New session of Parliament: live blog
Full Fact’s rolling live blog of political fact checks
Rochdale by-election wasn’t called after ‘expulsion’ of MP by Labour
On BBC Radio 4’s Today programme this morning, presenter Nick Robinson suggested the forthcoming by-election for the Rochdale constituency was caused by the “expulsion” from Labour of MP Simon Danzcuk
During a segment on Labour withdrawing support for its Rochdale candidate Azhar Ali over comments he is alleged to have made about Israel, Mr Robinson said [starts at 2:12:20] there were now three men “rejected” by Labour challenging the seat, including: "The MP whose expulsion by Labour led to the by-election, Simon Danczuk, now running for Reform.”
However, this isn’t right. The by-election on 29 February is actually being held following the death of the incumbent Labour MP Sir Tony Lloyd on 17 January days after announcing he had an incurable form of leukaemia.
Mr Danczuk was the MP for Rochdale from 2010 to 2017, but was suspended by the Labour party in 2015 after newspaper allegations about his private life. At the time, he apologised “unreservedly” for what he described as “inappropriate” behaviour in a post on X (formerly Twitter).
Mr Danczuk was not allowed by Labour to stand as its candidate in the 2017 general election and stood as an independent. Sir Tony, who had formerly represented the Stretford and Manchester Central constituencies and served as the Greater Manchester Police and Crime Commissioner, won the seat for Labour.
Mr Danczuk is now contesting the seat as the candidate for the Reform UK party.
There are 11 candidates standing to be Rochdale’s next MP.
We’ve contacted the BBC about this and will update this post if we hear back.
Think tank’s figures misquoted by Labour MPs in Parliament
In recent weeks we’ve seen two Labour MPs, including deputy leader Angela Rayner, claim that a think tank found that “on average, people are over £10,000 a year worse off” after 14 years of Conservative government.
This isn’t what the Centre for Cities study they referenced says, however. The figure in question is actually a cumulative estimate for the period between 2010 and 2022—the estimate wasn’t over £10,000 “a year”.
It’s also worth noting it was a counterfactual estimate, comparing the present to an alternative scenario, so doesn’t show how much less income the average person actually has compared to 2010.
For more details, see the full fact check of this claim which we’ve published today.
Treasury minister interview causes confusion over UK debt forecast
An interview with chief secretary to the Treasury Laura Trott MP yesterday caused confusion after she appeared to disagree with BBC Radio 4’s PM presenter Evan Davis’ claim that debt would be higher in five years time than it is now.
And the fallout from the interview has continued today, with Ms Trott trending on X (formerly Twitter) and widespread media coverage of the exchange.
Figures published in November by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) show that underlying debt as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is forecast to be 89.0% this financial year (2023/24), and 92.8% in five years time (2028/29)—so 3.8 percentage points higher.
Underlying debt is the measure the government uses in its fiscal rules, which state that underlying debt must be falling as a percentage of GDP between the fourth and fifth year of the forecast period. It excludes the Bank of England’s debt.
Mr Davis quoted these figures multiple times in the interview, but Ms Trott appeared to repeatedly suggest debt was not rising “as a percentage of GDP”.
It’s possible that some confusion may have arisen from the fact that Ms Trott was initially referring to the fiscal rules mentioned above, while Mr Davis seems to have been referring to whether debt would be higher at the end of the forecast period than it is currently.
As was noted in the interview, OBR figures do show that underlying debt is forecast to begin falling at the end of the period—peaking at 93.2% in 2027/28 before falling to 92.8% the following year.
This means that the government is currently forecast to be meeting its fiscal target, even though debt will be higher in five years’ time than it is currently.
We’ve written a full fact check about the exchange, which you can read here.
Fact checking Labour’s ‘missions’
In the last couple of weeks we’ve looked into two claims published in a document outlining the Labour party’s five “national missions”, reportedly the party’s election “campaigning bible”.
On 26 January, we checked a claim that there have been “4,000 GPs cut” under the Conservative government.
Labour hasn’t responded to our questions about this claim, but this figure is unreliable, because Labour appear to have reached it by comparing the current data with a different, non-comparable dataset from before 2015.
If you date the current period of Conservative government from 2015, when the party won a majority in the House of Commons, then the number of fully qualified GPs has fallen by nearly 2,000—although the total including those in training has risen by about 3,000.
There appears to be no reliable way to compare with the number of GPs doing NHS work earlier than that—for example, with 2010, when the whole period of Conservative-led government began—because NHS Digital changed the way it counts GP numbers in 2015.
Labour’s document also said there are “2.98 million people now using food banks, up from 60,000 in 2010”—a claim we’ve also seen made elsewhere.
The Trussell Trust—the largest food bank network in the UK—confirmed to Full Fact that these figures show the number of emergency food parcels it distributed in 2022/23 and 2010/11, not the number of individual people using food banks. That means they could double-count people who use a food bank more than once, and also fail to count people who use food banks which aren’t run by the Trussell Trust.
We’ve not been able to find a reliable estimate for the number of people using food banks currently. Data published by the government suggests that in the 2021/22 financial year approximately two million people lived in a household where a food bank has been used—however use has clearly increased substantially in recent years, with 760,000 people accessing Trussell Trust food banks for the first time in 2022/23.
Guardian chart confuses patients and cases waiting for treatment
Rishi Sunak’s admission that the government has failed on a pledge to cut NHS waiting lists in England is widely covered this morning—and a common error cropped up again in a chart in the Guardian’s write-up, which has since been corrected.
The chart’s headline said it showed that “more than 7.6m NHS patients in England were awaiting treatment in November”.
In fact, as you can see from a chart of our own in a recent fact check, about 6.4 million patients were estimated to be waiting for non-emergency treatment with NHS England at the end of November.
But between them, these people were awaiting treatment in about 7.6 million cases. There are more cases than patients on the waiting list, because some people are waiting to be treated for more than one thing.
It’s been common to talk about patients instead of cases for a long time, but it was hard to say how misleading this was until NHS England began publishing an estimate for the number of patients last year.
Now that we have a correct number, we think it’s important that people in politics and the media should use it, so we’ve checked several claims like this recently.
After we contacted the Guardian about the error, the chart’s headline was corrected to say “more than 7.6m NHS cases in England were awaiting treatment in November”.
Labour repeats claim counting tax rises since the last election
On Times Radio this morning, Labour’s shadow economic secretary to the Treasury, Tulip Siddiq, said “the government has actually increased taxes 25 times since the last election.”
Later, at Prime Minister’s Questions, Sir Keir Starmer appeared to add to the list. He said Rishi Sunak had “told every council in the country to put their council tax up by the maximum of 5%”, adding “that’s 26 tax rises now”.
These are variations of a claim we’ve heard regularly from Labour in recent months. We wrote about it last week.
Full Fact obtained what appears to be the list of the 25 tax rises, but we don’t know why Labour selected these specific measures for inclusion. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has said there have likely been hundreds of revenue-raising tax changes (as well as cuts) taking effect since 2019.
Have a ‘surprisingly large’ number of other countries copied the UK’s Rwanda plan?
With the government’s Safety of Rwanda Bill continuing its passage in the House of Lords today, Full Fact looked into a claim that other countries were seeking to copy the UK’s plan to process asylum claims in a third country.
Earlier this month a headline in the HuffPost claimed that “a surprisingly large number of countries have copied [the] UK's Rwanda plan.”
This is not quite right. Although the countries mentioned in the article—Austria, Italy, Germany and Denmark—have explored the option of using a third country for processing asylum seekers with a view to determining their right to move to those countries, the UK’s proposed Rwanda scheme goes further than this, as it removes asylum seekers’ rights to seek asylum in the UK.
The HuffPost article also mentions the Emergency Transit System which removes asylum seekers from Libya and transports them to Rwanda. This scheme is funded by the EU and is very different to the proposals being put forward by the UK.
Full Fact contacted the HuffPost and the headline of the article has since been amended to say that some other countries “could copy” the UK scheme. We are grateful to the HuffPost for making this change.
Labour party chair repeats incorrect claim there are 7.8 million people on NHS waiting lists
On Sky News this morning, Labour party chair and shadow women and equalities secretary Anneliese Dodds MP said: “We’ve already got 7.8 million people on the NHS waiting list”.
However, as we’ve pointed out before, this isn’t what NHS data shows. The latest NHS England statistics show that in November 2023, there were an estimated 6.4 million unique patients—so individual people—on the waiting list. They were waiting for 7.61 million types of treatment to begin, with some people waiting for more than one course of treatment.
We’ve previously written to the Labour party, as well as other politicians and media outlets, and asked them to stop repeating this claim.
Is Rishi Sunak 'Mr 25 tax rises'? We check Labour’s claim
At Prime Minister’s Questions yesterday, Sir Keir Starmer told the Commons that Rishi Sunak is “Mr 25 tax rises”.
This is a claim we’ve heard repeatedly from Labour in recent weeks, often with the caveat that these 25 tax rises have occurred since the last general election. Several shadow ministers have said it, and we’ve also seen it on Labour’s social media channels.
While Labour haven’t publicly published the list of 25 tax rises, Full Fact was sent the list by shadow Treasury minister Lord Livermore. We wrote about it yesterday.
It includes a range of tax changes that have occurred since 2019, but some—such as the windfall tax, or the temporary rise in National Insurance that occurred in 2022—are missing.
We’re not sure how Labour arrived at their figure, and their press office has not responded to our queries about how the list was compiled.
However, the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) told us that simply counting the number of rises “isn’t very interesting or meaningful”. The IFS also said that Labour’s analysis is likely to have missed a large number of specific tax rises, and that there have likely been hundreds of rises (and reductions) since 2019.
A better measure for looking at tax rises, said the IFS, is looking at the total amount of tax raised, and this parliament “is the biggest tax-raising parliament in modern times”.
PM repeats claim about fall in poverty since 2010
At Prime Minister’s Questions today, we heard a familiar claim from Rishi Sunak. He said “since 2010 there are 1.7 million fewer people in poverty”.
Mr Sunak has used this figure at a number of previous PMQs. As we’ve explained, it’s correct based on one measure of poverty, but other measures give a different picture.
The Prime Minister’s figure matches the number of people in absolute poverty after housing costs, which fell by 1.7 million between 2009/10 and 2021/22, according to government data.
The number in relative poverty after housing costs, however, is up by 900,000 over the same period.
The Joseph Rowntree Foundation report which was the subject of the question to the Prime Minister uses this measure.
We wrote more about the different ways of measuring poverty in this fact check about a different claim last year.