What does it say when lies are now so normal in UK politics that even when pointed out to the parties and politicians they refuse to correct them?
Full Fact sought to challenge and correct but neither were interested in doing so.
In a social media graphic, the Labour Party claimed Rishi Sunak spent £8.7bn on “dodgy PPE so useless it will have to be burnt.” But not all of this was burnt, some was used, donated or recycled.
We contacted them about this, but the party has chosen to take no action. This isn’t good enough. If Labour expect the government to correct their mistakes, they should lead by example and do this themselves.
On the BBC’s Politics Live, MP Scott Benton claimed the “vast majority of people coming across the Channel are economic migrants”. But there’s no evidence for this claim. In fact, analysis shows this is not the case.
We contacted Mr Benton and he told us he will not be issuing a correction. Similarly, this is not good enough. MPs should back up what they say in public with evidence.
Other nonsense this week from both parties includes:
| Thérèse Coffey wrong to claim employment is up over the pandemic |
| “Despite the challenges of the last two years, unemployment is down and employment is up, and there are 662,000 more employees on company payrolls and earning more money than before the pandemic.” – Thérèse Coffey in a video for DWP’s Twitter page But employment is not up. The number of people in employment fell by 580,000 between the three months to February 2020 and the three months to January 2022. The employment rate also fell by 1 percentage point in this time. While the number of employees has grown, the number of self-employed people has fallen by around 800,000. Suggesting that the employee figure is the total employment figure masks this fall. This is particularly frustrating because we’ve corrected false employment claims like this so, so, so many times. The Prime Minister has incorrectly claimed in Parliament eight times that there are more people in employment now than there were before the pandemic. Several other MPs have joined him in making this claim. The list of MPs in full: Boris Johnson, Paul Scully, Jerome Mayhew, Nadine Dorries, Mark Spencer, Nigel Mills, Rob Butler, Stephen McPartland and Suella Braverman. This is another reason why we think it’s so important that politicians publicly correct false statements. Click here to sign our petition to demand honesty from our politicians. Another MP gets employment claim wrong Keir Starmer wrong to say families will be £2,620 worse off this year Launching Labour’s local elections campaign, Keir Starmer has been claiming that families would be an average of £2,620 worse off this year under the Conservatives. While the average household in the UK is expected to be significantly worse off this year, this particular figure is flawed. Labour reached this figure by adding five different cost rises:tax rises: £1,060energy £690petrol £300food £275mortgage £295This does not include anything that might start to offset some of those rises, like an increase in wages or benefits. But the costings themselves are unreliable too. For example, this calculation assumes the “average” household has the equivalent of a £100,000 variable-rate mortgage. But only 30% of households in England have a mortgage. There are problems with the other calculations too, which we go through in depth in our article. |
Full Fact
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