The government spent £8 billion funding ‘woke projects’.
This is not correct, and not what the TaxPayers’ Alliance research concluded. £8 billion is roughly the entire annual budget for UK Research and Innovation. About £10.4 million of funding has been allocated to projects that the TaxPayers’ Alliance has described as “woke”.
Public cash has been spent on aid projects that include providing electric Porsches for Albanian jails.
This isn’t quite right. The UK donated 15 electric Volkswagens, not Porsches. This was part of a wider deal with Albania to facilitate the return of Albanian prisoners serving sentences in England and Wales.
Govt squander £8BILLION fund on projects like TikTok dancing, ‘queer animals’ & pro-trans robots in latest waste outrage
We revealed with The Sun that the government has squandered £8bn on woke projects
The Sun claimed this week that the government has wasted an £8 billion research fund on so-called “woke projects”. In print, a subheading on its front page said “£8bn research cash used for trans-friendly robots, ‘queer animals’ and TikTok dance…”, while its online headline said: “Govt squander £8BILLION fund on projects like TikTok dancing, ‘queer animals’ & pro-trans robots in latest waste outrage.”
🚨 Now British taxpayers fund academic research into pandemic dance craze on TikTok…
— Harry Cole (@MrHarryCole) February 17, 2025
Cash awards designed for top research frittered away on woke craziness…https://t.co/NUjk7YarE8 pic.twitter.com/c09iiaxPqp
The report was based on research by the TaxPayers’ Alliance (TPA) campaign group, which highlighted 26 “woke” projects with a combined cost of about £10.4 million—not £8 billion, which has roughly been the entire annual budget for UKRI in recent years, distributed to projects through a range of other organisations. Some of the sums involved are also intended to fund projects over several years.
The Sun’s article did go on to make it clear that only part of the total budget was spent on ‘woke projects’, saying: “£8billion a year is earmarked for UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) grants — but The Sun can reveal millions was frittered on woke projects.”
But this was not made clear in the article’s headlines, and Full Fact’s AI tools found evidence that others seem to have been confused, with some subsequently claiming that all £8 billion was spent in this way.
For example, a report on Times Radio Breakfast [18:45] on 18 February said: “[The Sun] have worked out that the government has spent £8 billion pounds on woke projects in this country.”
BBC Radio 4’s Today programme [57:00] on the same day said: “The Sun has for the second day on its front page an attack on what it says is government waste, including £8 billion research cash used for trans-friendly robots.”
Two of that day’s TalkRadio [3:35pm and 7:24pm] shows included similar references. The Ian Collins show said there was “eight billion quid’s worth of this claptrap last year”. (A guest from the TPA later explained that a proportion of the total was spent on “entirely legitimate research”.) And Kevin O’Sullivan’s show later said: “Taxpayers are footing the bill for £8 billion—£8 billion—in woke government spending.”
Meanwhile, the TPA’s own Facebook account initially shared the Sun’s article, alongside a caption that said: “We revealed with The Sun that the government has squandered £8bn on woke projects such as studies in the ‘Ontology and Ownership of Internet Dance’ and using AI to make firms pro trans. These grants need defunding immediately!”
After contact from Full Fact, the TPA corrected this post, and replaced “£8bn” with “£10m”.
We approached the Sun, Times Radio, Radio 4 and TalkRadio for comment. The TaxPayers’ Alliance told us the error it had corrected in its Facebook post was “a typo”.
Whether it’s fair to describe any project as “woke” is a matter of opinion. The TPA’s examples include “Storying Life Courses for Intersectional Inclusion: Ethnicity and Wellbeing Across Time and Place” and “#myeconomytoo: The gendered production of economic news”. As the TPA has acknowledged however, UKRI also funds a wide range of other projects in fields including research infrastructure and medical research.
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Separately, the Sun’s article also contained an error in a reference to another article it published the day before. It originally said: “We told yesterday, below, how £15billion in public cash went on foreign aid projects such as shrimp farms in Bangladesh and electric Porsches for Albanian jails.”
But as we explained in a fact check last week, the cars supplied by the UK government were Volkwagens, not Porsches. They were supplied as part of a wider deal with Albania to facilitate the return of Albanian prisoners serving sentences in England and Wales.
After we contacted the Sun, it corrected its claim about Porsches. The online article now says “electric cars” were sent to Albania.
It’s important that the media take care to report figures on government spending correctly, both in headlines and throughout articles or broadcast reports, so that the public is not misled about how its money is being used.
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