Fact checked: Rishi Sunak’s interview on BBC Panorama

Tonight we’ve been ‘live fact checking’ the Prime Minister Rishi Sunak during the first of BBC Panorama’s interviews with party leaders, and have looked at a number of claims.

Mr Sunak said NHS waiting lists “have risen … they are now coming down”. While it’s true that the number of cases on the main NHS England waiting list has fallen from a high of 7.8 million in September 2023, it’s still higher now than when Mr Sunak pledged that waiting lists would “fall” in January 2023. We’ve unpacked the numbers in our explainer on NHS waiting lists.

Mr Sunak also claimed that net migration was “down 10% from the levels that I inherited”. This is broadly right—as we’ve previously written, net migration was down 10% in 2023 compared to 2022. But it was still nearly four times higher in 2023 than in 2019, when the Conservatives pledged to bring down “overall numbers”. 

The interview included a number of questions about taxes and Mr Sunak made several claims we’ve seen before. 

Firstly, he claimed “taxes are being cut”. It’s true that National Insurance contributions have been reduced, but the nation’s so-called ‘tax burden’ is high and forecast to rise to a near-record level. Mr Sunak was correct to say the effective personal tax rate for the average earner is the lowest for decades, but this doesn’t include all the taxes people pay. 

He also spoke about a “£900 tax cut this year”. This appears to refer to the combined value of the reductions in National Insurance contributions in January and April 2024—but this figure is specifically for an average earner and doesn’t take account of any other tax changes. The Institute for Fiscal Studies says once the impact of all tax changes since 2021 is factored in, an average earner will save £340 in 2024/25. 

Mr Sunak repeated a claim we’ve heard a lot in the past week, that families would face a £2,000 tax rise under a future Labour government. As we’ve explained, this figure is unreliable and based on a number of questionable assumptions. 

Finally, Mr Sunak claimed children in England are “the best readers in the western world”. As we wrote last week, this appears to be based on the results of a 2022 international study. According to another measure from that year, however, pupils in Ireland and the US were better readers.