At #PMQs today, Rishi Sunak said “this week we’re cutting taxes by £900 for everyone in work”.

This isn’t correct, for at least two reasons. (1/5) The £900 figure refers to the combined impact of *two* reductions in National Insurance, each of two percentage points. One was introduced in April, but the other came into effect in January. (2/5)

At #PMQs, Rishi Sunak 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 *relative* poverty statistics paint a different picture.
(1/4) There are different measures of poverty.

The number of children in *absolute* poverty after housing costs has fallen from 3.7m in 2009/10 to 3.3m in 2021/22.

The equivalent figures before housing costs also show a drop, from 2.5m to 2.2m. (2/4)

At #PMQs Rishi Sunak claimed Labour’s immigration plan involves “a cosy deal with the EU which would see the UK accept 100,000 illegal migrants”.

As we’ve previously explained, this figure is a Conservative party estimate which is not reliable. (1/4)
buff.ly/3FW71MR The estimate makes a number of assumptions about a potential future returns deal with the EU, and appears to misinterpret a recent EU agreement on relocating some asylum seekers across the bloc. (2/4)

Yesterday Rishi Sunak said in Parliament that Sir Keir Starmer wants to open the UK’s borders to “100,000 additional EU migrants every single year”.

As we wrote in September, this figure is a Conservative party estimate which is not reliable. (1/4)

buff.ly/49p5tZ9 The estimate Mr Sunak seemed to be referring to makes several assumptions and appears to misinterpret a recent EU agreement on relocating some asylum seekers across the bloc. (2/4)

📢 NEW REPORT: Today, we have released a report tracking the misrepresentation of data across at least three government departments.
Read the report here: 🧵 (1/4) fullfact.org/media/uploads/…
Our report examines how if data is presented without context or caveats, if it is described incorrectly, or if data is given too much weight, it can give an incomplete or misleading picture. (2/4)

2022 was a damaging year for standards in public debate.

The latest Full Fact Report is out today, and sets out how politicians, the media and others can improve trust and safeguard UK democracy ahead of the next election.

📕Read the report 👉 fullfact.org/about/policy/r… In 2022:

🔴As many as 50 MPs, including two Prime Ministers, Cabinet and Shadow Cabinet Ministers, failed to correct false, unevidenced or misleading claims, despite our repeated calls for them to do so

Correcting mistakes is important, which is presumably why Boris Johnson claims he corrected the record ‘at the earliest opportunity’ in response to Sue Gray’s report. (1/4) But when Boris Johnson was Prime Minister, he repeated a false claim about employment statistics more than nine times in Parliament. We are still waiting for a correction. (2/4) buff.ly/42q2tZ7

“I’m pleased we had a record number of new homes built in the last year” - Rishi Sunak

We’ve been trawling over the data for nearly a week, and can’t find anything to substantiate this claim 🧵👇 There’s various official statistics on house building, all measuring slightly different things.

Here are the most recent official figures on the number of homes completed in England, covering the year ending June 2022.

There are seven years where more houses were built.

Here’s a quick roundup of the fact checks we’ve been doing this week outside of our usual wheelhouse of politics and the media, starting with a ‘crop fire in Ukraine’ that was actually in Michigan 👇 We’re still seeing lots of health misinformation spreading on social media too, like this one.

🔬 Shingles and monkeypox are caused by two totally different viruses.

fullfact.org/health/monkeyp…

As well as our usual fact checking of politicians and the media, this week our team have been taking a look at widely shared false claims on social media.

We’ve been seeing a lot of misinformation about monkeypox lately 👇

fullfact.org/health/expose-… Elsewhere, a Facebook user who listed chemical concentrations in Greater Manchester’s drinking water concluded that “we are being poisoned.”
 
But, despite the claim being shared 6,000 times, the data in the post actually shows the water is safe to drink.

fullfact.org/online/drinkin…

Has your MP made an inaccurate or misleading claim this year and failed to correct the record?

From now on, their names will be listed on our website and won’t be removed until they’ve corrected themselves.

📃 The list 👉 fullfact.org/updates/mps-wh… This list isn’t exhaustive. We don’t yet have the resources to fact check everything MPs are saying in and out of Parliament.

You can help. If you spot a claim from a politician you think might be false, you can contact our fact checkers directly on WhatsApp.

📱 07521 770995

Ahead of today's #SpringStatement, here are 3⃣ things to look out for:

🧵👇 Multi-year vs annual pledges.

The government often announces budget increases by adding up the increases over multiple years, not the annual change as you might expect. An example 👇

fullfact.org/economy/2022-d…

On BBC Radio 2 today, a caller misled producers about his intentions in order to get on air, before spreading misinformation about the Covid vaccines.

Presenter @theJeremyVine strongly challenged the false claim, and we applaud him for doing so.

Thread 👇 [1/4] The false claim the caller mentioned, which is popular online, is that 1500 people have died from the Covid vaccines.

These deaths were reported to have happened *after* vaccination, but not necessarily *because* of vaccination.

[2/4]

Dawn Butler MP accused Boris Johnson of lying yesterday, and was asked to leave the House of Commons.

We do not know if the PM was ‘lying’. But the majority of Mr Johnson’s claims that Ms Butler mentioned were either false or misleading.

Thread 👇

fullfact.org/news/dawn-butl… Claim 1️⃣

Ms Butler is correct to say this claim is false.

The 73% figure describes growth since 1990, not since 2010. This means it covers a much longer period that also includes 13 years of Labour government.

Telegraph columnist Allison Pearson claimed that, last week, Sir Patrick Vallance and Chris Whitty presented cherry-picked figures from hospitals on course to run out of beds, despite falling or stable numbers of Covid patients in hospital.

The problem? They didn’t.

[Thread]👇 At the daily briefing on 26 November Sir Patrick and Professor Whitty made no mention of bed capacity at individual hospital trusts.

Sir Patrick noted that, at a national level, the number of Covid-19 patients in hospitals had “flattened.” [2/6]

On @bbcr4today this morning, Boris Johnson claimed that a Brexit extension would cost £1bn a month. This is not true.

[1/4] You can say your plan is to leave with a deal, or you can say an extension will cost £1 billion a month, but you can't say both.

When Mr Johnson repeats this claim, journalists should ask him if that means he’s not serious about getting a deal.

[2/4]

A Conservative Party Facebook ad seems to have altered the headline of a BBC News article so that it claims there will be a "£14 billion pound cash boost for schools".
fullfact.org/news/conservat…
[1/4] The ads make it appear that the BBC endorsed the £14bn figure, when in fact they criticised it. The BBC told us that the headline on the article has never changed and so has never referred to the £14 bn.
[2/4]

A viral piece about the link between hedge funds, the Vote Leave campaign and Boris Johnson's leadership bid claims there was a large spike in "shorting" in the lead up to Boris Johnson becoming Conservative leader.

We can't find any such spike.

fullfact.org/economy/short-…

[1/5] We think Byline Times looked only at the number of active short positions, not all of them.

Shorting is where a fund borrows shares, sells them and hopes the share price falls so they can buy them back at a lower price, return them to the lender, and make a profit.

[2/5]

You may have seen that £2.4 million from the Sovereign Grant was used to pay for renovations of Frogmore Cottage, the home of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.

This is how royal finances work (a thread) 👑

fullfact.org/economy/royal-…

[1/7] The Queen receives three forms of income.

One is income from her private investments. These investments are owned by the Queen personally.

For example the Queen owns the Royal Stud at Sandringham which makes money which she pays tax on.

[2/7]

An election called tomorrow would be wide open to abuse—so we welcome the DCMS committee's calls for an overhaul of election and political advertising rules to make them fit for the digital age.

But the govt mustn't be allowed to water them down.

publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201719/cm… [1/5] We need a public database of online political adverts, provided in real time, with full information on content, targeting, reach and spend.

The government should commit today to making these changes before the next election and start putting a timetable in place. [2/5]

The problem with the Department for Education's misleading claims — in one thread 📚 The Department for Education (DfE) recently made several claims about education spending which are technically correct, but misleading. Here's why...
[1/5]