Conservative leadership speeches: fact checked

On the last day of the Conservative party conference in Birmingham, the four remaining leadership candidates—MPs Kemi Badenoch, James Cleverly, Robert Jenrick and Tom Tugendhat—each delivered a speech setting out their vision for the future of the party. 

We have looked at some of the claims that emerged during the event, including those on crime, immigration, education and energy. 

Labour freeing criminals

Mr Tugendhat—shadow security minister—claimed that the Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, “is freeing criminals”. This appears to refer to a scheme Labour recently introduced to release prisoners who’ve served 40% of their sentence in order to ease overcrowding. However, Mr Tugendhat’s claim could do with context.

Most prisoners with sentences of less than five years were previously released automatically at the 50% mark. Labour has reduced this to 40%. 

Under the last Conservative government, prisoners were being released between 18 and 70 days earlier than their automatic release date to reduce overcrowding. This End of Custody Supervised Licence scheme was announced in October 2023.

Education standards

Mr Tugendhat also claimed that education standards are falling in Scotland and Wales but “in England my kids are getting a great education”.

It’s not clear what metric this comparison is based on, and we’ve asked Mr Tugendhat for more information. Figures from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) programme for international student assessment for 2022 do show that pupils in England performed better in science, maths and english than those in Scotland and Wales (though these reports note that caution should be used in interpreting these results, as the samples used may not be entirely representative of the population).

It is worth noting however that all three nations saw attainment decline compared to the previous results in 2018.

Crime has been halved

Shadow home secretary Mr Cleverly’s introductory video claimed that the Conservative government had “halved crime” over 14 years.

As we’ve said before, this claim is based on crime survey data which doesn't count fraud or computer misuse offences, so doesn't represent all crime. In the year up to December 2023 the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) estimated that fraud and computer misuse accounted for around half of all offences. 

Questions about fraud were not included in the CSEW until 2017 so it is not possible to make a direct comparison between figures from before and after that change.

Did James Cleverly cut immigration?

Mr Cleverly also said he got net migration down by “300,000 people a year”.

We looked at a similar claim from him yesterday. The figure appears to refer to the previous government’s estimate of the expected impact of a series of immigration measures which were announced in December 2023 and came into effect at different points in early 2024. 

But we don’t yet know exactly how measures introduced while Mr Cleverly was home secretary have actually impacted net migration, because the most recent data from the Office for National Statistics only goes up to December 2023. Mr Cleverly was home secretary between November 2023 and July 2024.

It’s worth noting though that figures which have been published by the Home Office show a decrease in applications for some visas affected by the measures in the year to June 2024.

Small boat returns

Mr Jenrick, a former immigration minister, claimed that “120,000 people have entered our country on small boats” and that “99% of them are still here”.

It’s true that the vast majority of people who have arrived in the UK by small boat since 2018 have not been returned.

The latest statistics show that between January 2018 and June 2024 a total of 125,474 people arrived in the UK by small boat. Over the same time period there have been 3,788 returns—or 3% of small boat arrivals. Most of those people have been Albanian nationals.

Great British Energy

Commenting on Labour’s plans to reduce the cost of heating and powering homes by setting up a new company, Great British Energy, shadow housing secretary Kemi Badenoch said: “It doesn't produce energy, it's not a company and there's nothing great about it.” 

This could also use some context and we’ve asked Ms Badenoch for comment.

The government’s founding statement for Great British Energy describes it as a “an operationally independent company wholly owned by the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero.” It will be led by its own CEO. 

It further states: “Great British Energy will seek to generate publicly-owned revenue to reinvest into future energy projects, creating further benefits for the UK taxpayers, billpayers and communities. This means investing in and owning clean power generation assets—particularly in less developed technologies that can help power our clean energy future, like floating offshore wind and carbon capture. Great British Energy is not simply an investment vehicle – it is a publicly-owned energy company that will take stakes in the projects it owns, manages and operates.”

Not all companies involved in the UK energy market actually produce energy themselves.

The Institute for Government says: “Some companies [regulated by public body Ofgem] operate in both the generation and supply markets while others only produce energy or purchase it to then sell on to consumers.” 

We’ve contacted the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero to confirm whether Great British Energy will itself be responsible for producing energy.