Ten years ago, England’s NHS was better than Scotland and Wales when it came to the percentage of A&E patients seen within four hours. New analysis shows it’s now the worst of the three - while Scotland performs best. @C4Ciaran explains. @C4Ciaran The Department of Health in England told us cutting waiting lists is one of the government’s top priorities and that A&E performance improved in January 2024 compared to the previous month.

The pound has plummeted against the dollar in the hours since Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini budget.

But did one cause the other? And what does it mean for inflation? @FactCheck thread. The new chancellor has just announced the biggest set of tax cuts in 50 years - here’s @theIFS graph.

Boris Johnson faced his last ever PMQs today. Let's give some of his favourite claims the @FactCheck treatment. Boris Johnson and his colleagues like to talk about 40 or 48 “new hospitals”. But as @FactCheck has reported, that doesn’t mean they’re all *extra* hospitals.
channel4.com/news/factcheck…

How many care home outbreaks were caused by people leaving hospital? Matt Hancock told MPs that the “best estimate” is 1.6%. But there’s important data missing... This report from Public Health England links 97 outbreaks to hospital patients discharged into care homes between January and September 2020. That’s 1.6% of recorded care home outbreaks.
assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/upl…

Boris Johnson told #PMQs today that staying in the European Medicines Agency would have made the UK vaccine rollout "impossible". In fact, Britain was still bound by EMA rules when the Covid vaccination programme began. (@FactCheck thread) We were in the Brexit transition period when the vaccine programme was planned, and the rollout started. It didn't matter, because EU legislation enacted into British law already allowed countries to temporarily authorise vaccines without waiting for approval from the EMA.

Matt Hancock has said we "never had a national shortage" of PPE, citing a National Audit Office report. But the NAO said that "many front-line workers in health and adult social care reported not having access to the PPE they needed during the height of the shortages". (1/6) The NAO said: "The NHS provider organisations we spoke to told us that, while they were concerned about the low stocks of PPE, they were always able to get what they needed in time. However, this was not the experience reported by many front-line workers." (2/6)

There's been a flurry of good news stories about Covid today. How do we know that the UK vaccination programme is having an impact? @FactCheck channel4.com/news/factcheck… A massive new study from Scotland suggest both the Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines cut hospital admissions significantly. ed.ac.uk/files/atoms/fi…

Here's how government projections of how much AstraZeneca vaccine would be ready by Jan 1 slipped...(@FactCheck thread) May 2020: the talk is of 30 million doses by September.

Becoming seriously ill with Covid-19 is associated with a fall in cognitive abilities comparable with suddenly ageing ten years or losing eight IQ points, according to a new study of more than 80,000 people. medrxiv.org/content/10.110… Scientists at Imperial College and King's College, London, looked at 84,285 people with suspected or confirmed Covid who had done a range of online cognitive tests for BBC2 Horizon's Great British Intelligence Test show.

Some good news on #COVID19: cheap, widely available drugs called corticosteroids can cut deaths among the sickest Covid patients by 20 per cent, according to a new analysis. Doctors from around the world pooled data on 1,703 seriously ill coronavirus patients. Around 32 out of 100 people given corticosteroids died, compared to 40 out of 100 patients who received normal care.

As @FactCheck reported yesterday, the independent @ONS is now publishing data on deaths in England and Wales where #Covid-19 is mentioned by the doctor on the death certificate. ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulati… Unlike the death toll the @DHSCgovuk publishes every day, these figures include people dying outside hospital - in care homes, for example - and cases where the diagnosis of #coronavirus has not been confirmed by a test.

Michael Gove just used his record on schools as an example of why voters should trust the government to deliver. But he quoted a figure that the UK Statistics Authority has criticised. A @FactCheck thread... We asked Mr Gove: "Can we take your word in this election that you will deliver what you say you will?"

A spokesman for Boris Johnson has described the EU referendum as "the biggest democratic vote in our history". A lot of people have asked us whether this is true. @FactCheck thread... The 2016 referendum didn't (quite) attract the largest number of voters ever. Some 33,551,983 people voted in 2016, but slightly more votes were cast in the 1992 general election - 33,614,074. parliament.uk/documents/comm…

A lot of @FactCheck readers have asked us about an interview Dominic Raab gave to BBC News yesterday: bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-pol… The Foreign Secretary said: "Every Conservative stood on a manifesto which included the language and provision that no deal would be better than a bad deal. We didn't rule out no deal."

Last week, the government claimed: “Sales of plastic bags by the seven biggest retailers in England have fallen by 90% since the 5p charge was introduced in 2015.”

But @factcheck found this figure is misleading… The government’s figures only include thin, single-use plastic bags.

They do not include any "bags for life" – which now account for a significant proportion (roughly 28%) of all plastic bags sold by supermarkets.

It's day one of Boris Johnson's premiership. There are a few things already on our @FactCheck radar - as we launch our project to examine every public statement by the PM until the day we are due to leave the EU... Today Boris Johnson promised "another 20,000 police on the streets". As Mayor of London, he announced a recruitment drive for 5,000 officers in London - without mentioning that these would simply replace staff lost through natural wastage. Officer numbers fell on his watch.

The government has launched the Stronger Towns Fund “to boost growth and give communities a greater say in their future after Brexit”.

The £1.6 billion pot represents a tenth of what councils lost from central government under austerity. A @FactCheck thread... Spending by councils in England has been rising in recent years - thanks to changes that give councils more powers to raise local taxes and a cash boost at last year's Budget - but has yet to recover to pre-austerity levels.