Full Fact's best of 2010

As 2010 draws to a close, the festive period will no doubt see a number of retrospectives emerge in the newspapess on an important year in politics.

While Full Fact will continue to keep a close eye on politicians and journalists to ensure that accuracy is at the top of their new year's resolutions, here is our own reflection on some successes that we've enjoyed this year:

• Full Fact catches Gordon Brown double-counting his help for business figures:
  Back in March, then Prime Minister Gordon Brown claimed that his Government had helped 300,000 businesses across the UK since the start of the recession. When we checked the figures we found that the claim referred to the number of occasions that business had received help, and that the number of actual businesses helped was closer to half the figure used by the PM. The issue was subsequently picked up by the Sunday Times and Sir George Young in the House of Commons.

• Home Office retracts alcohol-related crime claim after Full Fact investigation:
  When newly-appointed Home Secretary Theresa May claimed that relaxed licensing had led to an "increase in the number of alcohol-related incidents and drink-fuelled crime and disorder" when launching a review of 24-hour drinking laws. In fact, the number of incidents attributed to drink was lower than it was when the licensing laws were relaxed in 2005. When Full fact put this to the Home Office, they were forced to acknowledge that Ms May's quote "should have referred to the proportion of crimes, rather than the number."

• SEN errors in press corrected after Full Fact goes to PCC:
  In September, the media used wildly different figures when reporting on the numbers of school children misdiagnosed with special educational needs (SEN), with estimates ranging from a quarter to a half of all those currently considered as having SEN. Ofsted, whose report was the source of these claims, eventually clarified the matter after the issue was raised in Parliament. The press followed suit, but not before Full Fact was forced to take the matter to the Press Complaints Commission (PCC).

• Full Fact FoI requests provide some insight into Ed Miliband's B&B claims:
  Newly-elected Labour Leader Ed Miliband caused some waves in October when he suggested in Prime Minister's Questions that local authorities in London were already block-booking bed and breakfasts to deal with an anticipated rise in the number of people requiring council housing following the announced cap on housing benefits. Facing a dearth of information, Full Fact decided to submit Freedom of Information requests to all 33 London councils to ask about their plans, and have yet to find any evidence to support the claim. Our research was used in the House of Commons and the Financial Times.

• Full Fact encourages DWP to make research publicly available:
  Over the summer we noticed a number of questionable tabloid stories on unemployment quoting statistics from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) that were seemingly unavailable to members of the public. We thought this contravened advice given in the code of practice on the use of statistics, so we contacted Sir Michael Scholar at the UK Statistics Authority for clarification. Sir Michael confirmed that there were "serious deficiencies" in this way of operating, and DWP have now started to publish 'ad hoc' pieces of research to accompany recent press releases.

We'd like to wish all our readers a very merry Christmas, and hope you'll join us again in the new year to help us campaign for more accurate, informed and enlightened politics.