Government Tracker FAQs
Why is Full Fact running a Government Tracker?
Trust in British politics is at a record low—just 9% of Britons say they trust politicians to tell the truth, and 75% think elected parties break most or all of their promises. Politicians make promises and ask to be judged on their delivery. But then whether they’ve delivered those promises—and sometimes, what they actually promised—is often subject to debate and confusion, and sometimes false and misleading claims.
Access to verified, impartial information on this is vital. So to help, Full Fact’s new Government Tracker is monitoring the government’s delivery on its promises as it happens.
We launched the Government Tracker in November 2024 so please let us know what you think and give us your feedback. We’ll be keeping the tracker up to date and adding more pledges in the coming months.
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How did you choose what to track?
Politicians make lots of different commitments, in a variety of places, and we can’t track them all. So we’ve had to choose what to focus on initially, and will be adding more pledges in due course.
We’ve started with Labour’s 2024 election manifesto, given it was what the party put in writing before asking people to vote for it. Our fact checkers went through it line-by-line to identify everything that appeared to be a measurable pledge, and found nearly 300.
We’ve then initially looked at around 40, across 12 different areas:
- Crime, police and justice
- Culture and society
- Defence
- Democracy
- Economy
- Education
- Energy
- Health and social care
- Housing
- Migration
- Transport
- Work and benefits
Most of the first set of pledges were selected from what Labour itself said were its most important priorities—its ‘five national missions’ and its ‘six first steps for change’. We’ve also added a few other key pledges, either to ensure we’ve included other important policy areas such as defence, or to ensure we’ve covered issues which have made headlines before or since the election, such as giving 16- and 17-year-olds the vote.
Again, we’ll be adding more pledges over the coming weeks and months.
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What about pledges which weren’t in the manifesto?
The manifesto is important, but it’s not the only forum politicians make pledges in—and as this parliament progresses, it’s likely we’ll see many new important pledges from Labour. So while we’ve focused on the manifesto initially, as we expand the tracker we’ll be adding pledges from other sources too—for example, if the government makes a major new policy commitment or a minister makes a big announcement in Parliament.
If there’s a particular pledge you think it’s important that we track, please let us know here.
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How do you judge if a pledge has been met?
The first thing our fact checkers do is take a detailed, critical look at the pledge itself. What was it promising? What did it actually say? What didn’t it say? And what might a reasonable, fair-minded voter have understood it to mean? Specific things we might check at this stage include over what time period the pledge was to be delivered, whether it applies UK-wide or is on a devolved matter, and how progress is likely to be measured.
Once we’ve understood what was promised, we look at what’s been delivered. On some pledges this is a yes/no question—for example, has a piece of legislation been introduced in Parliament, or passed. Sometimes there’s a numerical measure to look at, in which case we’ll check one or more sources of data.
Then, after checking the evidence, and discussion with at least two other senior members of our fact checking team, we’ll apply a ‘status’ to the pledge—rating it as ‘Achieved’, ‘Appears on track’, ‘In progress’, ‘Appears off track’, ‘Not kept’, ‘Unclear or disputed’ or ‘Wait and see’. Sometimes this is clearcut; sometimes there’s a judgement to be made. If so, we try to apply the rating in an impartial, fair-minded and precise way, and ensure consistency across all the pledges that we look at.
You don’t have to just take our word for it though. Against each pledge we’ve explained how we’ve decided to give it the status we have, with links to our sources. And if you have questions or think there’s something we’ve missed, you can contact us at the bottom of each pledge page and let us know why.
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How often will you update this?
We’re aiming to keep the Government Tracker up to date as events unfold. As we add more pledges, that will become an increasingly demanding job for a small team of fact checkers, so we may need to prioritise which pledges we look at immediately. Each pledge is clearly marked with the date it was last updated on. That doesn’t mean that was the last time we looked at it. We’ll be keeping an eye on what’s happening with all the pledges we’ve looked at all the time, and if a pledge hasn’t been updated for a while, it’s likely that’s just because there have been no significant developments. If you think a pledge is out of date and needs updating, please let us know.
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Which pledges will you be tracking next?
Over the coming weeks and months we’ll be adding more pledges to the Government Tracker. It’s likely this will initially be more pledges from the manifesto—we’ve already identified around 15 more from the ‘missions’, ‘first steps’ or other key topics we would like to look at, and there are many more we could look at beyond that, given we initially identified nearly 300.
But we’ll also be keeping a close eye on new announcements from the government and in due course it’s likely we’ll start tracking pledges which weren’t in the manifesto, but which the government has made central to its policy platform.
If there’s something you think we should be tracking, please let us know.
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Are you tracking the pledges of other parties?
Not currently—this is a Government Tracker which is focused on the delivery of the UK Government, so at the moment we’re looking at Labour’s pledges and delivery. But we are doing so making sure that we apply our usual rigorous standards of accuracy and impartiality—and if we continue to run the Government Tracker and there’s a change of government, we would look at another party’s record in exactly the same way.
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What do the different statuses mean?
Applying a single ‘status’ to a wide range of often nuanced, and in some cases unclear, pledges isn’t an easy thing to do, and as noted above sometimes involves us making a judgement call. But we believe it’s important to do so in order for the Government Tracker to be accessible and useful at scale.
The statuses we’ve used are as follows:
- Achieved. For when a pledge has been met.
- Appears on track. For when work on a pledge is under way and appears likely to be met based on current progress, though this is a judgement call we’ve had to make based on the best available evidence, and may be subject to change.
- In progress. For when work on a pledge is under way but we’re not able to confidently assess whether it appears to be on or off track.
- Appears off track. For when work on a pledge is under way and appears unlikely to be met based on current progress, though this is a judgement call we’ve had to make based on the best available evidence, and may be subject to change.
- Not kept. For when a pledge has been broken. This includes pledges which may have been abandoned. It also includes those which the government may modify, in which case we’ll rate the old pledge as ‘not kept’ and start tracking the new one. (It’s important to note there may sometimes be good reasons why this happens—for example, if the government is forced to respond to external events beyond its control, such as a war or a pandemic—but we are aiming to track progress on pledges regardless.)
- Unclear or disputed. For pledges where we are unable to offer a verdict, usually because either key data is unavailable or the original meaning of the pledge was unclear or disputed.
- Wait and see. For pledges where delivery has not yet started, or it is too early to assess any progress.
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What if a pledge is no longer relevant?
There may be occasions where a government says that a pledge it has previously made is no longer relevant—for example, due to external events such as a war or pandemic, or because the premise of a commitment is no longer valid. If so, the pledge may be abandoned or modified.
In that case, we will continue to assess progress against the original pledge, and if it has been broken will rate it as “not kept”. (If a pledge has been modified, we’ll look to track the new version too).It’s important to note that there are sometimes good reasons why this happens, and why changing course from a pledge made before the election may be considered the right thing to do in light of the latest situation.
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What if the meaning of a pledge wasn’t clear?
The first thing we try to do in assessing a pledge is understand its meaning—what was it promising, when was it promising that by, and how was progress supposed to be measured.
Where this isn’t clear from the original pledge, we’ve pushed the government to clarify its promise. If we’ve been able to do so, we’ll clearly set out the detail which has since emerged.
If we believe the original pledge had a clear, single meaning for most voters, we will judge progress against that meaning, regardless of whether the government offers a different explanation. If the original was unclear or ambiguous, then we may not be able to judge progress at all, but will instead call that out and rate the pledge as “unclear or disputed”.
As we’ve written elsewhere, this in itself is a major problem. Ambiguity in politicians’ pledges isn’t good enough—commitments that are subject to interpretation are a recipe for confusion, and risk fuelling cynicism among voters. And this is particularly the case with written manifestos. As we set out in our manifesto standards ahead of the election, manifestos should define things clearly and consistently and be phrased in a way that a reasonable person is likely to understand.
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Who is the Government Tracker for?
Everyone, really—trust in politics is an issue that is relevant to everyone, and all voters in the UK have a stake in the government’s delivery of its promises.
Along with it being a useful resource for the general public, we also hope the Government Tracker will be used by politicians, journalists and others with a professional interest in public policy, as a useful research tool providing accessible, impartial and up-to-date information on the government’s progress on its pledges.
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Can I give feedback on the Government Tracker?
Yes! Please do—we’ve launched the Government Tracker in November 2024 and we want to hear how we can make it better. You can send us feedback on specific pledges at the bottom of each page, or on the tracker as a whole here: