The government found a £22 billion ‘black hole’ in the public finances.
This refers to the findings of a Treasury audit, which found an in-year overspend of £21.9 billion on departmental spending. The IFS says many of the challenges were “entirely predictable” but also that some in-year pressures do “genuinely appear to be greater than could be discerned from the outside”.
800,000 pensioners are not taking up Pension Credit.
This is broadly correct. Recently published government figures show that 880,000 pensioners who are eligible for Pension Credit don’t claim it.
The Prime Minister inherited the fastest growing economy in the G7.
This is correct in terms of GDP growth in the first half of 2024, though the UK’s annual growth last year was among the worst in the G7.
An average of three million working days a year were lost to strikes under Rishi Sunak.
This appears to be a rounded-up estimate. ONS data shows nearly 2.7 million working days were lost to strike action in 2023, the only full year Mr Sunak was Prime Minister. 2.5 million days were lost in 2022. These are the highest numbers since 1989.
The Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and Conservative leader Rishi Sunak went head-to-head across the despatch box today as Prime Minister’s Questions returned after the summer recess.
We’ve fact checked a number of the claims made—about the state of the public finances, support available for pensioners following changes to the Winter Fuel Payment, the number of working days lost to strikes, the UK’s economic growth and more.
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The Prime Minister said the government found a “£22 billion black hole” in the UK’s public finances earlier this year.
We looked at this figure back in July, when Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves claimed public finances were worse than Labour had expected before entering government.
She referred to a Treasury Public Spending Audit, which found that in the current year the “forecast overspend on departmental spending is expected to be £21.9 billion” above the totals set during the Spring Budget. This figure included extra spending on areas such as the asylum system, the transport budget and public sector pay.
The extent to which this was an unexpected “black hole” is disputed, however, with the Conservatives accusing Labour of laying the ground for tax rises. After Ms Reeves announced the £22 billion shortfall, the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) said that many of the challenges Labour outlined were “entirely predictable”, but also that the in-year financial pressures identified did “genuinely appear to be greater than could be discerned from the outside”.
More recently, it’s been reported that Cabinet Secretary Sir Simon Case wrote to shadow chancellor Jeremy Hunt and said the lack of a Spending Review since 2021 has contributed to uncertainty over public finances.
But Mr Hunt has responded, saying the letter raises “more serious questions” for the government.
Mr Starmer also said that “800,000 pensioners are not taking up Pension Credit”. This figure is broadly correct.
Recently published government figures show that 1.4 million people currently claim Pension Credit, and that up to an estimated 880,000 people are eligible but don’t claim it. This means potentially 39% of those eligible for Pension Credit don’t claim it.
Pension Credit is one of the qualifying benefits for the Winter Fuel Payment, alongside Universal Credit, income-related Employment and Support Allowance, income-based Jobseeker’s Allowance and Income Support.
Pensioners who don’t receive any of these qualifying benefits will no longer receive the Winter Fuel Payment from this winter, following a government announcement in July.
Mr Starmer also claimed that “we lost an average of three million working days a year to strikes under [Mr Sunak’s] watch”. This appears to be a rounded-up estimate.
According to the latest annual Office for National Statistics (ONS) data, 2,514,000 working days were lost due to strike action in 2022, and 2,660,000 were lost in 2023, the highest figures since 1989.
Mr Sunak became Prime Minister on 25 October 2022. We only have monthly ONS data for 2024 so far, which shows roughly 465,000 working days were lost up to the end of June.
The Leader of the Opposition Mr Sunak claimed that Labour inherited “the fastest growing economy in the G7” from his government.
This was a claim we heard many times during the general election, based on data from the first quarter of 2024. But since then new data has been published, and Mr Sunak’s claim now seems to be based on GDP data for the first half of 2024. The UK economy grew by 0.7% in the first quarter, and 0.6% in the second quarter of the year—the highest combined rate in the G7.
It’s worth noting though that the UK’s annual growth last year was among the worst in the G7, and the UK has seen comparatively slower growth since the pandemic than most other G7 countries, except for Germany.
Finally, responding to concerns raised about hospitals impacted by deteriorating Reinforced Autoclaved Aerated Concrete (RAAC), Mr Starmer said: “The last government promised 40 new hospitals. The problem is there weren’t 40, they weren’t new and some of them weren’t even hospitals.”
We wrote about this in detail back in June.
In their 2019 manifesto, the Conservatives pledged to build 40 new hospitals by 2030. After winning the election, the Conservative government then published plans to do this in October 2020. It listed 40 hospitals for which funding was confirmed but also said that eight further schemes had been invited to bid for funding “to deliver 48 hospitals by 2030”.
Eight of the 40 projects announced in 2020 were already “in build” or “pending final approval”, and the Department of Health and Social Care later said they “should not be referred to as part of the government’s 40 new hospitals manifesto commitment”. The eight further schemes mentioned in the government’s original announcement therefore replaced the eight pre-existing schemes as far as the target of 40 was concerned.
Exactly what counts as a new hospital may be a matter of opinion, but the government set out a broad definition, which could include “a major new clinical building or a new wing, providing a whole clinical service, at an existing hospital”.
As far as we can tell, only one project which meets the government’s definition of a new hospital and has been judged by the National Audit Office to count towards the 40 hospital target has been opened so far—the Dyson Cancer Centre in Bath.
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