ITV’s seven-party debate: fact checked

On 13 June ITV hosted its second debate of the 2024 general election campaign—this time involving representatives from seven of the UK’s political parties. 

The line-up was the same as the seven-party debate hosted by the BBC last week: the Conservative party’s Penny Mordaunt; Labour’s Angela Rayner; the SNP’s Stephen Flynn; the Liberal Democrats’ Daisy Cooper; Plaid Cymru’s Rhun ap Iorwerth; Reform UK’s Nigel Farage and the Green Party’s Carla Denyer.

Taxes and spending

Ms Mordaunt claimed Labour would increase taxes by an average of “£2,000 per working household”.

This figure has been widely quoted by the Conservatives, but as we explained in our fact check last week, it’s unreliable and based on a number of questionable assumptions. 

It comes from a Conservative estimate of Labour’s “unfunded spending commitments”, but Labour has said this is “flawed” and many of the costings behind the calculation are uncertain. Even if the figure was right, we can’t be certain this money would be collected by raising taxes, and if it was, households are unlikely to be affected equally.

Mr Flynn claimed that £18 billion of public sector cuts are “baked in under a future Labour government”.

This seems to be based on an Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) estimate from March of the real-terms cuts unprotected government departments could face by 2028/29. 

But the IFS also says there’s uncertainty over this figure, as there are no published spending plans beyond this year. In May it said a “reasonable estimate” is that unprotected budgets face cuts of between £10 billion and £20 billion by 2028/29. 

And Ms Rayner claimed the Conservatives have taxed people at the highest level in 70 years. 

The so-called ‘tax burden’ was the highest in over 70 years in 2022/23. It’s since fallen slightly, but is forecast to increase over each of the next five years to a near-record level. 

It’s worth noting though that there are different ways of looking at the extent to which “people” are taxed, and the effective personal tax rate for the average worker (based on the rate of income tax and National Insurance) is currently the lowest since 1975.

GDP per capita

Mr Farage claimed gross domestic product (GDP) per capita “has declined for the last six consecutive quarters”.

That’s not right. Office for National Statistics figures show GDP per capita increased in the first quarter of 2024 compared to the previous quarter—though it did fall for seven consecutive quarters prior to that.

GP recruitment

Ms Cooper said under her party there’d be “8,000 more GPs”.

That pledge was outlined in the Liberal Democrat manifesto, which we fact checked earlier this week. But crucially the manifesto didn’t say if those GPs would be fully qualified. That’s important, because GP workforce stats can paint a very different picture depending on whether you do or don’t count trainees.

After we asked the Liberal Democrats about this, the party told us that “at least 7,000” of the extra GPs would be fully qualified.

Crime

Ms Mordaunt claimed police officers have “reduced crime by half” over the Conservatives’ time in office. 

We’ve written about this figure before—it’s based on specific data from the crime survey for England and Wales (CSEW) which doesn’t include fraud or computer misuse, so doesn't represent all crime.

Child poverty

Mr Flynn said 100,000 children will “be lifted out of poverty” thanks to the Scottish Child Payment (a weekly payment of £26.70 issued to eligible low income families for each child under 16). We wrote about this earlier this week after Scottish First Minister and SNP leader John Swinney made a similar claim in the BBC Scottish leaders’ debate. 

The 100,000 figure likely refers to modelling which estimates 100,000 children will be kept out of relative poverty in 2024/25 due to Scottish government policies. However that modelling suggests the Scottish Child Payment specifically will keep 60,000 children out of poverty in 2024/25.