Politics Live

With the Reform UK party conference underway in Birmingham today, we’ve heard a couple of senior figures from the party make claims about the number of people who are in the UK illegally.

On BBC Breakfast [34.15], the head of Reform UK’s department of government efficiency Zia Yusuf claimed: “There are north of a million people in this country illegally, at least—the real number’s probably higher than that. There are north of around 600,000 men who are in this country illegally.”

And addressing the conference this afternoon, party chair David Bull said: “We believe there are over one million people in this country who do not have the right to remain.”

It’s not immediately clear what these estimates are based on—we’ve asked Reform UK, and will update this blog if we receive a response.

But as we’ve written before, we don’t know with any certainty how many people are in the UK without the right to be here. The University of Oxford’s Migration Observatory has warned that studies attempting to put a number on the UK’s unauthorised migrant population should be treated with caution due to large margins of error.

Neither the Home Office nor the Office for National Statistics (ONS) currently publish estimates of the UK’s total irregular migrant population, and in a 2019 report the ONS said: “By its very nature, it is extremely difficult to know the exact size of the illegally resident population and due to the challenges in making reliable estimates the government has not produced any official estimates since the mid-2000s.”

It’s possible that today’s Reform UK claims may have been based on a study published by the Pew Research Center think tank in 2019, which estimated there were between 800,000 and 1.2 million unauthorised migrants in the UK in 2017, 48% of whom it estimated were male. This would produce an upper estimate of around 576,000 men in the UK without the right to be here. Mr Yusuf has previously referred to a figure of 1.2 million when talking about the number of people who are “here in this country illegally”.

However, as we wrote last month, the Pew Research Center has since acknowledged its methodology was flawed, and subsequently revised its estimate to a lower range of 700,000-900,000.

In any event, these figures and indeed most estimates of the UK’s unauthorised population are several years old and so are not necessarily representative of the true number in 2025.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy and other European leaders are in Washington DC today to meet US president Donald Trump, following the latter’s summit with Russian president Vladimir Putin last Friday (15 August).

While no deal was struck between the two leaders, it’s been reported that Mr Trump may push Mr Zelenskyy to agree to territorial demands made by Mr Putin involving the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine.

Conflict in this region has been ongoing since 2014—eight years before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began—when Russian-backed separatists in the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, which make up Donbas, broke away from the Ukrainian government.

Since 2022, Russia has claimed both regions as part of its own territory, but this annexation has been widely condemned as a breach of international law.

Russian forces reportedly currently control almost all of Luhansk, while approximately 30% of the Donetsk region remains under Ukrainian control, according to Mr Zelenskyy.

The Institute for the Study of War has noted that the current front line in Donetsk is heavily fortified, and that ceding the entire region would potentially leave neighbouring parts of Ukraine more vulnerable to future Russian attacks.

There also appears to be some confusion around what, if anything, Mr Putin is prepared to offer in exchange for his apparent demand that Ukraine cedes the entirety of the Donbas region to Russia.

It was reported last week that US officials believed Russia could withdraw from two other regions of Ukraine—Zaporizhzhia and Kherson—which it currently partially occupies. However it’s since been reported that a deal would only freeze the current front lines, rather than see Russian forces withdraw from these regions entirely.

In a post on his social media platform Truth Social ahead of today’s meeting, Mr Trump appeared to rule out Ukraine regaining control of Crimea—which was annexed by Russia in 2014—or joining NATO.

Former Downing Street communications director and host of The Rest Is Politics podcast Alastair Campbell has corrected a claim he made about Labour’s record on closing so-called ‘asylum hotels’, after being contacted by Full Fact.

In a post shared on X (formerly Twitter) on 12 August Mr Campbell said: “Amazing how neither @KemiBadenoch or @RobertJenrick objected when part of the government opening up 400 asylum hotels but somehow find time to jump on the Farage bandwagon when Labour has managed to cut the number in half.”

But as we explained in a fact check earlier this week, while it is true that the number of hotels being used to house asylum seekers has decreased from a peak of over 400 in summer 2023 to 210 as of July 2025, almost all of this reduction took place before Labour came into government.

In July 2024, when Labour took office, there were 213 hotels in use, meaning that during Labour’s first year in government a net three hotels were closed.

We’re grateful to Mr Campbell for promptly correcting his post. He said: “As a strong supporter of @FullFact happy to correct this.”

The Times has amended a headline that incorrectly suggested doctors should monitor patients taking Ozempic injections in order to lose weight for a year following treatment, after the paper was contacted by Full Fact.

The article, published 5 August, was headlined “Ozempic patients ‘need support for a year after treatment’”, and was included on the newspaper’s front page that day. The first paragraph of the article said: “People should be supported for up to a year after stopping weight-loss medications to prevent them from regaining weight”.

It reported on new guidelines published by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) for people coming off obesity medication or finishing a weight management programme.

But Ozempic—a drug containing semaglutide, and often seen as synonymous with weight loss injections—is actually only licensed in the UK to treat type 2 diabetes, and shouldn’t be prescribed by the NHS to help people lose weight.

A similar drug—Wegovy—that also contains semaglutide, the same active ingredient as Ozempic, can be prescribed for weight loss.

This drug, along with a similarly-licensed drug Mounjaro, which contains the active ingredient tirzepatide, is what NICE refers to in its guidelines.

The Times did not respond to Full Fact’s request for comment, but has updated the headline in the online version of its article, and we’re grateful to The Times for taking action.

This morning, on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme [1:38:46], shadow housing secretary Sir James Cleverly claimed: “[Labour] are opening up asylum hotels, they are increasing the use of asylum accommodation around the country”.

It is true that under Labour the number of asylum seekers housed in hotels has increased, as our Government Tracker explains. According to the latest available data, 32,345 asylum seekers were housed in hotels at the end of March 2025, up from 29,585 at the end of June 2024, just before Labour came into office.

The data also showed that there were 71,339 asylum seekers living in other types of non-hotel accommodation at the end of March 2025, compared to 67,057 at the end of June 2024. The majority of these were in “dispersal accommodation”, which is longer-term temporary accommodation managed by providers on behalf of the Home Office, with others housed in “initial accommodation”, which is typically shared accommodation while an asylum seeker is having their claim for support assessed.

The Home Office told us that 210 asylum hotels are currently in use, and that they expected more to close. On 3 March 2025, Dame Angela Eagle MP, minister for border security and asylum, said that in July 2024 there were 213 hotels in operation, suggesting the number of hotels in use is currently slightly lower than when Labour first came into office.

According to the Home Office’s latest accounts, “the total number of contracted hotels reduced by 71 across 2024-25”, although it did not specify an exact figure, and this time period also includes figures from when the Conservatives were in office.

It’s worth noting however that while the overall number of hotels in use appears to have come down slightly, there have been recent reports of new hotels being intended to house asylum seekers. It’s possible this is what Mr Cleverly meant when he said Labour was “opening up” hotels.

We’ve contacted Mr Cleverly for comment.

In a column published by the Daily Mail on Friday, 11 July, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage MP wrote: “One analysis of official figures has found that those who come to Britain illegally are 24 times more likely to finish up in prison.”

His party’s deputy leader Richard Tice MP similarly claimed on X (formerly Twitter): “Illegal migrants are 24 times more likely to end up in prison.”

These claims appear to refer to Conservative party analysis first reported in The Times on 3 July, which claimed that “Channel migrants” were 24 times more likely to go to prison than British citizens. But as we explained in our fact check last week, this figure is not reliable, based on the details reported.

The Conservative analysis reportedly compared 2025 prison data to 2021 population statistics which are likely out of date, and appears to have used data on the imprisonment of foreign nationals in general to draw conclusions about small boat arrivals specifically.

In addition, it’s worth noting that while Mr Farage and Mr Tice’s claims seem to refer to “illegal” or irregular migrants in general, the Conservatives’ figure was reported as being specifically about those arriving by small boats, rather than those arriving in the UK “illegally” via any method of entry.

While tens of thousands of people detected entering the UK irregularly arrive via small boat crossing, thousands are also detected via other routes (for example, in lorries). And, as the University of Oxford’s Migration Observatory has noted, it’s difficult to accurately estimate the number of people entering or living in the UK illegally, because many may never be detected.

We’ve contacted Reform UK for comment.

The government is about to publish the 10 Year Health Plan, the blueprint for its reform of the health service in England.

In the words of the NHS, the plan will emphasise three key shifts: from hospital to community, from analogue to digital and from sickness to prevention. And the government has already announced some changes, including plans to abolish NHS England itself.

It’s also expected to tackle inequalities in working-class communities and widen access to medical careers.

This week, the health secretary Wes Streeting said in the Sun that the plan will include “fundamental changes to how we recruit people to become doctors”. Specifically, he said it would address the fact that “only 5% of medical school entrants are from a working-class background”.

We looked into this claim, which comes from research by the Sutton Trust published in February this year. It found that “5% of entrants [to medical school] in 2021 were from the lowest socioeconomic group”, defined as those with parents who worked in “semi-routine and routine occupations”. (It sounds like this would therefore exclude the children of doctors.)

It’s worth noting that this data is based on a sample of applicants to medical school, and that the socioeconomic status of some was “unknown”, so there is a margin of error around the number.

The data also shows that the number of applicants from low socioeconomic backgrounds has been rising over time, roughly doubling between 2012 and 2021.

And of course, it reflects only one way of assessing the social background of those who apply to medical school. The same research found that a higher proportion, 16% of entrants, lived in the most-deprived fifth of neighbourhoods, a number that more than doubled between 2012 and 2021. About 26% of entrants also had parents without a university degree, where this information was known.

In short, there are lots of ways of measuring social disadvantage, including these and others, which may tell slightly different stories.

You can follow the government’s performance against its promises on health, and in other areas, with our Government Tracker.

The government is hoping a series of concessions will be enough to push through its Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payment Bill, which has its second reading in the House of Commons this afternoon.

With a current working majority of 165, Labour’s bills would usually expect to be granted safe passage by a comfortable margin, but dozens of the party’s MPs are reportedly threatening to rebel, making the future of the legislation less certain.

Before it can become law, a public bill must generally pass through five steps in both Houses of Parliament—first reading, second reading, committee stage, report stage and third reading.

Bills are not opposed at first reading, as this is usually a purely formal event, without any actual debate or voting. The second reading, however, is where bills can be opposed if MPs put forward “reasoned amendments” to the legislation, or vote against the motion to give the bill its second reading. This is the earliest opportunity MPs have to get a bill thrown out.

If a bill is defeated at second reading, it cannot be re-introduced until the following parliamentary session, meaning the proposed reforms would likely have to wait until at least next year.

At one point more than 120 Labour MPs had threatened to vote against the government’s welfare legislation, forcing a U-turn and the introduction of multiple concessions. It is unclear whether these will be enough to ensure the bill’s passage, as earlier this morning it emerged that at least 39 Labour MPs still intend to oppose the legislation.

Defeating a government bill at second reading is extremely rare—according to the Institute for Government, the last time that happened was in 1986. This was when Margaret Thatcher—who had a Commons majority of 144— failed in her attempt to reform Sunday trading laws.

Governments more commonly experience defeats on amendments to bills, or on other parliamentary motions—particularly in the House of Lords, where governments do not enjoy an in-built majority of their own party members.

The Yorkshire Evening Post has corrected a story about projections for the population of Leeds after being contacted by Full Fact.

The headline and first paragraph of its original story claimed the population of the city was set to “soar by nearly 900,000” over the next decade, according to figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

However the story went on to explain that the ONS had projected growth of 8%, which would take the population from its 2022 total of 820,802 to 886,763 by mid-2032.

This increase of around 65,000 would take the population of Leeds to close to 900,000, not increase it by that number, as the original headline suggested.

After being contacted by Full Fact, the Yorkshire Evening Post amended its story. We are grateful to them for doing so.

In response to a question in the House of Commons on Monday about whether the UK would support the US in the event of a retaliatory strike by Iran, foreign secretary David Lammy referred to “paragraph 2.13 of the ministerial code”.

Yet in a point of order raised later in the day, Conservative MP Ben Obese-Jecty—who had asked Mr Lammy the original question—said: “In the current version of the ministerial code, published on 6 November 2024, there is no 2.13; chapter 2 finishes at 2.7.” He went on to accuse Mr Lammy of “misleading the House by quoting made-up references to the ministerial code to avoid scrutiny”.

It’s convention for a new prime minister to publish their own version of the ministerial code, and it is true that the current version of the ministerial code, published in November last year, does not contain a paragraph 2.13.

When we asked the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office what Mr Lammy was referring to, it pointed to Erskine May—the guide to parliamentary procedure and practice—which states in its online version: “By long-standing convention, observed by successive Governments, the fact of, and substance of advice from, the law officers of the Crown is not disclosed outside government. This convention is referred to in paragraph 2.13 of the Ministerial Code.”

This appears to refer to the previous ministerial code, published under the Sunak administration, paragraph 2.13 of which does indeed state: “The fact that the Law Officers have advised or have not advised and the content of their advice must not be disclosed outside Government without their authority.”

The same sentence also appears under paragraph 2.13 in previous versions of the ministerial code, beginning with the version published under Gordon Brown in 2007. Similar guidance appeared in different parts of the code in versions published under Tony Blair.

However, this paragraph appears under 5.14 of the current ministerial code—so Mr Lammy did cite the wrong paragraph number.

We contacted the House of Commons, who told us that a new version of Erskine May is currently being prepared for publication, and that the reference to the previous ministerial code would be updated as part of that process. We’ve also contacted Mr Lammy’s office to ask if he will correct the record in Hansard.