More claims from PMQs fact checked

At Prime Minister’s Questions today, Rishi Sunak said the government has recruited "20,000 more police officers". As we wrote in April, this is correct based on the increase since 2019, but doesn’t tell the whole story. The recent rise follows a significant fall in the number of police officers in the years prior to 2017.

In 2019 the government announced its intention to recruit 20,000 officers in England and Wales as part of an “uplift” programme. However, due to the decline in previous years, the majority of the new officers were simply replacing the ones who had been lost. 

The recruitment campaign ended in March 2023. At that time, by headcount, there were around 3,500 more officers in England and Wales than there had been in 2010.

Mr Sunak also said there are “hundreds of thousands fewer children in poverty today thanks to this government”. This figure is correct in terms of absolute poverty, but there are different ways to measure poverty, and relative poverty statistics paint a different picture.

The number of children in absolute poverty after housing costs across the UK has fallen from 3.7 million in 2009/10 to 3.3 million in 2021/22. The equivalent figures before housing costs also show a drop, from 2.5 million to 2.2 million.

However, the number of children in relative poverty has increased since 2009/10—from 3.9 million to 4.2 million after housing costs, and from 2.6 million to 2.9 million before housing costs.

We wrote more about the difference between absolute and relative poverty, and other ways of measuring poverty, in this fact check about a different claim back in June.