Was @RishiSunak right when he claimed "independent Treasury officials” had costed Labour’s spending plans in the #ITVdebate? The claim every household will pay £2000 over 4 years has issues.

We’ve been taking a look at the Conservatives ‘Scorecard’ for Labour’s spending… 🧵1/11 First things first, the costing is based on 4 years of spending, so £500 per year, and assumes all households are taxed equally, which is unlikely.

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Did @TheCassReview - the review of NHS gender identity services for under-18s in England - throw out 98% of the available research?

That claim was spreading online before the report was even published.

It is “completely incorrect” says @Hilary_Cass

A More or Less thread.🧵1/8 Cass commissioned @UniOfYork to produce systematic reviews to analyse the available research on puberty blockers and hormone treatment.




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Are only 4% of estates subject to inheritance tax? With speculation that Jeremy Hunt might be considering cutting or even abolishing inheritance tax, More or Less decided to look at the figures. 1/10 The 4% figure is a real figure from 2020-21, though it’s now gone up slightly to about 5%. This means only 1 in 20 estates currently pay inheritance tax. 2/10

Have the Conservatives built social housing in ‘record numbers’, as has been claimed?

A More or Less thread. 🧵1/9 So is the claim true? No.

Since 2010, the number of new social rent homes has plummeted, from 39,500 a year in 2010/11 down to 7,600 in 2021/22.

When the reporter @JamesRiding pointed this out, Rachel Maclean told him ‘that’s not a figure that I recognise’. 2/9

Do Grant Shapps’ claims about the environmental impact of North Sea Gas stack up? A More or Less thread. 1/10 At the start of August, Grant Shapps - then Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero - was questioned on The World at One about the environmental impact of the government’s decision to award over a hundred new licences to drill for oil and gas in the North Sea. 2/10

You may have seen a version of this tweet, which seems to claim that energy costs in the UK are many times more expensive than the rest of Europe - over four times as much as the next two countries, Belgium and France.

Here’s why that tweet is wildly misleading. A thread 🧵1/10 What do the figures on the tweet refer to? Average bills? Gas prices? It’s not clear.

Let’s look at the source for these figures, which we’ve tracked down to something called ‘Epex Spot’, as you can see from another version of the tweet. 2/10

In the last half of 2022, the UK recorded 26,000 more deaths than it would normally expect - that’s a 9% excess, and a worrying trend.

But more recent data show the number of ‘excess deaths’ has been declining. So have we turned a corner?

A thread🧵 1/9 First, we need to remember just how bad the end of 2022 was.

Across the UK, large waves of flu and Covid peaked in late December and A&E departments saw historically dire waiting times. 2/9

What’s going on with ambulance response times in England? How long does it take an ambulance to reach you? The data tell an astonishingly bad story. 1/10 Ambulance response times fall under four categories. Let’s look at the most serious: category one. It includes cardiac arrest or severe allergic reaction - essentially those most serious conditions, often where a patient needs to be resuscitated. 2/10

Last week the Treasury put out a tweet publicising how its recent changes to stamp duty could lead to big savings for first time buyers in London, including individuals earning £30k. So does it add up? Barely. Here's another More or Less thread. 🧵 1/12

This week on More or Less, we’ve been digging into the numbers behind rising energy bills.

What’s driving the increase in the price cap? Let’s start with the profits made by the people who sell us our energy - the energy suppliers. 1/13 Some on the left claim that nationalising energy suppliers and reducing or eliminating profit margins could reduce our bills. 2/13