What was claimed
A Facebook post defending the government’s role in current NHS equipment shortages was written by Jennifer Saunders.
Our verdict
No, this post was not written by Jennifer Saunders.
No, Jennifer Saunders did not write this statement about PPE shortages
28 April 2020
A post that defends the government’s role in the current personal protective equipment (PPE) shortages, whilst strongly criticising managers of the NHS, private care homes and local councils, has been shared on Facebook.
The post claims to have been written by Jennifer Saunders—the British comedian, actress and writer—and readers have asked us to check whether this is true.
This post was not written by Jennifer Saunders.
In response to a question about the post, Mrs Saunders tweeted “Not me. Not by me. The Official Jennifer Saunders Facebook page is not me. Please ignore.”
The post was actually shared by the ‘Jennifer Saunders Fans’ Facebook page, not the official, verified, Jennifer Saunders Facebook page, which has not posted since 2015.
According to a statement by the ‘Jennifer Saunders Fans’ Facebook group, they did share the post, but did not write it nor attribute it to the comedian. They suggest that someone took the post from their page and changed it to say it was written by Jennifer Saunders. They’ve now deleted the post.
The original author of the post is unclear. There are several versions of the Facebook post that include the same text, but do not credit the statement to Mrs Saunders.
We are currently writing a separate article on the issues in the NHS supply chain of PPE.
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This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as partly false because Jennifer Saunders did not say or write this and we have not looked into the other claims in the post.