Politics Live

The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), an independent economics think tank, has criticised the Conservatives and Labour for failing to be honest with voters in their manifestos.

Launching its analysis of the parties’ promises, the Director of the IFS, Paul Johnson, said the raw facts about the public finances are “largely ignored” by both. He said they were “keeping entirely silent about their commitment to a £10 billion a year tax rise through a further three years of freezes to personal tax allowances and thresholds”.

Mr Johnson also cast doubt on the parties’ claims to have published “so-called ‘fully costed’ manifestos”.

We do not assess this point ourselves in our fact checks of all the main parties’ manifestos. 

But Labour’s does say “our plan for Britain is a fully costed, fully funded, credible plan”, while the Conservatives say “the measures in this manifesto are fully funded”.

Yet when asked whether this was true on the BBC’s Today programme this morning, Mr Johnson said: “No. I think it’s fair to say they’re not.”

Mr Johnson also criticised some of the other parties, for instance saying that proposals from Reform UK and the Green Party were “wholly unattainable [and help] to poison the entire political debate.” 

The front page of the Daily Mail today (24 June) features the headline “Ten days left to stop ‘disaster’ of a Starmer supermajority”.

The article previews a speech due to be made by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak today in which he was expected to warn against an “unchecked Labour government” and giving Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer a “blank cheque”.

But as we wrote last week, the term “supermajority” has no specific meaning in the UK parliamentary system.

The term has emerged as some opinion polls are projecting that Labour would win a substantial majority in the House of Commons, bigger than Labour’s win in 1997 under Tony Blair, when the party won a majority of 179.

The Institute for Government says, in parliamentary terms, the difference between an 80-seat majority (which the Conservative party won in the 2019 election) and a 200-seat majority is “not material”.

And the Electoral Reform Society says that a party with a majority of just one can legislate on anything it likes, as long as it can keep its back benchers “in line”, exactly the same as a party that wins a “supermajority”. 

Even foreign secretary David Cameron, Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton, said the term “doesn’t actually exist in the UK”, when asked about it in a Channel 4 interview.

The term may have gained traction in the UK because it is a genuine part of the US federal system. There, a supermajority is a qualified majority of two thirds.

The number of seats a party wins in a UK general election can however affect how many select committee chairs, and members, it holds. As the balance of committee membership is intended to reflect the balance of seats in the House of Commons, a government with a large majority would also expect to have a proportionate majority on select committees.

Winning fewer seats as an opposition party does come with a financial cost. 

‘Short Money’ is allocated to all opposition parties whose members have sworn the oath, and that secured either two seats, or one seat and more than 150,000 votes.

This money assists them in parliamentary business, and is usually spent on research support, assistance in the whips’ offices and staff for the leader. The formula to determine how much cash they get relies on the number of seats the party wins in a general election.

Talking about the “people that don’t have a right to be here” on the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg [29:30] yesterday, Labour’s shadow education secretary Bridget Phillipson said: “Returns have fallen through the floor.”

We’ve asked Ms Phillipson what she meant by this, because the actual number of returns—whether voluntary or enforced—has risen recently, albeit to a level that remains lower than it was in the early 2010s.  

As this chart shows, both voluntary and enforced returns have broadly risen since their lowest point around the first year of the pandemic.

These returns cover many different categories of people, most of whom were not seeking asylum.

It’s important to remember that the changing number of people returned doesn’t necessarily show us the proportion of people ineligible to be here who were removed. Nor does it tell us how many people were being deterred or prevented from illegally entering or remaining in the UK. 

Today, on Sky’s Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips, Conservative politician Robert Jenrick said: “we know [the Labour party] believe in open borders”. 

We’ve asked Mr Jenrick exactly what he meant here, as the contents of Labour’s 2024 manifesto don’t appear to support his claim. 

In its manifesto, Labour pledged to “reduce net migration”. It also makes other references to controls around migration: 

• “The overall level must be properly controlled and managed.”
• “We will reform the points-based immigration system so that it is fair and properly managed, with appropriate restrictions on visas.”
• (On refugee settlement schemes) “The system needs to be controlled and managed and we need strong borders.” 
• (On small boats crossing the Channel) “We will create a new Border Security Command” and “Labour will set up a new returns and enforcement unit…to fast-track removals to safe countries for people who do not have the right to stay here.” 

We’ve contacted the Conservatives about Mr Jenrick’s claim and will publish an update to our blog if they respond.

The UK Statistics Authority (UKSA) today warned about the risk that poorly explained figures may “damage trust”, in response to a complaint about estimates published by the Labour party. 

The complaint came in a letter from the Conservative party chairman, Richard Holden, who asked the UKSA to confirm whether it was misleading of Labour to say that the Conservatives had announced £71 billion a year of unfunded spending plans. 

In his response, the chair of the UKSA, Sir Robert Chote, also mentioned later analysis by Labour, which claimed that Conservative plans would “raise people’s mortgages by £4,800”.  

Full Fact’s own analysis has shown that Labour’s £4,800 figure was misleading, when quoted without due caveats, as it is speculative and based on uncertain assumptions.  

Commenting on both figures, Sir Robert said that underlying calculations, data sources and context should be provided alongside costings.

“When distilling these claims into a single number, there should be enough context to allow the average person to understand what it means and how significant it is,” he said. “Omitting this information can damage trust in the data and the claims that these data inform.

“To safeguard trust in official statistics, we encourage that statistical claims are presented clearly and transparently so that the public can test the arguments, and descriptive statements, that political candidates make about them.”

These words echo similar comments from the Office for Statistics Regulation on Conservative claims about Labour’s plans.

In today’s letter, Sir Robert said the principles of transparency applied to the analysis from both parties.

In a post last night on X (formerly Twitter), Labour claimed the Prime Minister and Conservative leader Rishi Sunak would “deny you access to your bank account and driving licence” if you refuse to “enlist for national service”.

The Liberal Democrats have also claimed in a post that Mr Sunak suggested “national service or no driving licence”.

These posts follow Mr Sunak’s appearance on last night’s BBC Question Time Leaders’ Special, which we fact checked. The Prime Minister was asked how he would enforce the Conservatives’ plan to require all 18 year-olds to complete a year’s national service.

In response Mr Sunak said that there would be “a set of sanctions”, stating: “We will look at the models that are existing around Europe, and get the appropriate mix of those.”He added: “There’s a range of different options that exist. There's all sorts of things that people do across Europe, whether that's looking at driving licences, other access to finance, all sorts of other things.”

However he did not say that these specific examples would be used as sanctions in the Conservatives’ plans. 

Mr Sunak went on to say that “we will have a Royal Commission to look at that and come back to the government and recommend the appropriate mix of sanctions and incentives”.

We’ve approached Labour and the Liberal Democrats for comment and will update this post if we hear back.