the information should be published as soon as possible after any statement has been made.”

This is not good enough. Government departments must provide evidence for what they say, and ensure that any statistics and data they rely on to back up their claims are provided publicly in accordance with the Code of Practice for Statistics or relevant guidance.

Nor is it the first time we’ve raised concerns about the government making claims based on unpublished data. Last September, the Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer cited unpublished immigration data in a speech at the Labour party conference. The Home Office later published it following Full Fact’s intervention.

We have contacted the OSR about the government’s NHS App claims.

During an interview on Times Radio [2:22:10] on Monday 28 April, minister for care Stephen Kinnock MP claimed: “the IMF and the OECD are predicting that we will be the highest growing economy over the next 12 months.” The claim was picked up by Full Fact’s AI tools.

But that’s not what the latest figures from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) show.

Figures published by the OECD and the IMF in March and April respectively project that several countries will see faster GDP growth in 2025 compared to the UK, including advanced economies like the US and Spain, and developing economies like Brazil.

It’s possible Mr Kinnock intended to say that the UK is projected to be the highest growing European economy in the G7—that is, that it’s projected to grow faster than France, Germany and Italy—which would be correct. 

We’ve seen a number of government ministers make similar errors in recent months.

Full Fact has contacted Mr Kinnock about his claim and will update this blog post if we receive a response.

Labour MP and Cabinet Office parliamentary private secretary Josh MacAlister has corrected a claim he made about the government’s record on immigration returns after he was contacted by Full Fact.

In a Facebook post published on 28 April, Mr MacAlister claimed there had been “More than 24,000 people with no right to be here deported” during Labour’s first months in government. This claim was detected by Full Fact’s AI tools. 

But as we explained in a fact check last month, the 24,000 figure refers to the total number of immigration returns carried out between 5 July 2024 and 22 March 2025. Not all of these returns meet the official definition of a ‘deportation’—in fact, the majority involved people who left the UK voluntarily, and we don’t know exactly how many of the 24,000 returns were officially classed as ‘deportations’. 

On 29 April, Mr MacAlister’s Facebook post was edited to say: “More than 24,000 people with no right to be here removed”. We’re grateful to Mr MacAlister for promptly correcting his post after we got in touch.

Following the publication of the latest GDP growth projections by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Tuesday, the chancellor Rachel Reeves claimed the UK “is still the fastest growing European G7 country”.

The IMF does indeed project that the UK will have higher GDP growth than the three other European G7 economies (France, Germany and Italy) in 2025 and 2026. Longer range projections similarly show the UK is projected to be the fastest growing European G7 economy each year until 2030.

The latest IMF figures estimate that in 2024 the UK also had the strongest growth of the four European G7 economies.

However, it’s worth noting that the latest quarterly figures published by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development suggest the UK had slightly slower growth than Italy in Q4 2024.

As was widely noted in the media, the latest IMF projections lowered the growth outlook for the UK, as well as all other G7 countries.

And while the IMF projections may suggest the UK is set to outstrip other European G7 economies in the coming years, Labour’s manifesto pledge on growth was not restricted to European G7 members—it promised to “kickstart economic growth to secure the highest sustained growth in the G7”. We’re following progress on that pledge in our Government Tracker, and for now continue to rate it as “Appears off track”.